I dunno crap about computers

and the amp Im using is one I made. Doesn't have an effects loop. Or two channels.

Hey all apologies for the slow replying - been on holiday.

El, glad to hear you finally got the tracing problem sorted (almost)

Brymus, I'm not really sure how budget you can go on the RAM etc... but if you're running Windows 98 it means that's not taking to much strain and as long as you make sure nothing else is running at the same time aall should be groovy.

El,

QuoteI cant hear my playing over the loop! Coz the sounds are so similar. Also I used the Splitter-blend to slpit the signals and then mix them. I think mixing out some of both signals to be able to blend them together at the same time is causing signal loss. I also only used 3 of the four op amps available with the two duals I used, since one signal was just going to be blended right away. I did not use the phase switching circuit. Was this my big mistake?

Sorry can't give any advice on this one. I used small mixing desk that I had lying around for all my signal remixing - SOunds like it has been a long process but just remember you are building a pretty expensive pedal 

Served,

QuoteWhat kind onf computer did you use? Was the soundcards quality good enough? Im a bit of afraid of the quality that is coming out of the computer... But we'll see.

Just an old computer fro a friends work place. Sound card was just the standard one. Probably not great if you're recording at Abbey Road studios but certainly pretty good.

All the best everyone.

HI again.

Im making progress.

So what I got.

I have Compaq Desktop, size 37cmX31cmX9cm, so its not that big. Its Pentium MMX 266Mhz, 126MB RAM.
At the moment, I am going to just test it as it is. Im not going to build footswich yet.
I added PCI soundcard and going to shield it into seperate box. The good thing is that it uses only one Fan, so there will not be much noise. HDD is pretty lousy, will gett a better one. Will make some pictures, if I actually have built something.

pfl

pfl?

i dunno if it's the length of the cord, but Im getting a little delay when I press loop, and start. Or maybe its when I press record. Its a little hard to use, I dunno if it's the laptop (it's from 2001) or what.

Quote from: Brymus on January 02, 2010, 04:09:03 AM
Yeah this is really cool,
I always had Jack headaches when running Linux as a DAW
FWIW the name is lame but Jesussonic is a group of effects made for this same type of idea ,except you still need the screen and keyboard to use them.He built a box to house it all on the floor next to his other "pedals"

I just got a Pentium with a 6gig HD running at 66 MHZ 
Was gonna build an amp out of the case .
Do you think this software would work OK on that? Its Windows 98 BTW...

If you mean 666MHz, then there's hope, but if you mean 66MHz, it's highly improbable you can swing it with anything other than a lightweight Linux or Win 98.  I suppose it depends whether there is a looper that runs on Win98.

Check out Puppy Linux or DSL (Damn Small Linux).  The default setup will keep the CPU and RAM usage to a min.  When you're talking about an old junker computer from the era of Win98, RAM might be the downfall for a looper....

Let's approximate:
44.1kHz at 32-bit float internal...assume you can do mono:
44.1k * 4bytes * 10s = 1.76MB

I would say you're in great shape on RAM for any old compy.

I have not had much head-ache with jack.  I think it can be a problem if you just happen to have the wrong combination of hardware, or have you interrupts improperly configured, or you're trying to get too low of latency for your hardware, or trying to do too much processing for your hardware.

I have had no troubles with jackd on P4 or higher....and I don't have any troubles on my old iBook G4 as long as I don't try to put too much stuff in the DSP chain....but that goes for every computer.

Anybody using Linux, give Rakarrack and Guitarix a try.  Both really great guitar programs.  I have been writing quite a bit of the DSP code in new Rakarrack features recently.  The standard desktop or laptop computer is a really great way to get into DSP without having to get a special development board and hardware...

Not to resurrect an old thread (it's not THAT old anyway!), but I thought I should let folks know that all current versions of Ambiloop let you set a custom key mapping for triggering events. This means that you can set it up to use any keys you want to trigger any function you want. So, instead of dismantling a keyboard, and trying to solder stuff to the traces of the E,R,L and Space keys, you can just setup a custom key mapping for evenly spaced keys, and just pop off the plastic key toppers for all the other keys so you can just step on the keys you want. You could easily get two or maybe three rows of 7-8 keys each on a standard keyboard. That's minimum 14 (max 24) individual things you can trigger! That's plenty of control to let you move between the 6 loop spots in Ambiloop, trigger the onboard effects in Ambiloop (delay, reverb, eq), load in saved loops via the quickload presets, pause, play, record, erase, multiply, divide, etc.

I have an old IBM thinkpad that I deconstructed and have been using as a digital photoframe. I got rd of win98, and have been running a very small linux distro on it, with a slideshow program set to autorun on start up. It would be super simple to switch this thing over to be a looper! And WAY more fun and useful to me too! It's totally stripped down, so it's super light weight. It's totally small enough to fit on a peadl board. It's about the size of any other looper pedal (like the JamMan or the Headrush)

I think I'll keep it Linux rather than switch it back to Wndoze. There will be way faster latency and way better performance on such an old machine. I'll have a look at some of the "linux for audio" distros out there, as well as the various looper softwares for linux. If I get it up and running in a timely manner, I'll post about what I did.

Thanks again to the OP for this idea. I've been using Ambiloop on my PC for a while now, and I love it. I've been meaning to make a keyboard trigger for it too, but I never even thought about using it to make a dedicated looper out of my old laptop! Kudos for "thinking out of the box"... er.... um... well I guess "Inside the box" on this one!

Well, a quick survey of the available Linux options has done me well! It looks like the best combo will be to install the "Ubuntu Studio" distro (http://ubuntustudio.org/), and use FreeWheeling (http://freewheeling.sourceforge.net/welcome.shtml) as the looping software. Ubuntu Studio is optimized to work as a low-latency DAW, and has JACK and a bunch of great audio apps included. FreeWheeling is in the Ubuntu packages repository, so it can be installed via aptget (no source code compiling! Yay!), and can be controlled by user-editable keyboard map (perfect!). Actually, FreeWheeling looks like a cooler bit of software than Ambiloop. It has some pretty cool features. SnooperLooper looked cool too, but I don't think you can control it via user-editable keyboard bindings (it's seems to be only either GUI or MIDI).

Anyway, I've got to download Ubuntu Studio at work (I don't have fast enough internet here at home), so hopefully I can get it up and running next week sometime. I'll report back with any info.

Wow. That Ubuntu studio story made me want it too. I ll try it out!

Didn't get a chance to download Ubuntu Studio today, but just noticed two things. 1) You CAN set a custom key mapping for controlling sooperlooper. 2) sooperlooper comes as the default looping tool when you download Ubuntu Studio.

So it seems that it will be even easier:

1) Download the Ubuntu Studio disk image file, and burn it to disc.
2 )Use disc to install on old laptop.
3) Configure key mapping in sooperlooper.
4) Pull out all the other keys in your keyboard (probably use an external usb keyboard rather than the laptops built in one for obvious "stompability" reasons).
5)Create a simple little bash script to launch sooperlooper at startup.
6)Start looping.

So I went to download Ubuntu Studio at work today, and I came across one significant glitch in my plan. It's too big for a CD, so it has to be burned to DVD, and my old thinkpad does not have a DVD drive (hey, it's ten years old!). SO I had to look for another distro. Not to worry, I found a very good replacement in PureDyn (http://puredyne.goto10.org/). PureDyn is also Ubuntu/Debian based, but is MUCH smaller. It has all the same audio stuff as Ubuntu Studio, including SooperLooper. You can fit it on a CD. Plus, like all other Ubuntu's, it's a "live" distro. Meaning you can boot it off the CD, or if you machine supports USB booting, you can boot it off a thumbdrive. The thumbdrive option is cool, because it allows you to make changes to the packages and save files and scripts and stuff, but not have to totally replace the OS on your computer. That means you don't have to dedicate an old machine to this. That means you can use your CURRENT laptop if you want to. Just boot up your customize PureDyn distro off a usb key, plug in your modified usb keyboard "stompable control pad", and start looping!

I didn't have time to download PureDyn today (just found it now after getting home from work), and I'm working from home tomorrow, so I'll have to download it on Thursday. I'll keep updating as I progress!

Here's a screenshot from the PureDyn site showing SooperLooper being used in conjunction with Calf (a real time DSP effects processor). You can see the JACK interface on the right that lets you set the effects order, including the loops you make in sooperlooper. VERY cool! I'm sure you can make several effects in Calf (or other software DSP) be callable by footswitch, and I'm sure you can write a little script to start all the bits of software up in the right order upon bootup. This is definitely what I am going to do. VERY cool.

This ambiloop update would've saved me a ton of greif while making the keyboard box!!! My E key wasn't working on the keyboard. I guess I fried the IC pin maybe. So I had to use "U" for Undo. It's a pain in the ass. I'm gunna download the update now.

Quote from: darwin_deathcat on March 29, 2010, 12:00:45 AM
Not to resurrect an old thread (it's not THAT old anyway!), but I thought I should let folks know that all current versions of Ambiloop let you set a custom key mapping for triggering events. This means that you can set it up to use any keys you want to trigger any function you want. So, instead of dismantling a keyboard, and trying to solder stuff to the traces of the E,R,L and Space keys, you can just setup a custom key mapping for evenly spaced keys, and just pop off the plastic key toppers for all the other keys so you can just step on the keys you want. You could easily get two or maybe three rows of 7-8 keys each on a standard keyboard. That's minimum 14 (max 24) individual things you can trigger! That's plenty of control to let you move between the 6 loop spots in Ambiloop, trigger the onboard effects in Ambiloop (delay, reverb, eq), load in saved loops via the quickload presets, pause, play, record, erase, multiply, divide, etc.

I can't find the "new version" I went to the site I got it from last time. Ambiloop.com and the current verion is what Ive had. I couldn't, and still can't find the option to change the key functions.

Hell if this really does work, I'm just gunna tear up another keyboard so I can have more than one loop and do stuff like pause and multipy em.

But I've been everywhere in this damn Ambiloop 1.72 and there's nothing that lets me do that!

well I figured it out.




Crap now I gotta make a new keyboard controller for this. Dammit

this solved all the control problems I had with this thing. Now I can set the U key for multiple tasks. Now after I record a loop and press loop, I can press U and it will erase the loop, stop the recording, and set the empty loop back to 180 seconds. Before, when I would press erase while the loop was playing, it would erase the loop but keep playing. Also it would keep the empty track to the time of the last recorded loop.

Hey! It looks like  you got this figured out on your own. Yeah, the key mapping feature is kind of buried in the menus. That's too bad because IMO, that's a super important part of the software! It makes the thing actually useable in a live situation where you want to be playing your instrument AND triggering loops at the same time. Once I figured out how to do it, Ambiloop, to me, went from "hey that's cool software" to "damn! I can USE this thing!".

I'll keep you posted how PureDyn and SooperLooper work out.

PureDyne is definitely a good bet.

For users with lowly computers, Sidux is excellent.  The default install is very minimal for the XFCE4 desktop version.  I have been using Sidux on my tablet PC.  I got one of those Behringer FCB1010 controllers, so forget about the key mappings   If you have a MIDI controller and Linux, you have a wide world of possibilities.

With Sidux, you don't get anything for music production/multimedia by default, but it is easy to install this stuff as you need it.  My desktop environment boots with about 55MB RAM resident.  Some standalone programs (firefox) are larger than that .  Sidux default desktop environment is about 80MB RAM, but you can knock off a little over 40MB just by removing gdm from the init scripts.  The difference is when you boot, you get dumped into a commandline login prompt instead of the nice graphical "greeter" login screen.  Then you login and do 'startxfce4' and it's the same...

Here is a demo of me jamming the Rakarrack Looper in Debian stable:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMBvrycheAM

You will probably see links to a couple other videos I have made with Rakarrack (I'm one of the project devs).
All the FX are the FX built into Rakarrack.  I don't think most people know the wealth of audio tools available free for the taking in the Linux community.  That screenshot above of Pure:Dyne had Calf Audio Plugin tools...this is an amazing set of plugins.  If the masses ever have their Microsoft-brand blinders taken from their eyes...