Live Looping with the Duo (Spring 2018 Edition)

The Duo can be used can do some basic live looping performances and there are a couple of options available, which I will give an overview of. My experience is just as a hobby musician who with very limited exposure to a few hardware and software loopers. Loopers are great for practicing, quickly composing ideas or soundscapes, jamming, busking as a one-person performer, etc. You should try one sometime if you haven’t yet.

There are two choices available at this time: SooperLooper and Loopor.

SooperLooper

This is a simplified version of a classic piece of looping software called SooperLooper. While SooperLooper is itself pretty sophisticated and flexible, the version available as a Duo plugin has the minimum features needed to be able to record, loop, and overdub audio. SooperLooper has been a part of the plugins ecosystem for some time and should be suitable for live use.

To use the SooperLooper, make sure it is enabled and the Play mode must be on before you begin recording. Hitting Record starts the loop recording, hitting again closes the loop and begins playback. Dubs can be added by punching in and out with Record. Undo / Redo allow you to stack / unstack dubs. Using Play you can stop and start the recorded loop.

One downside of the SooperLooper is that it takes at least three buttons to make practical use - Play, Record, and Undo or Reset. If you’re using external controllers like a foot pedal, that might use most of your available slots.

Loopor

Loopor was contributed by community member @Stevie and is available in the “Unstable” (soon to be Beta) section of the plugin store. Loopor is pretty similar in capability to SooperLooper, with a little more flexibility overall. Loopor makes clever use of the buttons to be able to share some operations ways so you can setup the recording and dubbing workflow in different ways. You can even just use the Dub button for recording and resetting and have a simple, single-button loop controller - freeing up other buttons as compared to SooperLooper.

Loopor still has a couple minor things keeping it from being promoted to stable - mainly the lack of a UI skin and documentation in the plugin description. There are some operating instructions here: https://github.com/stevie67/loopor/blob/master/README.md

Loopor has a threshold feature that allows you to start recording only when the audio threshold is surpassed so you don’t have to get your timing perfect on the opening end.

It is not clear how much live use Loopor has seen, if any. For practicing and jamming purposes it has served this author’s needs well so far.

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Hi,

Another feature for the MOD developers to add (not the Loopor author) is controlling the MOD’s LED’s to change color, I have Loopor set up with 2 buttons and the LED’s just stay green, it would be nice if they could change color so the user knows that their footswitch click has engaged ‘Dub’ properly. This has been discussed here: Looper - Ditto X2

Also for me Loopor only works properly using the footswitches on the Duo itself, if I use the footswitches on the optional Control Chain footswitch the Loopor Dubs are often truncated.

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Good point about the LEDs, forgot to mention that. I’ve learned to mostly mentally ignore them, especially my external footswitch. It is workable, but definitely more tedious to keep of the recording state mentally. It’s ok practicing at home, but sometimes I don’t engage the button fully and won’t know that until later :slight_smile:

I’ve just checked, and SooperLooper has a little advantage in this regard. For example, mapping the SooperLooper Record to one of the Duo footswitches, the LED will reflect the state correctly.

Is there a looper plugin that can be synced to other looper?
I would use multiple loopers and have them sync to each other.
I’d love to have some multi-track looping.

Also, I would love to have the ability to upload my own loops and have it play back.

Just some things I’m looking for…

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I stumbled across the GxLiveLooper in the plugin store - from the UI it looks like it meant to be a one-button looper. I’ll try it out this weekend and report back.

Any advice on the Gx looper? Is there a manual somewhere?
An UI would also help… :slight_smile:

I couldn’t get it to function and concluded it probably ended up in the store by mistake.