16 bit stereo looper - Beginners only - Size of box may disturb some

[JKowalski]

This seems great, except im totally lost on computers. I have no idea what im doing.


How do i set up the registry so it starts up automatically when i turn the computer on?

This is with Windows XP.

Go to start, RUN, and type in "regedit". Youcan also open up the START -> ACCESSORIES -> COMMAND PROMPT and enter in regedit there too. Hit enter, and your registry edit program should pop up. In the left directory, go to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER / SOFTWARE / MICROSOFT / WINDOWS / CURRENTVERSION / RUN

Now, in the right hand window, right click and hit NEW / STRING VALUE.

Enter in the name of the program in "Name" (not critical), and then in the value data, type in the location of the program .exe you want to run. For example, iTunes would be:


Value Name: iTunes

Value Data: C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe


Hit okay, and you should be done!

[El Heisenberg]

Cool thanks. I cant wait to try this! My friend has a broken lap top. It worls fine except for he dropped a hammer on the screen to you hav to have a sepetate monitor. Like a tv! Although i still wana make the mobius trip, jus cuz its cool. Wish they sold kits.

[El Heisenberg]

The laptop ha 1/8 inch jack for headphones and a microphone. These are the line i and outs? And i gotta usea buffer before the mic input. Anthing on the output? Or just deirectly to  a mixer? I plan on making a mixer for this.

This is so cool, why isnt this thread longer? I woulda titled it "beginners: make a 16-bit 3 min. loop ped. in 1+1/2 hours!" starting NOW!

This is rediculously awesome. Thanks! I mean, im sure ill get it work.

[Transmogrifox]

The laptop ha 1/8 inch jack for headphones and a microphone. These are the line i and outs? And i gotta usea buffer before the mic input. Anthing on the output? Or just deirectly to  a mixer? I plan on making a mixer for this.

Yeah, that's what you need.  Make sure your buffer has a 5k-10k resistor to ground on the output, and that it has a DC blocking cap on the output.  Usually a mic jack provides a bias to a PC condenser mic (which is what the input is designed for).  The resistor will set the bias on the mic input so it's within linear operating range.  The DC blocking cap will prevent the buffer from mis-biasing the input and burning something up (or at best just make it not work or sound really bad).

A final warning:  Be careful to modify only the items in the Windows registry that is noted above...ie, be sure you are sure you're in HKEY_CURRENT_USER / SOFTWARE / MICROSOFT / WINDOWS / CURRENTVERSION / RUN , and not somewhere else.

Mistakes in REGEDIT are really bad.  This is a part of Windows where the user has the ability to do about anything they want with the way their computer runs.  Usually uninformed meddling in the registry either makes it not run at all, or makes it run really badly.

...Now that I made you scared...go try it.  It will be fun.

[Chris S]

Apologies for being slow to reply

Re:

i really want to see your pedal board =P

It's a boost a tube creamer a Hearthrob Tremolo for the electric pick up and Di or mike preamp and Di for the acoustic pickup/mic and a tuner


Re:

Q: how are you shutting down windows 98 when you want to turn it off?

Yes I just push the on/off button

Re:

How do i set up the registry so it starts up automatically when i turn the computer on?

\
Everything JKowalski says is right (i think) the other option, if regedit scares you is...
Click on "Start", click on "programs", click on "start up". all the short cuts in this folder are short cuts to the programs that automatically start when XP does so just add a shortcut to ambiloop here. (and take everything else out)

Re:

This is ridiculously awesome.

Thanks!!!

Re:

"biggest enclosure ever featured at DIYstompboxes.com"

yes I think there should be a prize for this Seriously though there is a lot of empty space in your average PC unit so I'm sure you could shrink it down to something more convenient.

Transmogrifox thanks for the Linux links. I'm sure linux would be more stable and efficient than Windows 98 or XP. Will have to try that.

You might be sad to hear that I've had to give my looper back as the computer of the friend who gave it to me died. And I thought he probably needed a PC more than I needed a looper so I'm back to hunting for a free PC.

[JKowalski]

except for he dropped a hammer on the screen

Nice.

[El Heisenberg]

Hwo did you make the stompbox, chris?? I was thinkin to cutnup the film that the buttons are on so i could fit it in a small box, but i dont know how to keyboard works and dont wana ruin it. Plusbthe E and R buttons are right next to each other.


Im having a problem with the loop time. Sometimes it chnagesnto a randomly
Smalle time. An when i close an restart the program, the loop time changes back to 20 seconds.

[El Heisenberg]

Yea I can't figure out how to keep it so that when the program starts, the loop time is 180. I have to do it manually.


Also I took apart a keyboard and took all the other rubber things off the three film layers except for E, R, L and space. But plugged it in and it doesn't work. I didn't test it out before I did it, but could someone help me out with out how to do this? I'm willing to destroy another keyboard. If that doesn't work, I'll have to buy one.

[Chris S]

I can't figure out how to keep it so that when the program starts, the loop time is 180. I have to do it manually.

When you open Ambiloop click options and choose set loop time to 180 (as you've done before)
Now click on file and choose "Save configuration as default"
Now every time you open it'll be set to 180.

Sometimes it chnagesnto a randomly Smalle time

The randomly small time is when you've recorded a small loop and then stopped and then hit record to record a long loop straight after and then uses the timing of the previous loop. The secret is after you press stop is to hit erase and this will erase the loop and set the time back to the 180 default.

Alas Ambiloop wasn't made with this application in mind.

The other thing I make sure that I have ticked in the preferences is "Play after set loop" That way when you record something you can either press stop to stop the recording or set loop to get it looping straight away.

Also I took apart a keyboard and took all the other rubber things off the three film layers except for E, R, L and space. But plugged it in and it doesn't work. I didn't test it out before I did it, but could someone help me out with out how to do this? I'm willing to destroy another keyboard. If that doesn't work, I'll have to buy one.

The Keyboard is a little trickier.

Once you've opened it up you'll notice that there is a little PCB board just where the wire comes out the back and two plastic sheets with traces on them. All the traces go to the PCB and the little bare strips on the PCB each key is a different combination of two of these. You'll need a multimeter or perhaps a good eye and a coloured felt tip pen to trace the plastic sheets back to the PCB from the Four letters E R L and Space. from there you just solder wires to 4 momentary switches and then test in note pad that you now have a keyboard with only 4 letters. You should be able to do this with your current not working keyboard assuming you haven't wrecked anything on the PCB board.

If this doesn't make sense post back and I'll put some pictures up on the weekend.

[Chris S]

As requested here are some pics to help you understand the whole "just pull your keyboard apart and rehouse it with only 4 keys working" part of the process.

Picture one: this is the inside of a keyboard. It will contain 2 or 3 clear plastic sheets with traces on them and a little PCB board this is what you will keep to go inside your box (see Picture 2)



Picture two this is the final result



The keyboard works by squeezing the plastic sheets together and making contacts on the sheets connect, specifically the dots on the sheets.

To convert the keyboard into a box do the following

Step 1: label "space" "L" "R" and "E" on your sheets. each letter will have two corresponding dots on different sheets if you have a keyboard with three sheets one of those sheets will always have a hole in it.

Step 2: Count the number of the little stripe contacts on the PCB

Step3: Using a multimeter put one end on each of the dots and the other scrape over the stripes on the top of the plastic sheet where the trace meets the PCB until you work out which PCB stripe is connected to which dot. you will do this 8 time in total for four keys. Now write down the numbers that the of the two contacts that need to be connected to create a particular letter.
So the "Space" might be strip 4 and 17 this will probably vary form keyboard to keyboard

Step 4: test you have got this right by plugging your keyboard into your computer and making connecting the two strips for each letter on the PCB board with some wire

Step 5: take the PCB out of the keyboard solder some momentary switches to the particular combinations (see pic 2) and there you go.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more detail.

[El Heisenberg]

Still waiting on thebkeyboard... I gotta go to the radiosh*tshack to get some momentary switches and a box.


Thanks for thenhelp thisnis gunanrock!

[El Heisenberg]

I cant figure out how to use the multimeter to work out witch button and witch pins. What setting do I put it on? Its a cheap old multimeter so it might not have the same test functions. Like continuity or wutever.

[El Heisenberg]

my keyboard doesnt have copper to solder onto either. Its just this black stuff. I dunno if itll take solder. I used my multimetter on the lowest ohm setting and found two pins that lead to letter E. I tried to just touch wires to them while plugged into the computer, but nothing happened. I turn on caps lock and the light comes on. The board is not connected to the actually keytboard and the plastic sheets.

[El Heisenberg]

Yup, there is simply no way I can get the solder and wire to stick to the pads. I dunno what to do.

My keyboard is the same set up as the picture Chris posted on top. The bottom pic is a different keyboard with copper pads. I need one of those I guess.

[El Heisenberg]

i really picked a crappy keyboard to try this on. I cant even trace the traces cos theyre so small, so there's no way i can freakin work this out. I gotta get another keyboard. already ordered two. 

[El Heisenberg]

well i finally got it done. I figured I could just solder directly to the IC pins, which I did. So I had to do twice as much tracing, but it worked.

Only thing is, that strangely I couldnt get the E key to work at all. I was positive which to pins to connect. But ti wasn't wrking. So I just used U. Now I have to use UNDO to erase my tracks. With some fiddling witht he options it will work OK. Getting new keyboards already so I might redo it better. Maybe make one for someone else.

But Im onto the next problem, I need a splitter and buffer and then something to mix them back. I need to play the loops and play over them through the same amp.

[Brymus]

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...

[served]

This is super cool.

Im going to work on this one! The best part is that I have everything I need to put this together. Super!
Thanks for the idea!

[El Heisenberg]

ugh Im having trouble with this. It works great it's just


I 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?

[served]

I have a dual channel amp, i think I'll use that one. What 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.