Re: AW: Laptop Looping

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 25 aug 2007, at 11.40, Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill wrote:

> A problem arises for the unexperienced player when using acoustic  
> sources
> (the hardest being singing, as you can't effectively combat hearing  
> the
> sources signal). I'm going to try attacking this with Mobius (also,  
> as Per
> mentioned).


Since my laptop looping rig is working without noise artifact  
problems I'd like to post some notes on how it's set up: I use the  
method recommended by the manual to let Mobius adapt to the hardware  
AD/DA latency (sending on output back into another input). Mobius  
then calculates the time for the process and as soon as you layer  
live audio into a loop it will be shifted in time to appear at the  
correct position as the loop plays back.

When I have been feeding Mobius a digital signal (no latency) I have  
adjusted the latency setting by ear. This is easy if you use  
percussive source audio. The rig that calls for this method is when  
playing EWI MIDI into a Mac's virtual instruments and sending the  
audio output as S/PDIF into the PC where looping is performed in Mobius.

In Mobius I do not use the "Monitor INput" function (global  
preferences). Instead I split the signal after the first "general  
sound shaping plug-in" (almost exclusively a PSP608) and before all  
other effect plug-ins (some quite long chains of plug-ins PRE  
looper). Now, one signal goes directly from this PSP608 to the Mobius  
input. This is a trick to minimize the real-time playing latency. As  
for reverb, delay etc I don't mind if they are 20-30 milliseconds  
late when getting looped, but the stuff I play has to be accurate  
(i.e. 6-12 milliseconds late).

On some rare patches I don't even route my live input (instrument)  
signal into the looper. I simply route the input through a PSP608 and  
directly to the audio interface output while the effect treated  
signal chain goes into the looper (delay + reverb passing through  
beat synced filter bank).

> Disabling wLAN is especially important here,

Oh... maybe I need to say that I always disabling most of those  
things if I use a Windows machine for audio (with Mac's I just turn  
of the screen saver and the energy saving options). I don't use anti  
virus software or update Windows XP once I have set it up to work  
well. The laptop I have for Mobius I ordered specifically with no  
such extra components. Only the motherboard, graphic card and CPU  
recommended for audio. Hardware recommendations are changing all the  
time and my PC is two years old and thus quite "obsolete" for a  
laptop purchase today.

I have good experiences with using audio interfaces from RME and I'm  
sticking with them because they work well. In the past I bought an  
RME (multiface) because other users had good experiences with them,  
especially with pc's built on the same hardware components I was  
ordering for mine.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)