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What is feedback control on a looper?


angstwulf

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Feedback controls how quickly each recorded layer of the loop fades away.

 

It's called feedback because it's actually controlling the level of the previously recorded material going *back* into the loop.

 

Feedback = 0, the loop repeats previous material once

 

Feedback = max, the loop repeats previous material forever

 

Or until you shut the damn thing off. :)

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That would have to be a loooper with a feedback loop - one that sends the output back into the input, like a Effector 13 Truly Beautiful Disaster does, for instance. In which case the feedback would control how much of the signal gets sent back to the effects loop send of the unit.

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That sounds like what I used to do with an old DOD 4 second delay. Overlay sounds on one another to get that Fripp and Eno sort of space noise.

 

Can you still do that with the Boss RC's or with the new JamMan or do you completely overwrite what was previously on the loop? And if you do layer, do you get that kind of signal delay that the old delays or true tape loops had?

 

Laters and thanks,

Tommy

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So you are talking about delay type feedback, not feedback loop type feedback, ok. I only have experience w/dl4, boomerang, and a handful of older digital delay looper thingies, but I understand loopstation and rc20 functon under largely the same paradigm.

 

The way the dl4 or boomerang does it is as long as the record is on (ie.. the dl4 blinky light is on, or you have your foot down on the rangs rightmost button) than the signal will go onto the loop, on top of whatever else is recorded there, slowly causing the old signal to degrade under the new. This will also gradually happen with silence, so if, for example, I were to record a one second loop of myself talking, then left the record button on/down and stayed quiet the looping signal would slowly fade away at a constant but slow rate. If I kept talking my new conversations would gradually overlay the old (the loop would just be insane psychedelic mud by this point, but you get the idea). If you then turned of the record button and let the loop run its volume would remain consistant.

 

Don't confuse the feedback control at the top of the dl4 for the looper feedback btw, in loop mode the delay controls just control a simple delay that can be put before the imput signal into the looper.

 

As I understand it (which I don't really) feedback control on a Gibson Echoplex Pro (the cadillac of audio loopers) is an expression pedal that allows you to decide how much signal goes onto the loop and how loud it "imprints" itself on the loop in comparison with the rest of it. This is usually what peple are bitching aout when they complain about newer loopers not having any feedback control.

 

I also have a crazy homemade 8-bit looper a friend made, essentially like a "locking" ps2 delay from about a sec to about a minute that you can insert silence into and move between "open" and "closed" (to imput signal). This allows you to control the feedback and delay time while the loop is going for really intuitive speeding up and slowing down, along with the ultimate slow death mangling sounds. I can also change the length of the loop while it's recording to weave a sound around the pitch time axis and with short delay times turn a pretty simple tone into drone heaven. I don't know of any commercial loopers that have this feature, except possibly the old digitech stuff, which I have only used a few of (and they all seem different, especially if they are broken/bent).

 

Hope this is helpful, but upon reading it seems like the ramblings of a madman.

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"I also have a crazy homemade 8-bit looper a friend made, essentially like a "locking" ps2 delay from about a sec to about a minute that you can insert silence into and move between "open" and "closed" (to imput signal). This allows you to control the feedback and delay time while the loop is going for really intuitive speeding up and slowing down, along with the ultimate slow death mangling sounds. I can also change the length of the loop while it's recording to weave a sound around the pitch time axis and with short delay times turn a pretty simple tone into drone heaven. I don't know of any commercial loopers that have this feature, except possibly the old digitech stuff, which I have only used a few of (and they all seem different, especially if they are broken/bent). "

 

Greaseenvelope:

 

Thank you. Yes, these are the ramblings of a madman. Fortunately, I grok your lingo. This is exactly what I was wondering about.

 

So these much desired "feedback controls" introduce silence along with the new overlaid sound to force the degradation of the underlying sample, no? It sounds like you can get a similar effect by putting a volume control in front of the looper.

 

Did your friend do anything to the circuit board itself? I used an Digitech delay that a friend of mine bent by hardwiring the delay time controls to the pot of an wah/vol pedal. That allowed me to change the speed of the sample playback so that the layered sound would change both time and pitch.

 

I'm going to have to try out a few loopers before I continue to mortgage my future children's educations.

 

Laters,

Tommy

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"Greaseenvelope:

 

Thank you. Yes, these are the ramblings of a madman. Fortunately, I grok your lingo. This is exactly what I was wondering about.

 

So these much desired "feedback controls" introduce silence along with the new overlaid sound to force the degradation of the underlying sample, no? It sounds like you can get a similar effect by putting a volume control in front of the looper."

 

-No. The introduction of silence to the looping sound is a feature of the ciat-lombarde cocolase alone (ciat-lonbarde) AFAIK.

Well, the volume pedal thing would work if you had your loop constantly running, but the feedback control part of it has to do with the actual delay feedback. It's exactly like a dd3 or any other delay you may have used, only "lockable", if I turn the feedback knob all the way down the loop will go away, all the way up and it starts getting louder and louder.

 

"Did your friend do anything to the circuit board itself?"

Yes he designed it, burned it, assembled it, soldered all the connections, and then sold it to me ;-)

 

"I used an Digitech delay that a friend of mine bent by hardwiring the delay time controls to the pot of an wah/vol pedal. That allowed me to change the speed of the sample playback so that the layered sound would change both time and pitch."

 

That seems really f*ing sweet!! I wish I had the knowhow to do that to my friend's Digitech. He was so pissed at the lack of abiity to mangle loops in the rc20 that he put the digitech back on the board handle that duty. He would flip for expression pedal control of this feature.

 

"I'm going to have to try out a few loopers before I continue to mortgage my future children's educations."

 

Your future children are going to require a lot more than 300$. Try a few of the regular models at guitar center or something and see if they are what you want.

 

And there is of course a looper that would probably fit the bill, and for which I will now GAS:

Manecolooper FilterEko2..

 

 

:eek::love::freak:

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