LP1 Rant warning! (was Re: Looperlative LP1 testers)

[mark sottilaro <zerocrossing2001@yahoo.com>]

--- Claude Voit <c.voit@vtx.ch> wrote:

> having followed the LP1 forum for a while, I'm a
> little bothered with the
> "throw in your ideas, boys" way of develloping a
> software.

Boy howdy, Claude!!  At first I thought, "what a great
idea, go to the people!" and then reality set in. 
People are self absorbed jerks!  I'm a self absorbed
jerk! I'm shocked that Bob's not gone crazy by this
point.  I can't wait for the "let's change the logo
thread!" ;)

I can't help but feel that in some ways, maybe due to
his design by customer input, that I bought a beta
product.  The manual is poor (many features are barely
mentioned, let alone explained, if it wasn't for Steve
Lawson on the forum I probably would have returned the
LP-1), it's got outputs that aren't implemented in any
way and did ship with a fair amount of bugs. (many
have already been found and fixed) Was a night of my
life wasted because v 1.1 refered to midi channels as
0-15?  Yes it was.  Another gone because the midi
clock sync didn't work?  Yeah, that too.  Another gone
because stopped tracks don't restart synced to the
clock...

Also, because of it's very open yet unfinished form
I'm one of those frustrated owners.  It's a tweak away
from being my dream looper. (there's curently no way
to use the midi tracks as separate loops when synced
to a midi clock and have them operate like the EDP or
the Repeater does, toggling betwen them) Judging from
what I read on the forum you could operate it that
way.

If this was a product from a company like Roland or
Digitech, it would have been returned.  Mostly when
those companies release a product it is what it is. 
I'd have said, "Oh, this product does't operate like I
want it to.  Bye bye."  But now I have a product that
*may* change into what I want.  This is kind of odd,
as rather than digging into if for what it is (a very
cool multi track looper), I can't help but think of
what it isn't and might be.  LOOP TEASE!

Will my tweak come?  I don't know.  I've put in
several requests but never got a "oh that's slated in
the next release" or "no, that's not doable at this
time" reply.  The reply was "When it comes to multiple
tracks, especially when combined with MIDI sync, we
will need to spend more time defining how you want the
software to work. The software is still young and I'd
be happy to make changes to make operate in a useable
fashion."  How much time?  Do I be patient?  I don't
develop hardware/software loopers so I have no idea
what it takes in terms of time to implement features. 
Maybe my request isn't worth Bob's time as I'm one of
few that even care about this.

As it stands now it's mostly useless to me *but I
couldn't know that based on prerelease information* 
It's not even in my signal chain.  I know I'm ranting
(I'm a good ranter, eh?) but $1200 left my bank acount
on something that's sitting on a shelf.  Do I wait? 
How long?  Bob has been amazing and patient, but part
of me wishs that a bit more time was spent in initial
conception before it was released.  If I knew that
this *is* the way the LP-1 is going to be for a long
time, I would have passed.

I'm not saying the LP-1 isn't GREAT.  It is a great
looper.  In some ways it's the best.  If you're not a
midi clock looper, this may indeed be your box.  If
you don't care about cuing a new loop to start
recording at the end of the current loop AND then
going back and finding the first loop still perfectly
synced to your drum machine, this may be your looper. 
If you want 8 stereo channels of midi synced (or not)
loops that don't all have to be the same length, this
may be your looper.

Of course Bob is on this list so he's probably going
to read this.  Hi Bob!  Bob, I like you.  I like the
Looperlative.  I could not have done anything like
this at all.  I have much respect for your hard work
and effort.  Your ability to implement all our crazy
feature requests in a short time has been amazing. 
I'd have told me to fuck off a long time ago.  In a
sense I wish you would.  Then I could say, "is the
LP-1 worth owning in it's current form?" and be done
with it.  Like it is it's an itch in my brain that I
just can't scratch.

Mark


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