Multi-Channel Outs

[ZEF]

I have a question about selecting SooperLooper as the audio input of an audio track.
I noticed that there are many channels available.

Pre FX
Post FX
Post Mixer
3/4-SooperLooperAU
5/6-SooperLooperAU
7/8-SooperLooperAU
9/10-SooperLooperAU
11/12-SooperLooperAU
13/14-SooperLooperAU
15/16-SooperLooperAU
17/18-SooperLooperAU

How can this be used? Is it possible to assign certain loops to certain channels.

I would love to be able to have only 1 instance of sooperlooper in my Live set and to have 3 or 4 audio tracks which each draw their audio from difference channels of that sooperlooper instance. Anybody have any experience with this? or know where I can read up on it?

Thanks,
Zef

[jesse]

Yes, it should be easy to set up, those output pairs from SL are the direct outputs from the individual loops of one instance:
3/4 = Loop 1
5/6 = Loop 2
.... etc

So you should be able to set those as the audio inputs to a track. SL's "main outs" will be the ones on the track your plugin is inserted in, and you can mute it if you are sending the discrete outputs to different tracks.
Note that if your loops are mono, you might get audio on the first channel of each of those pairs only.

Did you try it and it not work for you?

jlc

[ZEF]

I haven't been able to figure this out.

This is how I sometimes get a few loops going. I have an AU instance of SL on an Audio Track in LIVE. I hit or midi trigger the record button in SL_AU and record my first loop. Then if I want to add a second loop, I'll hit the overdub button, record a 2nd loop, then hit the overdub button again to stop recording. Now I have 2 loops playing. In this example I also added a 3rd loop using the multiply button so now I have 3 loops playing.

With these 3 loops playing, I go to a newly created audio track in Live, I select SooperLooper under the "audio from" selection box, then expand the next selection box immediately beneath which has all of the available channels. With these three loops still playing, the only channels receiving audio are:
Pre FX
Post FX
Post Mixer
3/4-SooperLooperAU

Do I need to do something special to send one of the loops over to one of the other channels, say 5/6 SoooperLooperAU?

Maybe I'm missing a concept of SooperLooper. What I just described, is it really 3 loops playing or does SL consider the 3 lines recorded over each other to be 1 single loop. Maybe I just haven't figured out how to move on to record a 2nd loop (which may automatically map itself to outs 5\6)?

I'm messing around with the select_next_loop, record (sel), etc but am not having any luck with that.

Thanks,
Zef

Macbook Pro 2.6 Intel Core 2 Duo
LIVE 7.0.10
OS X 10.5.5

[ZEF]

Okay, I think I'm figuring this out.

SooperLooperAU seems to default to only 1 loop on first use. "select_next_loop", etc, doesn't do anything because there are no other loops available.

Default SooperLooperAU with only 1 loop

SL default 1 loop.png (66.91 KiB) Viewed 3558 times

To fix this I clicked on the SL GUI. This brings up the SooperLooper menu bar in OS X. From there, I added 3 more loop channels (command 2).

add more loops menu command

SL-addLoop.png (54.92 KiB) Viewed 3559 times

Now, the AU GUI shows 4 total sets of SooperLoopers.

SooperLooperAU now has 4 loops!!
More can be added

SL with 4 loops.png (161.09 KiB) Viewed 3559 times

The reason I didn't know SooperLooper worked this way is because I never launched it as a standalone to check out how it works. As a standalone, I discovered that I could drag the window to reveal more loops. Then using the key bindings 1,2,3, I could select the different loops. (That never happened in the AU). I recommend to anyone having trouble with the AU to launch the standalone App first in order to grasp how it is designed to work before diving into AU land.

Now that the AU instance has 4 loops, when I trigger "select_next_loop" I see "selected_loop_num" changes to reflect the current loop selected. I haven't tried recording or routing audio yet but I'm sure it will work now.

This blows my mind. This means I can overdub a bunch of loops into loop 1 of SooperLooper, then select the next loop and add a bunch more to that one. And then I can control those 2 loop individually. Amazing.

my worthless 2 cents: I find the naming conventions to be a little bit confusing. What is a "loop"?
In the SooperLooper menu it says add loop. To me I thought that's what I was doing every time I hit overdub, or added a new layer of sound. I personally consider an SL loop more of a "loop group", "loop track" or "channel" or something like that.
I consider all of the overdubs recorded onto a single SL Loop as individual loops because they are not destructively rendered as 1 pattern, it is still possible to play with them using "undo" + "redo".
Or maybe I could call what I record to be a "cycle" instead of a loop. And that each SL Loop can contain many layers of "cycles".

Regardless of naming conventions, this latest discovery of having multiple loops, each with the possibility of being very sonically dense thanks to overdubbing, really blows my mind. What a versatile piece of software!!
Thanks,
Zef

[jesse]

The reason I didn't know SooperLooper worked this way is because I never launched it as a standalone to check out how it works. As a standalone, I discovered that I could drag the window to reveal more loops. Then using the key bindings 1,2,3, I could select the different loops. (That never happened in the AU). I recommend to anyone having trouble with the AU to launch the standalone App first in order to grasp how it is designed to work before diving into AU land.

I guess I'm a little confused, usually the exact same GUI you see in standalone starts when you open the view for the plugin (the wrench icon in the little bar for it in Live). Strictly speaking it also opens a little stubby plugin view which then lets you pick the location of the "standalone" application if not the default, then a button to start it. It shows up *behind* the Live window by default (unless you click the keep on top option), so make sure to look for the SL icon in your dock. I never expected anyone to try to use it with Live's exposed plugin parameters view, it only shows the first 100 anyway, dumb thing

my worthless 2 cents: I find the naming conventions to be a little bit confusing. What is a "loop"?
In the SooperLooper menu it says add loop. To me I thought that's what I was doing every time I hit overdub, or added a new layer of sound. I personally consider an SL loop more of a "loop group", "loop track" or "channel" or something like that.
I consider all of the overdubs recorded onto a single SL Loop as individual loops because they are not destructively rendered as 1 pattern, it is still possible to play with them using "undo" + "redo".
Or maybe I could call what I record to be a "cycle" instead of a loop. And that each SL Loop can contain many layers of "cycles".

Sorry for the confusion, I usually call them Loop Instances.

jlc

[jvl]

i can chose "SooperLooperAU out" from a "MIDI from" tab on an Ableton Live channel, but I have no similar option to bring SooperLooper audio back into an audio channel. any ideas why?

MBP, OSX 10.5.8
Ableton 7
SooperLooper 1.6.14

[jvl]

asked and answered... the "audio from" tab reading "sooperloper" instead of "SooperLooper" should have been the tip-off (in the attached pictures in earlier posts). So the channel that you are using as an input to SooperLooper is chosen as the "audio from" setting for another channel - now it makes sense, especially in terms of being able to monitor the live sound separately from individual loop outputs of sooperlooper.

i'm getting there, slowly but surely. thanks for making this incredible software, jesse.