Jakeallen Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 I'm trying to use a drum machine pedal (BeatBuddy) and do not want add another (looper) pedal to my rig if I don't have to just to maintain my ability to use the looper without going out of sync. Is there any way someone could tell me how to achieve the looping while staying in sync with this external source? Thanks so much! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silverhead Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 Unfortunately that can't be done. The POD HD Looper has no concept of tempo/time; there are no beats, no metronome and hence no possibility of synchronicity. It operates on a simple start/stop switch. It starts recording the instant you push the footswitch, and it stops similarly. It records everything in between. It's up to you to keep the tempo of your playing consistent while recording, and also to start/stop the recording at exactly the right 'beat' according to your concept of tempo - without any silence at the beginning and end of your recording interval. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunpointmetal Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 Yeah, I tried this forever looping live guitar over a tempo-synced backtrack and after a few bars no matter how tight I thought I was with my button presses, it would start to trail off after a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakeallen Posted December 2, 2014 Author Share Posted December 2, 2014 bummer. Thought so. Looks like I have to have another looper. Damn! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clay-man Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 The looper function is probably one of the things I think that falls short with the POD. I hope they improve the looper function in the next POD they make. The problems I have with it are: -No saving -Timing as mentioned -Routing inside the POD. It's kind of useless if you're using 2 independent split channels. It's fun for a simple Loop function, but ultimately can't be used for looping in conjunction with a band, or in your case, backing tracks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjnette Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Yeah it is in all intents and purposes unusable except play something loop it and tweak a patch to. I am so hit and mis on the timing after a while I concluded it wasn't precise enough for live, or it is that there is no tolerance involved. Even if it just had a simple end editor in the menu just dial back a slider to shorten the loop length assignable to the foot controler and throw in one for tightening the starts. Wouldn't be to hard, perhaps some zero crossover point slider and a choice of a few crossover curves.for thye loop join. But that would require code to detect zero crossing points and that would mean a wave form display. This would make it very usable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radatats Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 I agree, its unusable as is. No matter how hard you try, it just goes out of sync with anything its used with, click track, drum beats, backing track... tone building is about it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silverhead Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 I find it useful for practicing/creating solos as well as for tone building, but I too gave up on it for live use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillBee Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Yep it is what it is. A basic drum machine would have been nice too - for noodling around. But I have hope for the future - at the least an onboard mp3 player or similar would suffice (load em up via usb). Start stop next FS assignment the usual would make it easy. -B Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mincer Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 It falls short on live use for me because you can't control the volume of the loop with the EDP pedal. Even my DL4 and M9 can do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjnette Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Actually a receive midi clock in it as originated by OP would make it more usable Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rewolf48 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 You asked for ANY way.. and I haven't tried this you understand. but: MIDI CC 062 (value 64-127) triggers "Play Once" for the Looper If you have a "something" that syncs to your incoming midi clock, and which emits CC 062 (value 64-127) once for every phrase, then the Looper would appear to be synced - at least it would restart with the correct timing at the start of every phrase. Most DAW could act as something - with a MIDI track just containing the CC event set to loop. It should be possible to set the DAW to Loop triggered by the HD500 record and end and relying on the quantize functionality of the DAW to round the DAW loop to the incoming midi clock. The downside is that the set-up is so complicated that you might as well have just got as separate and more advanced looper device! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innovine Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 Actually a receive midi clock in it as originated by OP would make it more usableIndeed, that would be nice, but it is very difficult to do correctly as you need to also implement high quality timestretching for the audio. Even fancy softare wih tmestretching like ableton live is not so happy when slaved to an external midi clock. It is easier and better to generate the midi clock from the audio rate, rather than the other way around. You won't notice if a midi clock is off by a fraction of a milisecond, but you sure notice the error if the audio glitches by the same amount. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innovine Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 then the Looper would appear to be synced - at least it would restart with the correct timing at the start of every phrase. Not really. The above only works if youcan also overlap the audio, ie, have two audio samples playing at the same time, getting mixed to one output. Th problem is that, due to midi protocol, the clock messages are less accurate than the sample rate. In one second of audio, you have 44100 samples, exactly. So, if you try to loop one second of audio, the timing on the midi clock means that there might elapse 44150 samples if the clock is late (a big audible dropout) or 44050 if the clock msg arrives early. This causes 50samples of your audio to overlap or be omitted, both are also audible glitches. Real loopers need to perform tmestretch (keeping the pitch constant) so the 44100 samples get played back in 44050 on one loop, or in 44150 in another. This is generally so complicated as to not be economically viable, which is why you don't see sample accurate loopers slaved to midi clock so often. Considering the amount of other issues in line6 products, implementing this is obviously way way down on their worry list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianparent Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Sorry to beat a dead horse...but I was just wondering why there are conflicting reports about the HD500 being able to sync up to an external source for looping after a supposed firmware update fixed it. From what I read in this thread below it sounds like it was addressed. Please feel free to point out my stupidity. I guess it is just wishful thinking thats getting the better of me. I bought a Boss RC-300 which doesn't sync up either. The Boss RC-50 claims right on the main page that it is able to do it as one of its main selling features...yet it doesn't work. Ridiculous. Any insight appreciated. Thanks... Old Forum Thread: http://line6.com/supportarchivenew/thread/60000 The first post points to the problem, the fourth post says it was fixed in version 1.20 by someone at Line 6 it appears, and the 12th and 15th posts seem to confirm its working. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil_m Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Sorry to beat a dead horse...but I was just wondering why there are conflicting reports about the HD500 being able to sync up to an external source for looping after a supposed firmware update fixed it. From what I read in this thread below it sounds like it was addressed. Please feel free to point out my stupidity. I guess it is just wishful thinking thats getting the better of me. I bought a Boss RC-300 which doesn't sync up either. The Boss RC-50 claims right on the main page that it is able to do it as one of its main selling features...yet it doesn't work. Ridiculous. Any insight appreciated. Thanks... Old Forum Thread: http://line6.com/supportarchivenew/thread/60000 The first post points to the problem, the fourth post says it was fixed in version 1.20 by someone at Line 6 it appears, and the 12th and 15th posts seem to confirm its working. The HD500 will sync its tempo parameter to an external MIDI clock, but the tempo parameter has no effect on the looper. So there's no way to sync the looper to any tempo - internal or external. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianparent Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Thank you for clearing that up. Guess it just needed to be said in a different way. =) Cheers. Good thing I have my tried and true Echoplex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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