@forestcaver and @gwpt - thanks for your input - in fact we also have a request for “tap tempo input” as well - let me see what can be done - it’s been an insane year, but a new LoopA release is now near the top of the To Do list! 
Best regards and have a good wintertime!
Peter
Another thing which would be useful (I’m pretty sure you can do it, but please correct me if I am wrong) is to be able to map midi messages (CCs?) to all the functions which can be operated by the foot switch functions.
I find myself wanting more than 2 of these features sometimes (the footswitch being limited to 2) and I have a midi coot conteoller with multiple switches would could be set up to for this.
would it be possible to do something like this?
Happy new year
I wanted to add some improvement ideas here. But first, a huge thumb up to a small detail in the design that I love: the fact that there is no REC button. REC buttons are a pain because you never know what they do or how they override your content. The ARM button + run indicator + “Fwd” switch in the track menu makes so much sense, thanks for this!
Here is my wishlist for the upcoming firmware versions, smallest/most important first:
a MIDI “panic” function (shift+stop? shift+stop twice? long press on stop? something in the shift menu?). It is super easy to freeze a note in “note on” or “sustain” state on a target device, especially when using external clock in for the LoopA. When it happens, it seems to be currently impossible to send a “all note off” message from the loopA. If you need help to reproduce freeze situations, feel free to ask me, we can talk about it in another thread if needed!
a small confirmation before saving and loading the project (that could eventually be disabled in the config.txt for those who don’t like it). Save and Load buttons are… way too close and it can lead to some dangerous mistakes haha.
more undo/redo steps if the internal memory allows it
when receiving a clock start / run midi signal from USB or MIDI IN, exit screensaver. Or maybe in all situations where something should be displayed?
in the Monitor menu, the ability to filter or maybe scoll in previous midi events (if you have enough memory)
the much requested song mode (to automatically switch scenes). Digitakt’s song mode is super example (if needed…)
The only one that is vital is the first one in my opinion, I hope I didn’t miss something in the manual.
Cheers!
@schematicwizard thanks a lot for your feedback! Glad you like your LoopA! We’re always trying to improve the small details to make the workflow better - i’m already working on the new version, but it will still take a bit, there are quite a few things still to do - to help you out with your first request - from the handbook:
Regarding the other items: we’re already quite at the memory maximum - multiple UNDO levels are not really possible, the MCU has only 192kb of RAM and we’re already doing quite a few optimizations here and there to squeeze it all in - i’ve added your points 2. and 4. to the list, 6. is already on there .
Best regards and have a happy 2023!
Peter
Happy New Year!
I’m not sure if there is functionality for this already, but I figured I would post it here anyway. Let’s say I have scene 1A set to 32 beats in length and I have scene 1B set to 64 beats in length. If I play scene 1A once through and transition to 1B, it will start the clip at beat 33/64. While this is convenient in certain regards that all current scenes/tracks are in sync, my hope is that I can utilize the 6 scenes in a more Ableton live style session view. So when I would transition to scene 1B, it would start at the beginning of the clip length, which I know you can manually do with a foot pedal. Especially if I have scenes of irregular lengths, it becomes impossible to transition appropriately between clip lengths.
I don’t know if this might be a matrix clip/launching functionality, or there is a work around somewhere in the manual I didn’t catch. Hope this made sense!
Sam
safrosch thanks a lot for this suggestion and a good new year to you, too!
LoopA works with every clip tightly locked into the timing of each other - the playback position for every of its 36 clips is deterministic and the LoopA sequencer calculates it by looking at the current playback time index. This allows to record any clip “on top” of other clips that are currently being played back and it guarantees, that (independent of the playback circumstances in the future) the newly recorded notes will “land” at the same timepoint as the notes played back in the other clips during recording - this would be impossible to do with “launched clips”, that could start at any full measure - you could potentially not reconstruct the clips that were at play during your recording of a new clip, as their launch times were random.
If scene changes would re-launch clips at time index 0, then a new problem would occur: say you have a clip of length 64 in both scenes “A” and “B”, with the “B” scene clip only being a variation of the “A” scene clip, e.g. one is in c-major, the other in c-minor - now there’s the very valid usecase that people would want to switch between them at every measure (time index 16, 32, 48 …) without restarting the clip. This is what LoopA implements - as it is a looping device, you could consider it as 36 tape loops that are started the moment the sequencer engine is started and you just switch between them, also arbitrarily as also partial scene switches are possible.
Another reason for all clip timings being linked is a requirement of the beatloop feature, which allows random scanning through time - from any time index, a clip playback position must be determined - if a clip could be “launched” at any arbitrary time, this would not be easy to calculate.
Hopefully this makes sense, it’s a complex topic.
Best regards,
Peter
More than 32 named instruments in setup.txt, please!
Cheers,
auto :
@autopoiesis thanks for your suggestion - i admit, i also ran into the limit of 32 instruments lately - i’ll see what can be done in the new release (LoopA main memory is limited, but it should be possible to squeeze out a few extra instruments).
Still working on the new LoopA 2023 software release .
Best regards,
Peter
LoopA firmware release v2.10 is finally out! Many thanks to everyone contributing ideas!
Yes, it includes a new and powerful song mode, have a look:
Also:
Robert as requested (and quite late, sorry!) we now have scale note replacement support - check out the new session fts note replacement feature - if you want to create a list of nice replacement patterns, we could add these as MatriX presets for the next MatriX firmware - thanks a lot! Also: check out white keys FTS mode!
talondnb song mode is here, finally!
@gwpt , @forestcaver and joshuaandrew tap-tempo support has been added, as well as eurorack gate-in support for tap-tempo, like this it should be possible to sync your LoopA to your modular system!
@safrosch LoopA song mode now has a pattern launch feature, which is very similar to your request to launch a full scene - with the cueing feature in song mode you can now launch “scenes” from their start - it’s explained in the video linked above
@schematicwizard we’ve now got the requested session safety confirmation (before destructive save/load/new operations), song mode and the screensaver should now start screensaving when a MIDI clock start packet is received
@autopoiesis as requested, an extension from 32 to 64 user instruments has been added
There’s also a widely improved CC remote control support, a configurable CC remote control port filter (to avoid CCs triggering unwanted activity on LoopA), a new triplet quantization feature and a new FTS “Scale 615 Schoenberg Hexachord”.
Hope you’ll all enjoy!
Best regards,
Peter
PS: footage from the video shoot:
Hawkeye Thanks for the hard work on this!! I watched the video, everything is crystal clear, the reset feature in song mode will be extremely useful! I’m also super enthusiastic about the scale configuration per scene. Your design/implementation choices make much sense to me!
I’ll try this update very soon, thanks again
Hey Peter!
Love so many things about this update, thank you so much for the work you’ve put into it. I am running into one unusual issue though with the RST function. When the reset function is enabled, the following pattern will start one step earlier than it is supposed to. For instance, if I have pattern one set to 16 steps, and pattern two has reset turned on, pattern two will start on step 16 of the first pattern, not the following downbeat.
I have found that if I set pattern 1 to 17 steps, everything lines up correctly, or 33, 65, depending on how many repeats of the pattern I have. When watching the firmware update video it sounds like it also triggered pattern two a 16th note early. Not sure if there is a way to adjust the playback position of the reset function to the correct spot, or I have something weird going on with my setup.
Thanks!
Sam
talondnb and @schematicwizard - thanks for your kind words!
@safrosch - thanks as well and thanks for testing! This is entirely possible, while we had a small beta-test team, this might have slipped our attention - let me check and come back to you - if it is a bug, it should be possible to fix in patch version v2.10b.
Best regards,
Peter
Hey Peter,
This is a solid update! It makes the LoopA a portable powerhouse now 
I’ll be working on some videos showcasing some gear including the LoopA.
Thanks again!
@diyguy - thank you!!! Always looking forward to seeing some external LoopA videos, thanks for filming them!
@safrosch - investigated the reported “pattern restart” issue - i’ve tried with this song structure:
To test if the second pattern starts one step too early with “restart” on, i’ve put a test note on the last step/on the last sixteenth note of clip 3A in the first pattern - and you’re right - both this sixteenth note of pattern 1 as well as the first note on the follow-up pattern 2 are played at the same time. I’ll see how to fix it and should be able to come up with a patch relatively soon. Thanks for finding and reporting the problem! I think for now you could indeed solve it by increasing the length of the predecessor pattern by 1 step, but this is of course not what we want to do permanently .
Best regards,
Peter
@safrosch just uploaded the patch, which should fix the pattern restart “last-step” issue - you can get the new v2.10b release on the main LoopA page or directly via this link:
https://www.midiphy.com/files/256/LoopA_firmware_v210b.zip
I’ve tested it quite a lot and pattern restart behaved nicely now over here, but i am unsure if i caught everything - it would be super nice, if you could run it through some tests on your side as well!
Thank you very much and best regards,
Peter
Just tested it out and it works like a charm! Thanks so much for the quick adjustment!
Sam
