RE: FlyLoops and electronic instruments

["Aaron Leese" <aaronleese@flyloops.com>]

Jeff / Per 

First of all ... thank you both very much for the elucidation on all of 
this
... I really enjoy getting to understand the various approaches that
different loopers / looping technologies take ....

I think we have come very close to understanding the differences between
flyloops and mobius ... there are just a couple things left that I wonder
about.


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

>..... Mobius is designed more for "evolving improvisational" loops that 
>are
>recorded then modified over time with functions like overdub, insert,
>multiply, trim, replace, shuffle, and most important a feedback
>control that lets the loop layers decay gradually while you overdub.


Perhaps ... though the feedback control on an individual track while
overdubbing is very key with flyloops also .... this is what I have been
calling stacking on an individual loop with a decay rate.  So in that sense
they are similar .... 

But there is a huge difference here:

>What Flyloops calls "loops" is what Mobius calls "tracks".
>What Flyloops calls "A->B" is what Mobius calls "loops" with
>the LoopCount parameter limited to 2.

This is correct .... we have thought about adding more than just the two
banks .... but so far have nixed that in favor of other operations.  I
should mention serial loops again here .... which play in serial to either
the A or B banks of parallel loops and allow for nice segways ... but this
is very different than having multiple banks of loops in parallel. 

>Flyloops doesn't appear to have the concept of what Mobius calls
>"layers", an infinite history of the evolution of the loop that
>you can move around in with the Undo and Redo functions.

This is true ... when stacking (overdubbing) with flyloops, you have no
recourse once it has been done ... no undo/redo.  This is something we have
thought about adding too ... but have no yet done so, figuring that the 
user
can always record a parallel loop instead and turn it on/off ..... and get
the same effect as stacking then undoing/redoing .... and then you can
choose to consolidate the loops if you like the finished sound (to conserve
space).  Of course, it is nice to have a linear history too in some ways.

One other thing that flyloops does not do ... which I was actually unaware
of until this thread ... is the subcycles.  I usually work with short 
enough
loops that I hadn't though about allowing trigger points at the 1/2, 1/3
etc. points of the master loop.  I just record a shorter master loop to
begin with.  This is something I should probably think about supporting 
....
if that doesn't bother you.

> Time stretch is one of the holy grails of looping but it is difficult
>to do because the algorithms that sound best require too much CPU to
>be done in real time on an average PC.  The ones that can be done in
>real time don't sound as good.  It is a tradeoff and doing it well
>requires a fairly detailed knowledge of DSP algorithms like FFTs and
>filters.  One of the better implementations is found in Ableleton
>Live.  The recently announced Virtual Repeater will probably do this
>well.

Yeah, I know it ..... I've implemented the frequency shift before ... but 
of
course, would love to vary tempo and pitch separately.  Have you seen the
REX2 standard by propellerhead ..... it's an audio format that they claim
allows flawless real time pitch/tempo shifting ... this is one of the other
things I am asking for the license for.  

There is also:
Soundtouch ... which if I remember right, is what mobius uses ....

And http://www.fftw.org/
Who also claim to support real time pitch shifting ....
Do you have experience with either of these?

>Rate shift and time stretch also cause enormous complications
>if you are trying to support external synchronization with a MIDI
>clock or a VST host.
>Syncing to a drum machine is more complicated than automating the
>record button even if you are not changing the tempo.  

Right, and quite honestly .. I am not planning on supporting syncing to
external clocks for those reasons.

>...you will have far more commercial interest if
>you provide VST support rather than Rewire support.  Rewire is not
>nearly as flexible as VST for the user.  

How so?  I figured that supporting ReWire essentially allowed people to use
VSTs ... since you could use Rewire to connect to a VST Host.

Of course, this is not the same as running flyloops as a VST instrument
itself ..... which might be worthwhile.

I don't personally use VSTs very much (just with Reason, using Reason as a
sampler ..) .... so any information here would be very helpful.

 

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