Thank you for posting here to give a better understanding of this exciting new instrument’s capabilities.
But overdubs are an essential part of what makes a looper a looper. So please pardon my harsh words, but to call something a looper without offering overdubbing is bordering on false labeling in my book.
Which reminds me of Elektron’s Octatrack release early 2011: The marketing material called out all sorts of applications for the new box, including looping. But it took Elektron until May 2012 to release an OT update with overdubbing capabilities (the so-called “pickup machines”).
Yes, that’s a workaround for overdubbing, but in order to make it work, you have to
(a) use one of the Blackbox’s stereo output to output just the track you want to overdub,
(b) route this stereo output thru a mixer where you mix it only with the signal you want to loop & overdub, while
© sending this stereo output signal to the mixer’s main output at the same time for hearing it, and
(d) once you are done with overdubbing this loop, you have to route this track to a different stereo output in order to avoid that its signal will spill into the overdub of a different track you want to overdub on. And finally
(e) you have to carry a mixer with 2 separately adressable output groups with you, which somewhat lessens the Backbox’s benefit of being an easy to carry device.
Really, it would be great if you can help convince Aaron that overdubbing is something that it is integral to a looper. Having to fiddle around with mixer and routing settings to accomplish overdubbing is clumsy.
This is the same argument that has been brought up by 1010music in the past when discussing the missing overdub capabilities on the original Bitbox, but it overlooks how overdubbing works on a real looper: you can just continue to play your instrument after the loop ends, as the loop will automatically jump back to the beginning and while continuing to record. In other words: There is no user interaction required to change from one overdub layer to the next.
If you use a Bitbox to simulate overdubbing by seeing each of its 16 tracks as one overdub, you have to manually select the next track you want to record on, make sure it has the right recording length and start the recording on this track, all while you are trying to continue to play. It is clumsy and interrupts the musical flow.
My apologies for my rant, but this topic is quite dear to my heart.
