Recorder

Plugins Plugins - BETA
#1

Hi
Been some while now in the beta section, but never really been announced here. So it’s time to give them a ‘official’ tread were you could show your love, or, report bugs and feature requests. Also to let you all know that they’ve a updated UI now available.
At least so anyone who like to do recordings on a MOD unit should know now were to get those plugs.

21 Likes
Looperlative - recording time
#2

Thanks for all the likes. So it seems it may be useful. :metal:
Hence I made some new recorders for you. First one, a quad recorder. It is capable to record a 4 Channel file. Currently, you can’t playback those on the MOD, but that may change after some time. Anyway, you could download them from the MOD and open it with the DAW of your choice. I hope 4 channels been enough to capture your sessions, otherwise, it wont be to hard to make one with … channels. :sunglasses:

And then, on request, I’ve made “mini” versions for all recorders:

Those been meant to catch less of the screen and less of you attention, so you could focus on the Pedals in your board which matters for your sound.

Enjoy your MOD(X/DUO/DWRAF)

25 Likes
#3

I’ve got a suggestion for additional functionality to discuss. Loop recording. Not like “looper”, but more like a car dash camera background cycled recording, where old records are replaced by the new ones.

How it supposed to work:

  • You set a buffer length, couple of minutes for example.
  • Recorder keeps audio stream only for this period, only these last two minutes, audio data goes to first-in, last-out queue. New data displace older data.
  • If you realize that you want ongoing record to be actually saved, you push some button and already recorded buffer gets saved to storage.

What’s the point:

  • Idea is that recording is happening in the background always, without an additional thinking and spending storage for nothing. And should help in cases when you get a “wow, what a pity I had not record it” moment.

For example:

  • Sometimes you just jam happily and not sure if recording your random mess worth it. Suddenly you find that you played something cool, and would like to remember it, but moment is lost, and even if you instantly start recording - you might not even repeat the melody, and idea is lost into a thin air.

  • Sometimes you just play the same thing multiple times and cannot get it right, but want to get more or less good record by brute force and multiple attempts. Reenabling record again and again is frustrating, and recording gigabytes of failures does not feel fun too. With constant background recording you just can make retries until you do it right and save only the good shot, if it fits the buffer size.

  • Enabling record, ( at least if you are not a professional) produces a heavy stage fright sometimes. As for me, when I click “record” I get so distracted by the fact that recording is going on, that my skills degrade miserably. Background recording can just let you forget about the fact that you are being recorded and focus on the playing, instead of fears.

Everything above would work even better if it will start cycled recording automatically, just after loading the pedalboard.

Does it make any sense? Is it technically possible with the amount of RAM available on our devices?

P.S. After a second glance to my post, it feels more like I am suggesting a completely new plugin.

2 Likes
#4

Nice idea!

One thing I noticed in the Beatles documentary was that they had people around running tape recorders and transcribing lyrics so they could easily revisit moments from earlier in the session. When I rehearse with my band I’ve gotten in the habit of starting a recorder on my phone before each song and it has been useful for us to have the recordings to refer back to.

This kind of plugin could easily be forked from the current recorder and developed separately so as to keep the current recorder easily maintainable. Some things I think would work well:

  • Like you suggested, have a mode where it will save to a new file every N seconds. In this mode, there could be an option to remove files older than M minutes or D days so as not to overrun storage.
  • Display a disk use indicator on the plugin to help keep visual track of the system storage space
  • Add an option to set the max disk use for the plugin and allow it to automatically purge the oldest files when the limit is reached.
  • Provide another mode where recording starts automatically whenever the audio signal passes a threshold of N dB and then stops recording when the audio drops below the threshold for X seconds
1 Like
#5

I was thinking about keeping this cycled buffer in RAM, to evade storage wearing, when actual storage writing happens only on explicit demand. I am not sure what exact kind of storage mod uses and how much beating it can take, but writing files to the internal memory all the way seems like a way to reduce device’s expected live expectancy quite seriously, as it should be some sort of flash memory anyway, that should have a limit on amount of rewrite operations.

If dumping all sounds to storage file by file, then it would be less scary to use an external USB flash storage, they are cheap comparing to 500-1000 dollar mod devices, and if a usb flash will die from the hard work - so let it be so, who cares, I can buy another one in the nearest shop instantly. If my MDX dies - it is currently unreplaceable even without a price tag involved.

P.S. Sounds like another separate feature request - recording to an external USB drive location.

3 Likes
#6

That is already on the roadmap, btw. it was the initial idea. Unfortunately the firmware didn’t support currently auto-mount usb sticks. As soon that is supported, the recorders will switch to record to stick when a stick is mounted. Then I could implement a auto-record feature as well.
I’ve talked already with @jesse and @falkTX about that before I made the recorders available for the MOD.

7 Likes