Basic Augustus Loop set up?

[Scott Righteous]

I've been using hardware loopers for many years - started with tape loops with smpte striped on them!

Now I'm trying to get a software looper that syncs well with Logic, and Augustus Loop looks promising. Before buying it, I've downloaded the demo to see how it works. I would rather a simple looper that syncs perfectly than a complex looper that has sync issues.

So far, my experience with Augustus has been bad. The GUI is unintuitive in many respects. Half the time I can't tell if a button is on or off, the color scheme is too close. It took me an hour to figure out how to set the max delay time (I couldn't see that the box was selected), and an hour before that to realize that it even needed to be changed for me to get a 4 bar loop! I figured that would get set by setting it to 4 bars.

Anyway, I figured I should ask if this thing is going to do what I want before spending more hours with it. Perhaps someone could direct me to a set up guide because the manual is horrible.

I plan to use the looper in Logic. I need it to sync to Logic - Augustus loop appears to do this.
I want to set the looper to record 4 bars, or 8 bars. Hit one button - Have it record for the set number of bars, and then begin looping automatically. I have not been able to get this basic behaviour out of it yet!

I'm sure there are some quirky settings that once I know, I can set 'em and forget 'em.
But I'm worried that this plug-in will never be intuitive enough for me to use live.

Any help would be appreciated!

S.

[os]

First thing to realise is that AL is not a 'looper' in the sense of, say, the Echoplex Digital Pro. It's a tape delay.

It will sync to Logic. Enable host sync, & set the loop to the length you want with the beats/beat divisor controls. Be sure to set the max delay long enough (sounds like you've done that already).

Since it by default works like a delay, if you play into it, it will start 'looping' right away. You'd probably want to set the master feedback to 100%, and possibly engage digital mode, depending on the sound you want.

If you want to stop recording into the loop, set the input level to 0.0.

[Scott Righteous]

When you say to stop recording, set the input volume to zero - is this not automated by setting the beats/bar.

So, if I set it to record 2 bars, can't it automatically 'punch out' after 2 bars and stop recording so that you don't get that sound on sound delay effect?

I'm going to experiment more with it today after a fresh coffee. If it syncs nicely, then it's golden!

S.

[Scott Righteous]

O.K. I think I've got the hang of this thing. Using a foot controller to turn the input up and down, I can control what gets fed into the tape loop. I think the continuous nature of the tape loop makes for better sync than the many software sample based loopers that are not in continuous record mode.

I think I'll purchase this now and start experimenting with multiple instances in Logic.

In case anyone is interested, here is a link to some old video of me using an 8 track tape loop on stage.
I'm hoping software can replace the tons of hardware I used to need.
http://www.myspace.com/scottrighteous/videos