Looper block upgraded? Love it!

Per Boysen

Per Boysen

Inspired
Yesterday I was switching between presets that all contain a Looper block by the end of the signal chain and I was surprised to notice that the audio spinning in the loop was carried over into the Looper block of the new patch! As I recall this was not possible back in FW7 when I last tested this. Very cool, I must say. :) There is a "bump" though that I suspect having to do with the loop being re-triggered from its start point, so you have to be careful with your foot timing and maybe also make some masking instrument noise right at the Preset swap.

Looking good, doing Half jumps when layering results in a totally pristine sounding high pitched bell timbre. Now we're only waiting for the modulation options of Reverse and Half to be fixed. Axe-Edit displays these two parameter as open for modulation assignment but if you select an LFO for Modulation Source there is just nothing happening at all.
 
I'm not sure but I have a feeling it has always worked this way if you have the spillover on.
 
This has always worked this way as long the Looper mode is is identical in the recalled preset.
 
Cool, thanks! Love this forum :)

Do you guys too get clicking noise if "doing punch-ins" with Stack by a momentary pedal switch?
 
Per Boysen said:
There is a "bump" though that I suspect having to do with the loop being re-triggered from its start point, so you have to be careful with your foot timing and maybe also make some masking instrument noise right at the Preset swap.
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Yes noticed that "bump" too! It is really annoying and spoils your loop. Same is happening when you switch scenes (on the same preset). You will here a slight 'switching artifact' or gap in the signal. Same artifact/gap happens when you click on a block to edit something or to bypass a certain block in Axe Edit. I am using a lot of long delay looping and this spoils your delay loop hearing this switching artifact coming back each loop.

Maybe there will be less switching gaps and faster switching in the new XL?
 
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One thing I do is to put a Delay block before the Looper. I set the Looper to "quantise" and then I can catch a first short loop in the delay (actually two delays set to some poly rhythm like 1/4 vs 8th triplet or something) and when that short loop is grooving I kick a switch to swap from Delay X to Delay Y, which is set to 4 bars. Now the short loop keeps repeating in the long delay and you may add stuff there as well during the 4 bars. Final stage is to kick REcord for the looper and since it is in quantise mode it will snatch an even longer loop with no bump. In Quantise mode you won't need to even press Record a second time, the Looper automatically adapts to the tempo when beginning to reach "end of memory". I keep four foot switches for my most needed values of the Dub Mix parameter; 97%, 70%, 20% and 0%, so when replacing loop content I can control how deep I'll dig. The Stack switch and the Half switch is on my Gordius Little Giant and I programmed that pedal to send wait for the Axe's clock beat before sending out the MIDI event; that is to make changes to the loop happen on the beat. But unfortunately the change of switching between Stack On and Stack Off has this annoying little click noise. May we please ask for a little audio processing crossfading with the next firmware upgrade?
 
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Hmmm, maybe try adding a bit of damping to the modifier that is controlling Dub Mix?

I think the sharp gain change when that parameter gets changed remotely is causing the discontinuity and resulting in the click. Normally this isn't an issue because most people just "set it and forget it".
 
AdamCook said:
Hmmm, maybe try adding a bit of damping to the modifier that is controlling Dub Mix?
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Good point! But I'm afraid I was confused and messed up facts when describing the problem - it's not the Dub Mix that causes the click noise, it is actually the Stack function! And the Stack function can not be assigned to a modulator, so there's no damping option at hand. I use the direct MIDI control of #CC31 to change Stack between ON and OFF.

The Half function also suffers a bit of this click noise. But although it has the "assign modulator" icon you can't do that (I remember Simeon posted about this issue too somewhere, hoping it will get fixed). To change Half I use the #CC120, and since modulators are broken there's no way to apply Damping here either.
 
Per Boysen said:
In Quantise mode you won't need to even press Record a second time, the Looper automatically adapts to the tempo when beginning to reach "end of memory".
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how do you mean this exactly? do you mean the fact that when the looper time is finished (say 15 seconds for stereo undo or 30 seconds for mono undo) it goes into play automatically? or do you mean something else?
It's hard to time the actual bars this way because it is depending on the maximum loop time...
 
Yes I mean what you're saying - but there is more! Here's what the manual says:
QUANTIZE – With quantize enabled, loop length is perfectly set
to some whole number of beats) with reference to the pulses of the Axe-Fx GLOBAL TEMPO
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My way of adapting to the Axe's global tempo is to bring in a delay block to give me "the click" as part of my playing.

Another way - that I like better, but unfortunately not supported in the AxeFX - is to let the loop you create set the global tempo. For that to work you would need to first tell the Axe how many bars you are going to record. Another little wish for future firmware upgrades :) Instead of forcing the musician to adapt to the machine's tempo you make the machine follow the musician.
 
Yes but the the looper quantize is limited to a 1/4 beat. Would be a really nice addition if you could quantize the looper in bars or specific numbers of beats instead of only one beat as it is now. If you wait till the looper time is full you don't get a specific amount bars you are just depending on maximum looper time. The amount of beats is then depending on the specific tempo. Also I noticed that there is a gap between the end of the loop when the maximum loop time is finished (where it rounds of to the beat). That is the first time around.
 
Well, it sounds as if the Looper automatically closes the loop point at the nearest 1/4 note if you let it go in Record mode. I might be wrong though, haven't researched this much because mostly I hit a second Record (or Stack) to land on a regular bar length. All this is of course happening only when "Immediate Play = ON". It would be nice too to have an "Immediate Stack" option too, because then you would go free from a lot of the "bump" problems when a long loop closes (printing reverb into the beginning of the loop, for example).
 
Per Boysen said:
Well, it sounds as if the Looper automatically closes the loop point at the nearest 1/4 note if you let it go in Record mode. I might be wrong though, haven't researched this much because mostly I hit a second Record (or Stack) to land on a regular bar length. All this is of course happening only when "Immediate Play = ON". It would be nice too to have an "Immediate Stack" option too, because then you would go free from a lot of the "bump" problems when a long loop closes (printing reverb into the beginning of the loop, for example).
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Yes looping end point quantizes at the nearest 1/4 note. Would be nice if you could have bar quantize or say 5 or 6 beats. Especially in fast tempos the 'nearest 1/4 note' can come also by accident be the previous note and there you have a shorter loop then you want. Also the beginning of your recording is not quantized. It would make more sense if the beginning could also be quantised. The way it is not the quantize function is usable but fairly limited.

When you let it run until maximum loop time the quantize causes a very noticable gab the first round.
Also to be able to make use of quantize "Immediate Play" should be OFF otherwise quantize is not working. I was experiencing that yesterday.
 
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AdamCook said:
I will definitely look into these improvements and fixes as time allows.
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ok, great! If I may add my wishes (already mentioned in my other posts in this topic) :

1) Record start quantize. So not only record end quantize as it is now.
2) Bar quantize (or even better choice between specific number of beats) instead of only 1/4 note quantize as it is now.
 
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Bodde said:
1) Record start quantize. So not only record end quantize as it is now.
2) Bar quantize (or even better choice between specific number of beats) instead of only 1/4 note quantize as it is now.
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Highily seconded! :)

An alternative way of calling it would be to fix the loop length related the global tempo (which isn't done when only the recording end is quantised).

THen there is (3) the click noise on activation and de-activation of Stack and Half (a little more tweak to the cross-fade code).

Finally (4), if you really want to make the [LPR]*"musician friendly", you should add also the opposite perspective; setting the global tempo related the absolute length of a loop being recorded (without quantisation, but depending on a user set preference of how many beats will be recorded). This is what we need when playing in a band; we need to kick on the downbeat to start recording and then kick on another downbeat to close the loop. And when doing that we would of course want the hole Axe-box global tempo to adapt so our delays and other tempo dependent effects will follow the band as well as our own playing (hopefully) does.
 
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Bakerman said:
And I don't know if this is easily changed, but loop start/end modifiers cause unexpected results:
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I guess you mean the loop trim start and stop? I was playing with this today using the Axe display while the loop is playing. When you adjust both trim start and end points the whole loop region shifts back. You can clearly see this by watching the display. When you only adjust the start point or end point (so not both) it seems to be ok. But when you adjust both start and end strange unexpected things happen. I guess this is a bug?
 
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I set a threshold and play once through my progression before recording in the loop to avoid the reverb/delay issue Per Boysen mentioned (or the opposite maybe... I WANT the delay/reverb from the end of the recording on the loop). No pops over here. *shrug*
 
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