some thoughts after my first performance with the LoopA

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Last weekend I did a one hour set with the LoopA at the center and it was a lot of fun!
Here are some thoughts, ideas and remarks:

Overall it is an awesome machine, steady and sturdy and I especially like the many connections. I found out one of my eurorack modules reacted to program changes on all channels and luckily I could easily route it to another output port to solve this
the setup.txt file is really useful and I like that it allows for quick rerouting of midi without changing all the songs
the feedback with the leds under the buttons which track is doing something and what is muted is really useful
I wanted to change the tempo separate from the project settings, but I didn’t manage to get a gate input to work as external clock (it seems more like a tap tempo functionality). In the end I managed to get to work as follows: Temps Utile clock & Reset signal to Westlicht Performer. Westlicht Performer Midi out to LoopA (and also Midi out from LoopA to Performer, since I used this as an 8 channel midi to cv). This worked, but it would be nice if the gate input could actually be used for external clock (+reset)
I prepared everything in Ableton Live and transferred it to the LoopA. This worked fine in general, but there where a few small things: the LoopA was tempo slaved to Ableton and if the LoopA wasn’t reset to the start it would generate very long weird notes. Also there was a small offset in the notes. Maybe I can compensate with the track-delay in Ableton, but it sounded ok so I didn’t bother too much because of the limited time I had. How do you guys/girls do that?
Swing only seems to work for notes that are already quantized, it will ignore non-quantized notes.
It is awesome that the saving the session also means it remembers which scene was active and what tracks where muted, this really helps a lot!
Is it possible to select all notes and do an operation on it? Like changing the length. I didn’t find how to do that. One reason to do that is that with a monophonic synth module it would play nicely the legato pattern I generated in Ableton, but on the LoopA it would not properly respond to the note-offs in between.
I missed having an overview what scenes have clips on what tracks. I know the matrix is an awesome option, but a view in the LoopA would be great as well (maybe something to add in the scene-map view).
The matrix is tempting, but also really big (and expensive), what about a matrix lite with 6×6 buttons for all the tracks and scenes in a project (or 2 way midi implementation such that I could make it myself). Support for a launchpad mini would also be a great alternative, but the lack of usb midi host makes this also a puzzle.
sometimes 6 tracks is limiting, but if it would be possible to change the instrument/midichannel on a track when you go to another scene then it would open up some extra space for variation.
I didn’t use the beat effect, it was too finicky to turn on and off. When I re-read the manual now I see that you can select a variation and toggle it on and off with shift, I hope this selected variation is also stored with the session. (EDIT: yes, according to the manual it does, nice!)
I ran into an issue with the limit of the number of notes in a clip. It was with an 8 bar loop and staccato rhythms of 4 note chords. Apparently the limit is 1024, which doesn’t sound limiting, but apparently it was (it felt more like 256, but I didn’t doublecheck).
In Mutes mode: in stead of how long a clip is playing I would prefer to see the instrument names of the tracks

I am really happy with the LoopA and I hope it will grow more and more. I understand that the used STM32 chip is almost at capacity, that is a bummer. Perhaps it is a good idea to use a different chip instead with more headroom. I think designing a waveshare Core407V compatible board with a more capable chips (such as perhaps the STM32H743 if the flash size is the limitation) seems like a doable project.

For those interested: here is some footage of the performance

Cheers,
Timo

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Here is an image of the setup, it is 100% diy (apart from the mixer)

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Great write-up, glad you’re getting good use out of it! I’m sure Peter could answer your points as they are mostly software based.

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@Timo thanks a lot for your thoughts and for your very nice feedback, as well as for posting your live session on Instagram - sounds very good! Quick answers between the lines:
1-3. Thanks!
4: Right, the gate input is mainly for triggering footswitch commands (like tap tempo) from the modular system
5: Good point! I’m not using it much with a DAW as a tempo master - in general LoopA (as well as SEQ v4+) should be aware of remote MIDI CLOCK starts and should tempo-sync to the source. As you wrote, it might take a while to get “in sync” - if there are artifacts right at the start, you might be able to compensate by starting with a (short) empty scene, until the timing has settled? But my recommendation would be to use LoopA as a timing master and sync your DAW to it - it’s clock is very stable (MIOS32), and if you drive a lot of other hardware gear in form of eurorack and MIDI synths from it, clocking it from LoopA as a master should be good.
6: Yes, that is intentional, as notes are recorded unquantized, they will need to be “converted” to a “step” before swing can be applied on that step - if there’s a swing algorithm that can work on unquantized time signatures, please tell me, i can look into it.
7: yes 🙂
8: MatriX allows this - sorry! 🙂 - same UI/UX notes as for 13. apply - a multi-note editor would obfuscate the small UI on LoopA - thus we went for a single note editor here - with the full feature set available on the big hardware. The good thing about MatriX is, that you can set it up in your studio, program your tracks, then take the small LoopA only to the live session.
9: good idea, i’ve added this to the LoopA feature request list, it should be possible to indicate in the scene-map view, if a clip is in use.
10: go for the big one, it’s worth it, also the DIY experience of it is unique.
11: Yes, 6 tracks is limited, but LoopA is intentionally limited: if LoopA supported instrument-switching per scene (technically not impossible), then it would get a lot more complex in the UI - some users might switch a scene and then total chaos breaks out, as an unexpected instrument starts playing. Also in any DAW you see one track per instrument, this allows variations with having multiple scenes of the same instrument. If more than 6 tracks are required, you could chain 2x LoopA and one MatriX, we have at least one power user doing that 🙂.
12: good!
13: yes, the notes are limited per clip - on the other hand, the display is limited as well, putting many more on screen would result in a pixel chaos 🙂. In general, we tried to strike a good balance between quick usability and user-friendliness (i.e. no menu-diving per page, no obfuscated screens, thus we also do not support multiple CCs per track) and a feature-set that we think is sufficient for 95% of MIDI-looper use-cases - 5% of power-users might need a bigger solution, but the vast majority should be very happy.
14: there are many different users with different preferences - for me personally the timing information on the mutes screen is the most important information ever - to be able to “unmute” any track in time, before the “wrap-around” - as there are only 6 tracks, one should quickly learn to which instruments these are mapped.

LoopA v2 is what it has grown into - about 10 software revisions since the start 2015 and v2.11 is in the making and scheduled for this year - we’ll continue to improve the product, but we’re very careful to not break a good concept with feature software bloat, which would make it unusable for every user.

Best regards and enjoy!
Peter