#16

So I think that there needs to be a distinction between two kinds of software loopers.

  1. is a looper that is like a looper pedal: it allows you to record audio of arbitrary length, maybe in sync with a clock or maybe not and then to loop that audio and optionally overdub more audio onto the loop.

  2. is a looper that records a looping sample and plays it back, maybe of arbitrary length or maybe in sync with a grid.

I propose that we call #1 an overdubbing live looper.

I use Augustus Loop wrapped in a custom Bitwig gridfx setup that bends it to my will as my overdubbing live looper. I then build patches with these loopers for my performances. Right now I’m working with a feedback network of four loopers as a single ensemble.

I’m interested in what overdubbing live loopers people are using that are software based. I have used Enso, Augustus Loop, Ableton Looper, SooperLooper, Mobius and build some a couple myself in Max/MSP and Blue Cat’s plug n script. My current Augustus Loop + Bitwig Grid setup is the best I’ve come up with but still has a couple limitations that bother me – specifically the way that Bitwig handles feedback (or, rather, really limits feedback in the mixer.) I’m waiting very patiently for VCV Rack for DAWs so that I can build a better looper setup in VCV and put that inside my DAW.

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#17

This sounds really great and super flexible. I’d love to take a peek into that Bitwig gridfx setup, if you’re inclined to share. Even a screenshot would give me some ideas of what’s possible and how to achieve it. No worries if you’d rather not though of course!

I do hope Bitwig reverses course eventually on limiting feedback in their modular design. It’s a strange limitation in an otherwise very freeform playground.

#18

here’s what I’m working on now… a triple looper with loopback 2 providing the BW-illegal feedback routes:

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And here is the main looper setup that is in the grid fx slot contained in a rack that has a delay-1 for the feedback route:

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I agree with you about feedback being a limitation. I use loopback 2 a fair amount to manage this, which is less than ideal because of the latency and… how it can get wonky if you go back and forth through it too many times. My hope is that there will be more IO in and out of grid in the future, or the ability to embed plugins within it… I don’t mind using the single buffer delay pattern that the grid uses for feedback for loopers (they don’t need to be in sync.) That said I have heard directly and indirectly from the BW devs over the years that they are not at all interested in breaking their no-feedback rule.

I am very much looking forward to VCV Rack for DAWs to be released as I can make a looper setup with feedback in VCV that works really well… but I really need Bitwig’s macros, remotes and modulators to work the way that I want to… doing all that in VCV is really heavy.

1 Like
#19

My question for the group --> does anyone have any good experiences with virtualized audio cards on OSX that allow loopbacks? Loopback 2 is ok, but it doesn’t work as well (latency and reliability) as actually looping audio outs back into ins on my audio interface. Just wondering what others are doing.

#20

I do this with Blackhole or Rogue Amoeba Loopback + my audio interface, combined in an OS X aggregate device.

Feedback based live looping is my jam! I’ve been using Enso lately but I do have distant fond memories of Augustus Loop and I should revisit it. I’d love to hear more about how you’d use VCV for this.

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#21

Blackhole is an alternative to Loopback.

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#22

Sooper Looper and one of these was my looping goto when I was doing it often. I haven’t used it for some time now, but midi mapped appropriately it was great. I had a single fader on my keyboard controller mapped to select between 5 loop tracks and 10 controls for the selected track mapped to the 10 pedals. It worked very nicely all around.

#23

I haven’t tried it myself yet but I have this tab open to test it soon.
Looks like it has all I need

Currently using a setup with 4 loopers in Ableton live.

#24

glad to hear you dig this (BlackHole)
as I just got it rockin’ this weekend
to route ableton, super dirt and a mic input to audacity and/or obs
recording mixdowns of tidal (live coding sessions) :slightly_smiling_face:

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#25

I’m intrigued, but have no point of reference. Do you have any examples of either yours or someone else using this technique?

#26

I’m not sure I understand the question.

Here’s a guide to creating aggregate devices:
https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/210295425-How-Can-I-Create-an-Aggregate-Device-OS-X-#:~:text=An%20Aggregate%20Device%20is%20a,interface%20with%20your%20audio%20application.

In the end you’ll have a new “Aggregate Device” to use as an audio interface, that looks like a combination of all the actual/virtual audio devices you chose to aggregate.

It’s not unusual for me to have an aggregate device that contains all the I/O from an RME Fireface UCX + Percussa SSP + virtual I/O from Blackhole or Loopback (Loopback offers a bit more routing flexibility than Blackhole, sometimes I want flexibility, other times I want a simpler approach). To my DAW it just looks like one really large audio interface.

You can also use VCV to route between audio interfaces, because you can have multiple “Audio” modules active, each set to a different audio interface.

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#27

I do this as well… but with the complexity of these configurations I really need to be able to save the state of the whole system with a project. This enables an incremental build of a config over time… whenever I’m wiring between two apps it ends of being a lot of work to get things going vs just opening a project. If it is all in Bitwig you can also start to use the grid to manage controls in a way that is deep and wonderful. Soon now… I hope.

#28

This is nice but doesn’t include the ability to monitor any of the tracks to an audio output device.

Re: enso – Enso is great and I was happy to have a (small) voice in its development. However, since it MUST sync to host transport it won’t allow you to put it in a feedback loop, which allows you to process the loop progressively with other effects. When you do this you get a glitch for every repeat, which is a bummer. Augustus Loop allows this setup in two ways: it has aux send/receive busses built into the plugin and it can just act as a tap tempo very long delay… no glitches. It has downsides, though: it doesn’t have a good “clear loop” function built in (it can take a long time to do this) and it has too much going on to use it simply. The patch that I set up in Bitwig really cleans this up a lot, though. I never open the plugin… everything is handled by the grid logic and remote controls and that works wonderfully.

1 Like
#29

Big old blush.

I’m curious to hear an example of your favourite kind of feedback based live looping.

#30

Oh, gotcha. Here’s a track that uses Enso pretty heavily.


1 Like
#31

I don’t have Augustusloop or Enso, though I plan on getting Augustlusloop at some point, maybe, and I just recently started using Bitwig, and was kind of bummed about the lack of track to track feedback, not being able to use effects sends to go to other sends.

Anyway, I’ve been reading this thread mostly curious about all the feedback stuff, was going to mess with BlackHole and aggregate devices, but I remembered that my audio interface has a few virtual routing options.

Typically I ignore the audio interface’s mixer section completely, but in this case I was actually able to get feedback going using a virtual stereo track in my interface, and using channel outputs and/or HW FX and the Audio Receiver.

Perhaps your audio interface has this ability as well? If so, it’s a bit more built in and futureproofed this way, though you still will need to save the interface routing separately I suppose… For me, I may just leave it perma-configured this way, since I wasn’t using it before, anyway.

Haha, sorry I hope all that makes sense… been a long day, and I feel like I’ve rambled a bit!

#32

A new and interesting piece of looping software: https://library.vcvrack.com/LilacLoop/Looper

A straightforward overdubbing live looper for VCV Rack. Looking forward to putting this through its paces.

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#33

This looks very interesting

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#34

OK! I was able to build a triple looper (although you could have 2 up to as many as you’d like) in BW with Augustus that has a matrix mixer where you can route audio from any of the loopers’ feedback loops to any of the other loopers without routing audio out of Bitwig or using a loopback. Bitwig’s feedback routing capabilities (via the builtin Delay plugin’s ability to host plugins in the feedback loop) are really powerful.

Now I can build multi-minute (up to an hour!) long loopers with feedback network patching between them… easily, and since it is all saved as a Bitwig rack preset, I can load these up on multiple tracks, nest them, save configs as presets, etc, without any rebuilding… which is good since this thing took me the better part of 5 hours to patch and debug.

2 Likes
#35

I have a Behringer FCB1010 footboard I use similarly, though I have yet to come up with 10 parameters I want to control. :laughing: