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

Started by Chris S, March 15, 2009, 01:26:18 AM

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Chris S

OK so it's not really a pedal it just works as one.



Ingredients...
- Old PC found on the side of the road. (or your swish laptop or any PC your happy to lug around will do)
- Windows 98 (just runs a bit faster on old machines that people throw away)
- Ambiloop Looping Software that you will run on the PC http://www.ambiloop.com/
- A bastardised Keyboard (the black plastic box) with the keys R L Space and E

Process

Ambiloop http://www.ambiloop.com/
- Set the loop time to always be 180 seconds.
- Set Ambiloop to play when you hit loop.
- Set Ambiloop to start every time windows starts this way you don't have to take a screen with you.[/li][/list]

Put some chords in the line in and line out ports of your PC.

Work out how your going to get the sounds in (perhaps a splitter of some sort I'd recommend going from the amp to the looper that way you can record a clean rhythm track and then bang on the distortion without changing the sound of the looped track) and what your going to do with the sounds coming out (if you're recording it straight from the amp then you can just feed the sounds straight to the mixing desk).

Personally I run in stereo I play acoustic guitars with an electric pick up and an acoustic pick up. And, I have a mixer so I've just used that for all the routing of signals.

What you get in the end

1.A really big box (bad)
2.A 16 bit stereo looper that will go up to 3 mins in length. (cool)

I know this is a bit brief and technically not really a pedal but if you don't have the skills to build a looper and don't have the cash to buy a looper and you don't mind lugging an old PC around (don't tell me lugging a super heavy valve amp is OK but an old PC isn't ;) ) then I think it's a pretty good alternative. If you want me to expand anything just let me know.

;D

Taylor

Yeah, if it works, it works.

For Mac folks like me, Mobius is an excellent, free looper available in standalone and plugin versions.

frequencycentral

http://www.frequencycentral.co.uk/

Questo è il fiore del partigiano morto per la libertà!

alanlan

Gets my prize for most inspired piece of pedal building ever!

slacker


snufkin

this displays excellent lateral thinking

very cool idea

i'm not to knowledgeable about PCs but could you build a stripped down version of the computer in a rack case

i see free PCs going around the place all the time this seems like a good use for one


preventing yet another land fill
easyface,phase 90,many fuzz faces,feedback looper,tremulus lune and so on soon to be ADA!

cheezit

Interesting ---what did you do to "bastardize" the keyboard?  Most of them I have seen are just a big pcb with those little bubble momentary contact switches.   Did you hack the switch wires onto the traces?

Chris S

Hey all. Thanks for the nice comments!

I think I'll print out and frame

QuoteGets my prize for most inspired piece of pedal building ever!

You probably could put a stripped down version in a rack case - it depends how old the machine is. Just out of interest mine is pentium 3 with 512 Ram. You can obviously get rid of things like floppy drives and CD drives. So it's pretty much the power supply mother board and hard drive.

Yes I just hacked the switch wires on the traces. Inside the keyboard all the keys trace back to a small PC board. Once you trace them back it's easy to test if you've got it right. Just open notepad and hit the switches to check it's the letters you want. Ambiloop also lets you use midi as well, but this way was easier for me.

Feels nice to be able to give something small back to a community who has taught me so much.  ;D


trendyironicname

OMG! thank you.

one of my pet projects was trying to write a program to control cakewalk to do something like this.

This just saved me a lot of head scratching.
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

newfish

That's fantastic.

Really!

Why re-invent the wheel when you can go sledging, right?

Happiness is a warm etchant bath.

trendyironicname

Quote from: newfish on April 16, 2009, 04:36:27 AM
That's fantastic.

Really!

Why re-invent the wheel when you can go sledging, right?



Exactly.

Gonna try this out tonight.
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

jefe

Quote from: snufkin on March 15, 2009, 07:34:36 AM
this displays excellent lateral thinking

very cool idea

i'm not to knowledgeable about PCs but could you build a stripped down version of the computer in a rack case

i see free PCs going around the place all the time this seems like a good use for one


preventing yet another land fill

Yeah, I really like the idea of using an old computer for... something, anything, lol...  Our PCs become outdated fairly quickly, but I've always thought it was such a waste not to use them for something. They still have powerful processors, just not powerful enough to run the latest software. It's a big friggen scam, really. The only reason that I've ever had to replace a computer was because it could no longer run the latest software. But probably still more powerful than the computers that went up in the first space shuttle.

Mark Hammer

These days, the requisite machine can be had for the price of a Behringer pedal! :icon_lol:

Pushtone


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

It's time to buy a gun. That's what I've been thinking.
Maybe I can afford one, if I do a little less drinking. - Fred Eaglesmith

JKowalski

    Quote from: Pushtone on April 17, 2009, 09:02:40 PM
    Q: how are you shutting down windows 98 when you want to turn it off?

    You hit the big *OFF* button  :icon_lol:

    He has it set up in the registry so that it starts the program automatically when you turn it back on. See:

    Quote from: Chris S on March 15, 2009, 01:26:18 AM
    - Set Ambiloop to start every time windows starts this way you don't have to take a screen with you.[/li][/list]

    Paul Marossy

    Wow, I think that wins the prize for "biggest enclosure ever featured at DIYstompboxes.com:icon_wink:

    El Heisenberg

    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?
    "Your meth is good, Jesse. As good as mine."

    El Heisenberg

    Where is the line in and out on the computer?? Computers dont have 1/4 inch jacks. Mine doesnt have rca jacks either.

    Do i need to use an amp that has a line out or fx loop or something?
    "Your meth is good, Jesse. As good as mine."

    Transmogrifox

    @ El Heisenberg :
    Line in / Line out on the computer is just the standard AC97 onboard soundcard.  Almost all P3 computers have a 16-bit sound card with Line in and out on it.  For guitar you just need to use the 1/8" to 1/4" adapters (or whatever adapters you need for your interface).  For line in I would recommend using a buffer since the typical sound card input is 10k ohms.  You can find simple buffer schematics & layouts easily with a forum search.


    I just have to add my 2 cents as a linux geek.
    http://www.essej.net/sooperlooper/  (works on Mac too)
    http://rakarrack.sourceforge.net
    http://zyzstar.kosoru.com/?creox
    http://jack-rack.sourceforge.net/

    I propose approximately the same type of  thing, but using Linux as the operating system instead.   The bonus is very little latency even on small machines.  It would take some work with configuring the key bindings, but probably not much more than Chris S has done with Win98...And likewise, a MIDI controller would make the thing much more flexible (think PIC project).  Linux opens the door to quite an arsenal of DSP effects, making this the ultimate digital FX processor.  The tube simulator LADSPA plugin I must say is absolutely right on.  It simulates a single triode tube, so with JACK RACK you can build your own guitar amp by using tone stacks, EQ's, amplifiers, tube sims and cabinet sims in the right order....

    Of course, you have Line6 products for Windows....

    If you don't have much cash, but don't like the size of a PC, then consider an old laptop.

    If you have some extra cash and don't like the size of the beast then check out LittlePC's:
    http://www.stealthcomputer.com/

    I have found that scripting and bash programming give you incredible leverage in UNIX-like systems (Mac, Linux and proprietary UNIX's).  With Windows, you usually pay Microsoft a penny for every command you execute (to exaggerate).  To be fair, many of the open-source applications are available on Windows.  A good example is Perl.  A person can do powerful things with Perl, and it doesn't take quite as much of a learning curve as getting into C or C++.

    I think the point of putting in my 2 cents is that there is such a large world of options out there that I never knew existed in my days of using Windows. 

    Many LInux distributions are both light weight and powerful.  You can do Vista-like eye candy with half the ram and cpu...and with JACK, you can do real-time DSP guitar FX processing on a 128MB ram, 300MHz CPU.  I like to use my old Mac iBook as a synthesizer with my MIDI keyboard.  The iBook now runs Debian 5.0 (Lenny).  The hard disk has some bad sectors in a partition that apparently OSX absolutely needs.  As a result, the machine crashed and OSX wouldn't re-install.  It's such a pain to replace a hard drive on one of those, so I gave it Linux (which doesn't care how partitions are defined, and has a filesystem that can deal with bad sectors) and have no desire for OSX, now.
    trans·mog·ri·fy
    tr.v. trans·mog·ri·fied, trans·mog·ri·fy·ing, trans·mog·ri·fies To change into a different shape or form, especially one that is fantastic or bizarre.