Audio Damage ENSO (Looper)

[vurt]

i know were ot, but yeah, i think at some point i may have to look at the expert sleepers stuff

[Klinke]

I'm really unimpressed. E.g. I don't see any reason why it click so much, even for such simple operations like RTZ as can be hear here at 21:35 IMHO there is no excuse for this, you can solve all the clicks I heard with some clever fading.

[paradiddle]

yep so far my only issue is with that. (clicking) For the rest it's a nice simple looper with some cool tricks. Hope they figure out a way to eliminate the clicking.

[firepile]

A demo or even a Rent to Own solution like here:
https://www.strongmocha.com/2019/03/06/ ... -own-plan/

Rent to own for a $59 plugin?

[fedexnman]

Might be fun to mess with , especially for non Bitwiggles and non Abletons.... users ...

[robbmonn]

I'm really unimpressed. E.g. I don't see any reason why it click so much, even for such simple operations like RTZ as can be hear here at 21:35 IMHO there is no excuse for this, you can solve all the clicks I heard with some clever fading.

The clicking with the RTZ button isn't sample offset clicking, it is a short xfade. Gotta have clean starts on those things -- I would say feature rather than bug. Are you hearing clicks elsewhere?

[Klinke]

If it's still clicking, the xfade is too short. And yes, I hear it a lot in the video, shortly after the RTZ example there is a lame excuse for this.

[V0RT3X]

Cool idea but I think it's completely useless for Ableton or Bitwig users, since you can do this already in the Clip mode.

[robbmonn]

OK, let's talk about why this is an important and quality offering.

Here is, in my view, what a looper needs to be able to do:

1. Needs to be able to be 100% wet, no dry, so that it can be used on a send. Using loopers as inserts is pretty cool, but they need to be able to work on a send in order to be able to do a LOT of things, which means you need to be able to mute the dry signal. There are basically no looper pedals or looper software that works this way outside of Augustus Loop and Ableton Looper.
2. Needs to be able to record for a long time. When RAM was cheap we did what we could with loopers, but now that it is now the ability to play an entire chorus or even an entire song into a looper is very, very cool. Augustus Loop does this (up to 1 hour!) Ableton does not (only 90 seconds and then it glitches)
3. It needs to be able to operate with an open feedback loop. Loopers and delays should all have open feedback loops that you can put things into, like tape emulations or whatever, so that you can alter the sound of the loop over time. Ableton does this very well and most delays and loopers can do this in a DAW that allows return tracks to send to themselves. Open feedback loops allow you to do cool shit like bounce your loop feedback out through a 3-head tape deck or a tape echo unit, which... that's really cool.
4. Great MIDI/Host Automation control. Ableton Loop, particularly, is super weird here. It doesn't work the way you want it to.
5. Multi instance -- this knocks out hardware loopers pretty much. I run with five loopers in my rig. Four running normally and one running inside the feedback loop of one of those four. Buying the hardware to support this would be thousands and would require that I get a mixer of pretty serious complexity to support it. In software you can wire everything up once and SAVE that.

Here's the deal so far as I know it: Augustus Loop (12 years old and minimally supported) can do these things. Ableton Looper can do 3 of 5 (max loop length is 90sec and it has a bug where it won't switch into overdub mode if you go past that time that I have reported maybe a dozen times over five years with no response ever.) The Boomerang pedal can do this stuff ok but is hardware so can not handle #5.

Until Enso. 5+ min loop time, can run in an open loop (and has inline effects in the feedback looper built in if you want them) can be 100% wet and work as a send effect.

AND, it has sectors, independent play rec heads and a lot of other stuff. And great MIDI sync. Things that I can tell I will find uses for. AND it has great MIDI control.

My point is this -- this is a serious tool that took into consideration the views and workflows of a lot of people that are serious about the real time looping art form. It is a deep tool. It actually works. I admire them for making it. Considering the size of the audience (a lot smaller than a reverb plugin for sure) and the amount of fussing it took to build it I think the price is very good and it would be a good idea to support them. I bought it even though I got an NFR for doing some testing. It would be a bargain for me at 3x the price as my whole musical workflow is currently depending on Augustus Loop, which is very, very old and will die some day.

[robbmonn]

Cool idea but I think it's completely useless for Ableton or Bitwig users, since you can do this already in the Clip mode.

You can absolutely NOT do overdubbing/destructuve looping with clip mode in either program. Ableton has a Looper that allows this. Looping (as the word is used by me) is NOT record a single piece of audio and loop it, it is getting a loop going that you can overdub more audio onto and control the feedback level.

[robbmonn]

If it's still clicking, the xfade is too short. And yes, I hear it a lot in the video, shortly after the RTZ example there is a lame excuse for this.

When you retrigger a loop to play from the start a non-digital pop is the norm. That said, restarting the loop is not something that I do frequently -- you let it play and fade out. I submitted some feedback about the click nature in testing, will make sure to do some more.

But -- here's the deal: if you have sounds going/sustaining and you hit record on a looper you are going to get a click at the loop point. That's how it works. The loop cannot xfade more than a few samples at loop point and not cause other artifacts. As someone that uses loopers a lot you have to either: 1. be careful about that and make sure that you fade in/out when contracting loopers or 2. use it to your advantage as an effect.

[robbmonn]

Might be fun to mess with , especially for non Bitwiggles and non Abletons.... users ...

Bitwig does not include a proper looper.

[robbmonn]

A demo or even a Rent to Own solution like here:
https://www.strongmocha.com/2019/03/06/ ... -own-plan/

Rent to own for a $59 plugin?

My first looper was a Lexicon Jamman in... 94? It cost $299 + $150 for the RAM upgrade to get, cough, 16 seconds of mono loop time. And, of course, two would have been twice as much. This is a good price.

[robbmonn]

Cant believe it took this long to do a simple 1 button pedal looper type plugin. I'd actually like it simpler than this, like a basic no bells and whistles 1 button looper pedal. Maybe there are others that already exist?

I can tell you that, on the Mac, it is this, Ableton Looper and Augustus Loop. Ableton's does the one click thing (but good luck getting your foot controller to work with it,) Augustus is very, very complex.

This is quite a bit beyond 1 click, but if you get into looping you will quickly see why. What you think you want ends up being a bit different from the simple case and without flexibility in configuration you end up getting pretty frustrated.

[Klinke]

If it's still clicking, the xfade is too short. And yes, I hear it a lot in the video, shortly after the RTZ example there is a lame excuse for this.

When you retrigger a loop to play from the start a non-digital pop is the norm. That said, restarting the loop is not something that I do frequently -- you let it play and fade out. I submitted some feedback about the click nature in testing, will make sure to do some more.

But -- here's the deal: if you have sounds going/sustaining and you hit record on a looper you are going to get a click at the loop point. That's how it works. The loop cannot xfade more than a few samples at loop point and not cause other artifacts. As someone that uses loopers a lot you have to either: 1. be careful about that and make sure that you fade in/out when contracting loopers or 2. use it to your advantage as an effect.

As someone who programmed an own looper for personal use I can ensure you that it's not that complicated to avoid clicks without getting artifacts. You only need two playheads per loop, which crossfades the current play position with the new one for about 50 samples (at 44100 Hz). And when you overdub, add those 50 samples before the record starting point with a fade-in (and of course also add 50 samples fade-out). I think the problem is, that Enso's memory concept is too simple. Which leads to my next main criticism: As far as I could see in the video, there is no undo in Enso, when you overdub a loop and make a mistake, the only solution is to clean the whole loop or a sector? I'm right? When I release a looper with only a single loop, that this loop should have as a minimum the possiblity to add the overdub as a layer and the possibility to remove those layers.