i’m playing around with the SooperLooper 2x2 plugin and it’s really fun i’m new to the whole looping thing, from what i’ve read this feature isn’t available in other looper pluins either, but maybe i just haven’t found this yet:
i am looking for a way to spread the recorded loops in the stereo spectrum. i imagine like a “width” or “panning” parameter to define how far away from the “middle” (i.e. the location of the original input stereo signal) each loop should be recorded, alternating between left and right and adding more distance with each new loop.
the panning should already take effect when recording a loop, but remain configurable during playback (e.g., to find the right spots for the number of loops you want to add, or create mindblowing experiences with a MIDI padel ).
what do you think? is this possible with existing plugins or more like a feature request?
Hi @m.useon,
This is a good idea to create a wide mix in your loops. But this would be a much specialized feature in a looper plugin so there’s nothing close to that in the available ones. It would be safer to have other opinions but I think the only way to achieve such a mix is to pan your signal before the looper. You should find useful plugins in the “Spatial” category.
interesting, i actually didn’t think of this as a mix, but simply as a way to get more order and clarity into the result. i had headphones on while i was experimenting with it, and i immediately began to search for options to give each loop a slightly different spot in the room so that it doesn’t sound like everything muddled together in the middle. i’m really surprised that noone else felt that urge before
panning the input signal actually sounds exactly like what i’m looking for. i’ll investigate how i could achieve this so that in the end i still need to press just one button to start recording a new loop and have it automatically in a different spot at the same time.
i found an approximation by using the Wider plugin and connecting the pan parameter to an expression pedal. it’s not quite perfect, especially because i need to use two controls (change pan then record loop) and panning can’t be adjusted after a loop was recorded. but it’s an ok workaround for the moment.
Keep in mind than an overdub overwrites the loop and there’s no way to pan different things from the same mono track. The only possibility I think about to modify the panning after the looper is to have loops in different tracks. Here are a few ideas :
recording a loop on the left input and a loop on the right input of a stereo looper. But it has the limit of 2 loops you can pan.
using multiple instances of a looper plugin that can be synced to a host (LP3, ALO).
After that, you can use the Stereo X-Fade plugin to crossfade your tracks. I haven’t tested these ideas but they can be a starting point for investigation.
yeah, i thought about multiple looper plugins as well. i’ll have to see if it get’s too complex (also mapping it to foot controls) and resource hungry when the board also includes other effects.
i actually don’t know about the specific implementation, but the SooperLooper already offers undo and redo, so there is some control over recorded loops. so internally, the individual loops could be kept either in individual tracks and playback is mixing them in real time, or each new loop creates a new merged track and undo/redo walks through these tracks back and forth. the latter would mean that changes to panning would indeed be impossible. individual tracks on the other hand should make it relatively easy to allow adjustments to panning, in theory.
i suggested this as a plugin feature because i felt having the looper plugin taking care of this would be the most efficient place to do it (compared the a setup with multiple loopers, panning controls and mixer plugin). and i was curious if others would find this useful as well, since i found some who were looking for such a feature, e.g. in ableton live or in hardware loopers, while searching around.
in the meantime, i have tweaked this a little further, adding some CV plugins:
the multi button CV plugin now triggers
the on/off status of loop record
the on/off status of the wider panning plugin
generatng a new random value via the random generator CV plugin
the latter in turn controls the pan parameter of the panning plugin.
this means that when i hit the assigned footswitch, panning is activated with a random position in the stereo spectrum, while also a new loop is being recorded. i limited the area so it can’t be too far left or right.
this is an improvement over the expression pedal solution because it all works with one switch, while at the same time a siginificant loss of control over the result. so there’s new problems, but i found them to be better than the old ones. i’d still rather have the alternating left/right positions with stepwise growing distance from the center position at each new loop, but i yet don’t see a way of creating that with the available controls.
this setup kind of worked, but i had one issue to solve:
when you were playing and then hit record (via the multi button CV switch), the panning changed in that moment. i would rather have it change right after the recording.
to achieve this, i added two more CV plugins:
a control to CV plugin now triggers the on/off status of both the looper and the panning plugin (i.e., panning is always on when the looper is on, it is no longer turned on/off by the multi button CV plugin)
a CV logic operators plugin was added between the multi button CV and the randon generator plugin and set to NOR mode. this practically inverses the on/off events of the multi button, which now triggers the random values to be generated when record is turned off(!)
so the panning doesn’t suddenly change as soon as you begin recording, but when you end it (and probably stop playing anyway, so it should be less distracting).
i’m absolutely planning to do so! the full board i am using this in is too packed, i want to reduce it to the looper section first, but am still experimenting with it.
i’ve finally managed to share my basic setup for a looper with autopanning. as you can see, it combines multiple plugins to get it done, i’d really rather have this as a feature of the looper plugin itself.
if anyone has suggestions how to get rid of the randomness and implement a left/right alternating scheme that gains width with each new loop, i’m all ears!
i’m new to the whole looping thing, from what i’ve read this feature isn’t available in other looper pluins either, but maybe i just haven’t found this yet:
).