Re: Repeater ruminations

[Mark Hamburg <mark_hamburg@baymoon.com>]

on 8/31/02 2:41 AM, Stuart Wyatt at stuart@solostring.com wrote:

> The only way around this is to buy a big CFC card.

Which probably puts the price point at the same point as the EDP or higher.
(What size card does the Repeater come with?)

What I want is a stereo looper that I can use to capture an underlying
"pulse" loop (e.g., some simple percussion) which I can then build on using
other loopers (generally with much lower feedback values). The pulse looper
is the logical one to send out clock to the rest of the system. It would be
nice if the pulse looper supported going straight into overdub, but I think
I can function without that.

My options at roughly the same price point appear to be:

* Repeater. Actually gets me 4 tracks as opposed to just stereo. Maybe a
little more intelligent than the EDP about deciding what the tempo is --
i.e., it doesn't just take the loop length and divide by a beat count. On
the other hand, it has problems with the clock signal it sends.

* EDP. Mono. I may have to monkey with the beats per cycle setting after
recording. But the clock is reliable and it does do the record into overdub
trick.

Both units support multiplication which is a nice plus. Both units have
threshold recording which is a very good plus.

I'm not giving the Repeater credit for tempo and pitch shifting but I'm 
also
not giving the EDP credit for things like insert since those features don't
matter all that much for this use.

If I could live with short loop times (5 seconds), I might be able to make 
a
D-2 or DL8000R meet my needs for less money than either of them, but I 
don't
think either of those has threshold recording which means I have to hit 
both
the start and the loop point.

Short story: I probably should have grabbbed a Repeater when they were
available for sub-$500 and worked around it's issues. Now that the price is
more closely matched, I'm having to think harder about the tradeoffs.

Mark

P.S. I think this has made it clearer to me that I'd pretty readily spring
for a $1000 stereo EDP but $1300 just feels too rich.

P.P.S. Of course, it would probably also be easier to do any of this if I
didn't have a wife looking at me and saying "How much is that?"