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(LONG) Beating up on the Electrix Repeater before it even getshere.



ELECTRIX AND THIS LIST

At 2:40 AM -0700 7/27/00, Kim Flint wrote:

>At 9:47 PM -0700 7/26/00, Mark wrote:
> >I disagree. I thought that Electrix may be watching the list and Damon's
> >response to the list shows that they are.
>
>Actually, like you, they just joined this list today.

[snip]

>I find it amazing that it took Electrix this long to arrive here when they
>are already so far into the design of a looping product. From my
>perspective, they have made the same mistake that several other companies
>recently made, showing up here only after they had already designed all or
>most of their looping product and missing a perfect opportunity to 
>discover
>what a huge customer base really wants.

Agreed.

On the other hand, "he who pleases everyone pleases no one" and a lot of
great machines are created by a single design team with a clear vision
without any outside input.


OK. So Electrix is in fact on this list, and we know a lot about loops.


IS THE REPEATER SOFTWARE WORTH EVEN DISCUSSING NOW?

Now,
At 2:40 AM -0700 7/27/00, Kim Flint wrote:
>Not necessarily. As Matthias and I have discovered many many times, it is
>really hard to add another feature in software when you've already used up
>all the buttons in the hardware. :-)


But if you look at the very sweet front panel of the unit,
this argument mightn't seem to hold:

<http://www.electrixpro.com/Repeater_Front.htm>


BEAT UP ON THE PRELIMINARY SPEC

So surely we should be getting Electrix to post a specification of the
software model of the unit, no matter how sketchy...

and let us cruelly evaluate what we do and don't like
and particularly what critical but simple-to-implement features are 
MISSING.

and eventually build a wishlist for future features (like a programmable
crossfade!)


A FIRST TRY

Here's the not-too-specific advertising text.
<http://www.electrixpro.com/repeater.htm>


PERFECT DRUM LOOPS

>Quickly establish the groove of your song by
>     instantly grabbing perfect drum loops.

"perfect".

is there something like glitch-protection
(pardons to members of Glitch who might be reading this)
that stops clicks appearing in the audio?

Is there a way to tune the loop length a little bit?
It would be REALLY interesting if the looper kept even
a few seconds before and after the start and end of the loop
so you could stretch out the loop and fix sloppy looping.


OVERDUBBING

>Overdub unlimited guitar lines.

"unlimited". hmm.

overdubbing:  how does that work?  can you bounce tracks
from one (or more?) of the 4! loops onto another one?

there are four interesting looking faders there...


FOOT CONTROL

guitar:

does that mean you can perform EVERY function on the front from
some sort of foot controller?  (being able to do every function
through MIDI counts fine.)


PITCH SHIFTING

>Add keyboards or vocals and change the
>     tempo or key without loosing audio quality.

So there's some sort of time compression == pitch shifting
software in there, is that right?  Please tell us more!


SYNC

>Sync your loop to any source using MIDI clock or Audio Beat
>Detection.

Ooh, ooh, ooh.  Well, I can't be critical about that if it works.


MEMORY

>Repeater uses CompactFlash media for easy
>     memory expansion (up to 50 minutes of record time)

I swoon here.  My camera, my computer, they all use CompactFlash,
it's a great medium.

50 minutes of looping!  almost a mile of tape! (3750 feet at 15ips)


can you play directly from CompactFlash?  it isn't that fast, is it?
I'd be very happy with just being able to load information on-the-fly
from the card.

that would imply that there was some sort of internal RAM memory too,
though... no information on that... ??


MAC/PC?

>as
>     well as Mac/PC compatibility.
>

there don't appear to be any serial or USB ports on it... if this just
really means "excellent MIDI implementation" I'll be happy.


A few more questions....


MODULATION DELAYS?

what about modulation delays, like the super timeline?  It's one of the
big reasons I got the evil DL4 delay (which is great but causes me great
sorrows in concert at times.)

If so, it would be great if you had a choice of LFOs (like sin, sq, tri,
ramp*2, random, external like a footpedal.)


ANY LFOs, etc?

Any LFOs or function generators or envelope generators in this unit at 
all??


I salivate with anticipation.

        /t


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