Home Forums Help/Technical Questions 2880 looper: extend maximum recording time

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #82414
    momomo
    Member

    Hello,
    can the maximum recording time of the 2880 looper be extended, if I just purchase a bigger (up to 32GB) compact flash card?
    I would like to use the looper for a very long recording with continuous overdubbing.

    If the 2880 cannot do it, can you tell me, which looper has the longest recording time and can be used in a similar way as the 2880 in overdub? I mean, so that I start overdub once & the device will continue to layer one recording over each other, untill I hit stop.

    thanks a lot for any help!!

    #117756
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    no, the largest disk size the 2880 can take is 2GB; However, that provides 64 minutes/track of looping time. That’s not enough?

    #117757
    momomo
    Member

    hello cryabetes,
    thanks for the confirmation.
    I wanted to use the looper in an art installation context, not for music. I need a device that can do long recordings (like 16 hours) and continuous overdubbing for a long period of time.
    I was hoping to find a looper that can do that, because I feel a bit unconfortable to rely on a software looper, but I might have to go this route.

    #117758
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    hm. i think you may be overestimating people’s attention spans. I mean, a large chunk have trouble listening to a 45 minute album all the way through.

    #117764
    momomo
    Member

    well.. I don’t expect anybody to listen to the whole recording. It’s planned as an installation… People coming by at different times will obviously hear different things.

    #117765
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    so why not use something like Max/MSP and some webcams or light sensors to trigger different loops or samples? it’d be aleatoric in the sense that you’d have different samples triggered based on different sensors and still controlled/”in key” if you loaded in your own samples.

    #117766
    momomo
    Member

    Hey cryabetes,
    thanks for the suggestions, but the level of interactivity with triggers and so on is really not what I’m aiming at.
    I would like to keep it basic. Just the long recording time and overdub is crucial for this project.

    #117768
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    mind if I inquire as to the scope of the overdubbing? Like, what exactly are you aiming to do?

    #117769
    momomo
    Member

    the looping time should be about 16 hours (duration of the loop).
    the whole thing should run in overdub for about a month (24h a day continously).

    #117773
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    Aight so I crunched some numbers
    If you’d get a midi time clock source, you could sync it to the 2880 and then drop the BPM to lengthen loop. I’m not sure if that would bitcrush the audio or out-and-out break the loop. BUT
    a 64 minute loop recorded at 300BPM, when dropped to 20BPM would end up being 960 minutes (16 hours) of loop-time. I’ll test this for you the next time the band I use the 2880 with practises.

    #117775
    momomo
    Member

    wow, I really appreciate your efforts.
    But I don’t understand the logic behind the idea.
    U mean that I basically load an empty dummy loop with maximum duration (64min) onto the card & use that to slow it down to 20bpm (slave to midi clock) and then hit overdub?

    #117776
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    that and loading the initial tempo in at the max speed of my sampler (300BPM) is the basic gist, yep. 20BPM is the lowest speed I’ve got on the sampler, so it’s like.. 1/15th the speed? Should be an interesting experiment. I’ll try it with a decidedly smaller card/shorter loop so i’m not waiting around a full day, but yeah. I’ll let you know how it goes, if the 2880 truncates it or glitches or if it just works.

    #117859
    momomo
    Member

    hey,
    I tried this concept now with a shorter loop, since my CF-Card is only 1GB.

    I tried many options.

    First I just made empty dummy clips for each track, loaded them onto the card & wrote in the tempo.text file 300.000 bpm.. but it never worked to slow it down… the 2880 would always jump into overdub after half an hour or so..

    then i hooked it up to my electribe as a midi slave.

    I recorded 30 minutes in 300 bpm. then i hit overdub and slowed the tempo down to 20bpm (via the electribe).

    Now the long recording works. It does not jump into overdub after half an hour. GREAT..

    But

    when you hear the 2nd recording after a couple of hours, it sounds VERY bit-crushed.. so much that it is almost unusable.

    Thanks for the idea anyways. It was a smart concept.

    PS:
    Meanwhile I also read, that WAV-Files are limited to 2GB File Size, so it might be complicated to create really long loops..

    All the software loopers I tried also don’t work…

    If anybody has an idea, I’m still interested in a solution.

    #117860
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    Is the sound quality usable when the variant tempo you switch to is half the initial? (Should lower the nyquist freq to 10k or so)
    could you automate the fader levels and track select with a DAW so it cycles through which track is recording? I mean, 2 hour wav file, half speed = 4 hours; four tracks * 4 hours =16 hours.

    #117862
    momomo
    Member

    yes, the sound quality should be ok, when you only lower the tempo half.
    but I don’t see a way to program a daw to control the 2880 the way you explain it.
    when the looper reaches the end of one loop cycle, it will jump to the beginning again (i mean the starting time), not to the next track for extended recording..
    so the maximum recording time is still 4 hours (with half speed), even if it records on the next track. because absolute loop length is defined by the first loop.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.