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Working synced looper for AUM?. (Enso not working...)
Hi,
This is probably older than earth and has been discussed a quintillion times... I can’t find a working, simple, solid looper for AUM.
I need a good old fashioned synced looper. To add guitars, bass or whatever in time with the song. Requires sync cos there’s no way you can press a rec button right on time, specially with your hands on an instrument.
Needs to be auv3 for simplicity in AUM. Although if you mention an excellent iaa alternative I’m up for whatever gets the job done.
I own:
- Audiokit L7 just doesn’t work. It crashes constantly, it’s unreliable and hasn’t been updated in ages. Feature wise it made sense but I don’t know why they put it out half baked and just seem to abandon it.
- Gauss. Everyone loves it, but I just don’t get it. I’m sure it’s great for ambient or unsynced stuff, droning and such. Brambros and Heinbach made it this way on purpose. But it’s definitely not made for looping a guitar in sync. You can resort to automating it via LK or something but it’s a hassle. @wim made a great Mozaic script to sync Gauss rec to the beat, but even the play head has to be automated so it starts with the song.
- Enso. Seems like it was everyone’s favorite until Gauss came about. It does sync and should work for synced recording as it has a “rec on measure” and “record for x beats”. But it doesn’t seem to work!. I attach a video below where I try to record 16 bars and it doesn’t play after finishing, instead it records again. I’ve also experienced out of sync issues, where it drifts, like it’s not doing the perfect synced measures it promises.
- I have the 1 week Quantiloop Pro trial but it’s not appearing on AUM. Seems like it does synced recording and ticks the boxes, but it’s 20€ so I’d like to test or be sure...
My current very inefficient workflow is to record audio loops in Zenbeats clip mode synced to aum via Ableton, then render and transfer those loops and trigger them in Drambo hosted in AUM. It sucks, it’s a mood killer. But Zenbeats is just great for audio looping/clips. It’s simple, straightforward and solid. It starts on measure, you record as long as you like and choose the length afterwards. The way it should be, no bells and whistles, just does it’s thing right and easy.
Are there any other loopers I should try?. I’ve mentioned this in a million posts, it’s sooo hard to deal with audio in a Dawless scenario (AUM). Something close to Zenbeats clip mode (I’m guessing GarageBand is similar). Synced, easy and solid in AUM.. Might have to find a Drambo patch, but I know I’ll run into little quirks and stuff...
Here’s the Enso demo where I can’t get it to work right.
Sorry for the boring video, but it needed long a longish (16 bar) loop to show what it’s doing. I press rec at sec 8, triggers on next measure and records until 16 measures (sec 40) but then doesn’t play but triggers record again
Cheers!
.
Comments
Ive set up Drambo for no frills looping.
Choose steps/bars. Then set to pattern. Add a note on first step. Record anything or nothing. Then clear. This way it allows you to press record without having to press again to stop record. Press record anywhere on sequencer. Then play as the circle spinner suggests or by ear. If you have a controller. You can press record and also mute. Mute will then be like a clip launcher that works the same as record ie press anywhere in sequencer to be an advanced mute. You could then slice and resequence or use as a pattern in drambo.
Can you set it to wait for the next measure?. If playing guitar you can’t press rec and play at the same time.
So guitar wise. You would press record then record would start at start of sequence. Then it will play back on next loop without needing to press stop. If you added a foot controller maybe even a nanokey studio and trigger with a toe.. You could maybe add drambos in a chain on one channel. Set all to monitor. Then record to last Drambo first. Then to the drambo above. This way you could loop on every loop ( I think )
Not sure what you mean ( plus im not that knowledgable )
To loop without above. You would press record. Wait till recording starts. Play guitar then loop will automatically play back. You set step sequencer length. Then add a note on first step. Then set in record mode ( pattern rather than instant ) Clearing the dummy sequence to begin with allows you to just press record and not need to stop record.
Yeah you could trigger nanokey studio with a toe. Maybe theres bt or foot controllers with midi channels and cc but a nanokey can be used as a controller. You only need to press record once ( anywhere in sequencer ) so toe timing isnt important. Thats if the thru monitor thing is sound.
Maybe theres a way to trigger another drambo record, when the other drambo record deactivates. You would then just press record before you start playing, then each record would be automatic and playback would be automatic ( provided you cleared a dummy loop of every sampler ) Maybe a drambo specialist can tell you if theres modules ( trigger ) can switch on record as the other record decactivates.
Sorry if its bs ideas.
Loopy Pro is coming out in a short while - I think it covers pretty much everything.
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/37748/while-were-all-cooped-up-inside-herere-some-loopy-pro-updates#latest
June/July seems like a looong time 😱
Kosmonaut + AUM Metronome works very well as Looper, you need to assign some MIDI to the bars and you can put to 64 bars or beats, don't remember
Well, Cubasis 3 is doing it... Should I duck and cover now? Anyway, I’m a Cubasis newbie and probably I don’t know the deeper problems. So, in Cubasis you set your loop, arm the track and then push record. After count-in it will start recording. When the playhead returns to the beginning of the loop it creates a new part and keeps going like that until you stop recording. I think you need to set an option in the settings ‚play back while recording‘ to get the overdub behaviour.
@tahiche, you can do your very own trick with using AB3 to sync with AUM. My problems with drifting out of sync had rather to do with the high load that my song created. Seems to be that high CPU load destabilizes the sync. When I bounced some synths to audio the problems went away.
Never tried a drambo build.
Example. Set drambo samplers in a aum chain. Monitor on. Sequence set. Record dummy recordings then clear.
Point a sequencer to each sampler. Add a trigger to each sequencer and note out, set in midi mapping. Set a song mode in each sequencer so that track 1 and 2 have a sequence loop gap and each track after dosent have a gap. It should input a note to each sampler drambo via song mode. Which then triggers a trigger linked to record. Add a step component so each trigger dosent keep triggering record.
Save template.
If it works. I know clearing recording allows to press record and not have to press record to stop.
It would be an automatic looper. Set to bars. Song mode
It would also be stems if it works.
Just setup trigless trigs for each sampler to a trigger button that presses record with step conditions and a songmode and a step note to activate pattern. The trig will be on pattern before pattern with the note.Then use the zoom magnifier on ipad to zoom a drambo circle. A giant drambo circle as a loop spinner.
Simple tip for Enso when recording your first loop is to press the ‘X’ to clear the loop before you record anything (or record something then clear it). I’ve found second time round things work as they should.
Doug has a good video with tips on setting up
Hey @tahiche, try turning on 'Long Memory' in Enso settings. I just did a quick test and Enso showed the exact same behaviour as in your vid, even at 12bars. Turning on 'Long Memory' seemed to solve it (just a quick test, but worth checking.)
Plus: I can confirm what @steve99 said.
Plusplus: Never use the Record/Overdub/Play/Stop-buttons, allways use 'Trigger'
I read the manual (go figure 🙃) and it clearly stated long loop was meant for audio recs longer than a minute at 48khz, which is not the case. But they are obviously wrong somewhere so I’ll give it a try.
Not too happy with Enso to tell you the truth. @steve99 i do clear the loop ( X ) before recording.
There’s 2 other things that I can’t figure out:
1) there’s supposed to be an indicator of where the recording is, but it only works when overdubbing. That’s not cool. If you set a predefined rec length (with Trigger) it should show where you’re at. Supposed to do it with the red line, but it doesn’t do anything.
2) Has anyone else had issues with time drifts?. I could it be related to the “long memory” setting?. Can’t see why it should but it does happen on longer recordings.
Wish list:
@tahiche : I know you said you want AUv3, but if you want to record synched loops on the fly, there is really no better solution for AUM than AUM+Loopy+Audiobus
It has state saving. It is super stable. Loops can be as long as you like. They can be synched or not. You don’t have to fiddle with one AU per loop. You don’t have to do window juggling. Once your project is set up, all you have to do is open the AB document to restore everything’s state including AUM’s. You don’t even need an AUM document as it’s complete state is saved in AB.
I haven’t used Quantiloop. So,it may be great too. Up to 12 loops. Extensive midi control.
+1 Loopy. It does it all.
Followed by Group the Loop and Quantiloop. Those both have some nice features, and some are things that Loopy lacks. But I always end up back to the grand daddy of them all, Loopy.
Drambo's Flex Sampler can also be very good for looping. I have it set up to auto-record to pattern lengths triggered from my foot controller.
I was about to mention that, and the beat-synced recording and stop events of Drambo's Flexi can also be triggered by a MIDI sequencer using notes as triggers. No need to place the notes precisely. It's a REC and PLAY arming mechanism. All in AUv3.
Yea that is a great tutorial.
I personally think Quantiloop is fantastic, especially for guitar based looping. If you are using a foot switch, it reminds me a lot of the boss loop station workflow
If you open Enso in standalone there are 2 links, 1 is a full video walk-through of the app and the other is a PDF Manual. Here’s a link to the manual, hopefully it helps.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1550/9885/files/Enso_1.0.1_Manual.pdf?21
Enso is working, set input monitor to 'record', after recording a predefined number of bars playback will start
The “long memory” setting seems to have fixed the issue described in the video. Also timing seems to be better. Weird cos the documentation states it’s only for audio over a minute long.
@rs2000 i used Drambo in my previous attempt. It worked but it’s too complex. My loops are rather long which means either a free running vel sequencer or shaper with scratch/offset which is hard to stop and start, or really long notes or 1-shots which don’t really work if loops are long and you want to switch halfway through (not to mention they don’t fit on the timeline). Even if there’s workarounds, Drambo would really benefit from a dedicated looper, as it is it’s very time consuming.
@espiegel123, @wim, I should have probably turned to Loopy. I’m probably overlooking it for the lack of auv3 when it’s surely the most stable and solid looper. I actually cheated and recorded the loops in Zenbeats and then loaded the exported wavs via “load buffer” into Enso. Syncing Zenbeats to Aum is so simple for recording, I’m sure Loopy would have been solid. I’ll try that next time as it’ll save me a lot of time. I do like the sectors feature in Enso and the midi learn is pretty useful, then again I’ll have to use a bunch of instances and midi learn each one... probably a lot faster in a centralized loopy. Can’t wait for Loopy Pro, it’s crazy that it’s unbeatable after all these years.
Btw the song I’m doing is a kraut inspired piece called AstraSeneca. I have to figure out all the mapping in LK and then do it live. Why?. I don’t know, it’s more punk I guess 😬🤟. I’m only using 1 CGB guitar, 3 strings total. Kraut is my ambient, I can listen to the same loop for ages and not get bored.
Thanks for your comments. Love this forum.
@tahiche : not only is Loopy the most stable: when you are working with multiple, co-ordinated loops that you want to record in realtime to build up a track it is way way less work than using multiple individual loop plug-ins (multiple Ensos or Gauss or whatever). Pretty much everything you need to do can be done without switching to Loopy or planning in advance about how many loops you plan to record. Tap the palette to start recording your first loop. Tap to end and it starts playing and the next tap records your next loop etc.
It really is actually easier than with any existing AU. And once you have set it up once, you can start a new session with a tap of a button.
Good choice on the CGB guitar ... that's only two more strings than you need rather than five.
If you do ever delve into Loopy, be sure to dig up @espiegel123's video tutorials. It'll save you lots of experimentation. I don't go as complex as he does, but I do use a lot of the same ideas.
For combined MIDI and Audio looping kinda stuff, I usually just go with Zenbeats these days, but I'm looking forward to the day when (some indefinite time after the initial release) Loopy pro has midi looping in addition to audio looping.
I’m back in a state of rage 🤬🤦🏻. It’s always something preventing the final masterpiece!.
AUM crashed Enso (or Enso crashed itself) and I lost all the tedious work in every instance, I had mapped all midi and stuff on 8 instances of Enso to control with LK. I had been experiencing crashes so I was saving/reverting constantly. But this time it crashed while saving, and it very kindly saved the crash state. So all Enso instances are now blank, no audio, no midi, no shame. Yeeeep
So I’m trying to do it in Loopy now. But I hut a huge hurdle which seems strange. Maybe @wim or @espiegel123 can help me out... Basically I can’t find an “unmute action”. I did find the “play from start” that’s very much needed. The thing is I’m doing through all these loopholes to perform a song in AUM. So there are song parts like verse, chorus, verse 2... etc. For that I need to control Loopy from LK, which I’ve setup nicely. But “Toggle mute” is the closest I can see to a “play” command, and toggle won’t work. The “fun” part of this AUM madness is that I can freely go from part to part as I decide on the go. So if I have 3 parts and 3 loops (to simplify) if I’m in part A, loop A will play but B and C will mute. If I then go to part C, C will play and A and B will stop. I can’t do that with toggle, in the example before, loop B would play when it shouldn’t as I move from A to C.
Sorry for the “no one cares” explanation... Is there no “play”?. It won’t work as is.
Cheers!!
If toggle mute isn’t a fit for you, you could set up an AUM channel for each track and mute and unmute the channels in AUM. I built a Mozaic thing when it first came out to mute and unmute tracks by tapping pads in Mozaic.