basic functionality

[carsandtrains]

hey folks, i am finally making the switch from musolomo to sooperlooper, as a looper inside of ableton...

i am kind of struggling to do some basic things. essentially trying to sync SL with measures on ableton, or clicks at the very least. i want to try to quantize it to a beat so i can say record two measures of something, then overdub. is it possible to sync with measures in mind, or can it only sync to beats?

i've had okay luck recording, but once i get to overdub land things get weird... it doesn't sync with the first loop i've recorded even though i've got overdub sync turned on, and tempo sync set to jack/host...

also trying to figure out a way to make it so i can use the same button for both record and overdub... ie the first time it knows to record, and afterwards it knows to overdub... is it possible to just use overdub from the beginning, so i can conserve the pedals i use (i'm using an FCB, and use most pedals for ableton related things)? i guess the functionality i need is pretty basic, it's just a matter of finding the right settings.

thanks!
tom

[jesse]

The trick for you is setting the 8ths/cycle control appropriately. With 'sync to' on Jack/Host, and quantize set to 'cycle', and 'sync' enabled on the loop. For instance, if your time signature is 4/4, then two measures would be 8ths/cycle = 16. However, with this setting it won't let you record any loop shorter than that. It is usually better to set it a little lower, say to 8 8ths/cycle which would quantize your loops to be multiples of 1 measure.

To further complicate matters, there is the 'rel sync' option, which lets you start recording at anytime but quantizes the final length to be appropriate with the sync source (and 8ths/cycle). This is handy when you don't want to wait around at the beginning for the downbeat. Currently I'm working on a bug related to triggering loops recorded with rel sync on, FWIW.

You might be wondering what that "auto 8ths" flag is, it doesn't have any affect when syncing to a Jack/Host. It only helps you out when recording your first loop when syncing to Loop #, but guessing what the eighths per cycle and tempo should be.

As for having problems with overdub, I'm not sure what could be happening. Are you saying that the audio you record (while listening to the existing audio) doesn't line up with that audio the next time around the loop? If so, by how much is it off? Or are you just concerned with when the overdub starts? The above tips might help with that.

And finally, there is no real way to make one command be both record or overdub at this time. This has been requested before, and since I've had a chance to play with an RC-50, I can see the benefits. One reason it isn't like this is that the notion of "clearing" a loop really hasn't been a part of SL. It can be done using the undo_all command (or a long-press of undo), after which the loop is "empty". So, if I added a "record_or_overdub" command, it would begin/end record if the loop was "empty" or begin/end overdub otherwise. Sound OK?

jlc

[sickquacca]

hi

i can't access the gui completly from within live anymore.
i'm not quite sure since when, but i think it was after the update to 1.6.10.
i updated because i live didn't transfer the midi data to sl. now i know it seems to do it only with vst but not with au.
anyway. i tried to delete all the files of sl i found - including the hidden settings folder on ...user/.sooperlooper .
didn't help. now i try to downgrade. do you know any other way to fix this issue?

thx in advance, sickqua

my config:
macbook 10.5.4
live 7.07
sl 1.6.10 (au in user..., gui in app folder)

EDIT:

now i updated osx to 10.5.5
and downgraded sl to 1.6.7 (because there i'm sure it was working)
still the gui doesn't appear.
and as you can see in the screenshot i attached something is not connected

my settings with sl 1.6.7

sl_settings.png (187.07 KiB) Viewed 37349 times

[sickquacca]

now i tested it on the same machine with logic pro 8.02.
in logic it is working well. but i want to use it in live (like i did before)

is anyone experiencing similar problems?
is there a bug i'm knowing of?
help? jesse? anybody?

thx, s

[jesse]

This is probably due to network configuration. Because the SL Gui communicates with the plugin/engine using OSC over the local network, it can sometimes be sensitive to misconfigured network hostnames. I'm guessing there might have been a difference in your network configuration between your two tests.

There are some troubleshooting techniques: from a Terminal run the 'hostname' command. With the returned value from that (lets call it YOURHOSTNAME), run 'ping -c 4 YOURHOSTNAME'. If you cannot successfully ping, then your network configuration might need some work. I'd be curious to see the results from that. Also, the output from the '/sbin/ifconfig' command could be useful.

[sickquacca]

ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.060/0.113/0.143/0.033 ms


and

/sbin/ifconfig
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
en0: flags=8822<BROADCAST,SMART,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether 00:1b:63:ad:c9:8c
media: autoselect status: inactive
supported media: autoselect 10baseT/UTP <half-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,flow-control> 100baseTX <half-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 100baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control> 1000baseT <full-duplex> 1000baseT <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control> none
fw0: flags=8822<BROADCAST,SMART,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 2030
lladdr 00:1d:4f:ff:fe:7b:f4:f8
media: autoselect <full-duplex> status: inactive
supported media: autoselect <full-duplex>
en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet6 fe80::21d:4fff:fefc:d252%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x6
inet 192.168.2.34 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
ether 00:1d:4f:fc:d2:52
media: autoselect status: active
supported media: autoselect

[sickquacca]

more info:

i figured out that after starting live7 from a fresh installed new user(standart osx user) based on the admin user, the sooperlooper is working there with the gui.
going back to the admin user the gui is still not showing up.
i think i wouldn't have anything to do with the network settings since the new user has the same network settings as the admin.
and the admin user, as i mentioned, is still able to use sl WITH the gui inside logic8.

still need help. thanks in advance, sickquacca

[carsandtrains]

So, if I added a "record_or_overdub" command, it would begin/end record if the loop was "empty" or begin/end overdub otherwise. Sound OK?

jlc

Jesse, i think this would be ideal (sorry for the super long past reply)... The undo all feature works fine for the clearing out of the loops. That record_or_overdub conditional would be wonderful, I think that'd be the dealmaker for me. The only other thing I'm trying to figure out is triggering start/stop with ableton's start stop, but i reckon i can just do a key binding for this with the spacebar.

[ZEF]

The only other thing I'm trying to figure out is triggering start/stop with ableton's start stop, but i reckon i can just do a key binding for this with the spacebar.

If I understand correctly, you want loops in SL to start when you trigger the play button in Live and have them stop when you trigger the stop button in Live.

When I first played with SL I noticed the loops would just keep on playing after I would hit stop in Live.
I did manage to get a better sync between Live's transport and SL working.
Here is how I did it.

Enable "use_midi_start" and "use_midi_stop" in SL. I did it from the device parameters within Live. You'll find these if you unfold the SL's device paramaters triangle found on SL's Device Title Bar right next to the wrench of GUI.
Set both "use_midi_start" and "use_midi_stop" to a value of "1" to enable them.

Activate midi out from Live to SL. In Live's prefs in the Midi Sync tab, toggle on "sync" for 'output: SooperLooperAU_in".

Also, in SL's prefs, in the "Latency/Misc" tab, "Trigger all loops on incoming MIDI Start Events" and "Pause all loops on incoming MIDI Stop Events" both need to be enabled. I think they may be enabled by default.

Hope that helps,
ZEF