Hi all, i tried to loop Hotel California with the MOD Dwarf and the Looperlative looper plugin and it stopped recording after about 3 minutes… is that normal ? is it a glitch ?
I’ve never recorded with the dwarf a loop that long…
Dwarf latest firmware and all plugins updated…
thx !
The Looperlative stores the audio on the storage space of the device - as far as I’m aware it’s simply that. So the length of the loop will depend on the storage that you have available. This storage is shared with things like plugins, pedalboards and lots of other things from your side and from the system side. So the limit for the looper will always depend on this. Longer loops may require you to have less plugins installed, less pedalboards, etc.
@Tuath
The plugin only loops from the device’s DDR memory. This being a limited resource requires setting a limit on how much can be used. I don’t remember off the top of my head what I set the limit to be, but 3 or 4 minutes sounds about right. Might I ask what you are trying to do?
Thanks for the quick answer !
was practicing Hotel California with my guitar teacher. My arrangement has 7 guitars so i wanted to use the DWARF so i can build it up correctly, easy undo-redo… When i found the limit, i had to flip to my ammoon looper which supports 10 minutes per track.
I was recording as a single pass (not parts nor multi-track).
I don’t know if raising the limit is possible ? or if the looper can use flash memory as storage? or on the fly memory compression to stay in RAM ? maybe a mono mode that doubles the length ? anything in the 6-7+ minutes would be good for me.
Thanks - Erik.
From my side, I can easily increase the limit, but the question will be can the dwarf handle the increase. I will check.
Thanks for checking !
Currently, the LP3 has 349 seconds of total audio time which is a large amount of time for live looping. I can double that number without causing issues in the device, but doing anything more wouldn’t make sense for nearly everybody. Looping through permanent storage or compressing audio in RAM is not something that I’m willing to do. Those type of things don’t fit in well with the live looping application.
Your application is more of a DAW application. I’m not saying that it can’t be handled in a Dwarf, but I suspect that you need a plugin that is better suited to your purpose. In fact, I might be willing to create the plugin, but we’ll need to get the specs nailed down so that we can match the application perfectly.
There is a recorder with u-limited record time (limit is file-size, but it will open a new file if that is reached)
Completely agree that the Dwarf is not a DAW, and if i were editing music - a DAW ios much more practical.
In my scenario though, a good looping pedal is what i need as we are working on my abilities to stay on tempo and put all 7 guitars together, withholding just enough so that i can play some parts myself and impress my wife… I don’t see myself starting to using my DAW in guitar class when my teach does it with his Ammoon 1 button looper.
Anyways - if i could get 7-8 minutes out of the LP3, i think that would be the best thing ever for me. Maybe it could be configurable for those who don’t need to reserve as much ram for their LP3 on the pedal board.
I’ll look into the recorder plugin in beta, though i am not trying to record a very long track. I am really trying to use overdub (with undo functionality when i screw up) over a 7-8 minutes song to practice holding rhythm, not screwing my chords, aligning sounds… I love that the Dwarf is the only thing i have to bring the guitar class - instead of a looper + reverb + overdrive + delay to make the practice amp sound like anything good.
Thanks for all, this is great insight.
p.s. I am a dev myself, and fully appreciate ram, storage, cpu limits, threading, latency and stuff - so kudos for getting things so good so far ! If i had more time to devote to my guitar passion, i’d love to get into the plugin ecosystem…
How long are you trying to make your track? You are or aren’t recording the whole song into a track?
I use a single track - max 7 minutes.
Just FYI - you can use the Audio File player plug-in, and set it to loop.
Then it won’t play the next file in the cue.
If you are just practicing over the song this might work?
But if you need to record a loop as well, then you would need to sync this with the looper.
In fact, most live looping musicians actually only use loops that are seconds long. There are a few that do extremely long pieces, but they are rare. If you think about a 5 minute loop repeated 5 times after the original puts you at 30 minutes. This is a very long time for a single piece. I don’t fully understand what Tuath is doing, but all I will look at how the lp3 plugin can do the job that he is asking without penalizing other users.
What I got was, that the idea is to play along with a song, for practice purposes by putting it in a looper. Roland has a few loopers where they promoted this as a feature - as a rehearsal tool, where you have your song list in the pedal. The audio file player would be perfect for this, unless you wanted to also record your playing over top of the song, to review your progress.
Hi all, sorry i wasn`t clear enough for my scenario…
1 - I play the chords to Hotel California for the whole song
2 - I dub over the loop the bass line
3 - I dub over the loop the “reggae” guitar
4 - I dub over the loop the melody line guitar
5 - I dub over the loop the "low notes of the lead guitar
6 - I play over the loop the remaining high notes of the lead guitar and the solos.
THis exercise is to practice rhythm keeping, using a looper and being able to build up the song using a looper to practice alone and playing all parts…
Hope it helps.
p.s. this works perfectly with my Ammoon Looper pedal (unlimited dubs-redos with 10 minutes max per track).
Some friendly advice (and apologies about assuming your wife’s preferences) - if you want to impress your wife don’t make her sit through the first 42 minutes of you building this up. Chances are, if she’s ever been at home the same time you’re practicing, she already knows about your masterful layering techniques and multi-track knowledge of the song. 
I think this is another case of “potential vs. product”. The Dwarf could be made to function like a hardware looper and incorporate modern feature sets, but that isn’t its destiny. Your best bet might be if you or another developer writes a “long form looper” plugin that will simply record audio and then replay with overdub in a continuous loop. It sounds like maybe you don’t need many typical looper controls beyond “start recording” and “loop with overdub” so you might be able to borrow heavily from the recorder and audio player plugins as well as the classic sooperlooper for how to blend audio streams.
Oddly enough, if I increase the memory limit on the LP3 plugin, @Tuath could do this. I am planning to release an update soon. So, I’ll take a look at allowing a memory increase for those that want it. BTW, the LP3 does store undo layers to permanent storage. So, the undos are limited by permanent storage and not DDR.
@looperlative Let me know when the update is up and running ! I will test it out gladly ! Thanks !!!
@unbracketed As for “potential” vs “product”: Ive given this some thought - isn t the Dwarf a platform and the plugins the products ? if so - instead of providing feedback to a company which might take it into consideration in a hardware revision which can be slow, I`ve merely provided feedback to a company which deals in software and can iterate faster.
And yes 
My wife is tired of listening to Hotel California. Every day I play the different tracks, try to keep the same rhythm, align everything correctly, make sure it doesn`t sound muddy (volume of the dub vs volume of the current loop) - 45 minutes per day of the same song !!!
Understood, and I wasn’t meaning to criticize you for making a suggestion, sorry if it came across like that. Keep the ideas coming!
Sometimes the greatest strength becomes a weakness and all that. With access to Linux box under the hood, so many things are possible conceptually. For better or worse, “we can do it in software” can lead to deviations from the roadmap or efforts to please the most vocal (or popular) customers. However, having external / plugin developer helping out is a big win since everyone can benefit from new features with only minimal assistance needed from the MOD team (internal review and store publishing presumably takes time).
For what it’s worth, several years ago I was lamenting the lack of a plugin that could play audio files and received at least one response suggesting that it was not an appropriate use of the device. 
I can`t wait to see what the future of mod is going to look like !
no worries !!