Extreme Time Stretch

[aholidayatthesea]

Isn't the new Montreal assembly pedal supposed to be a kind of looper? I'm sure that'll be pretty cool.

Anyway I messed with my SMMH looper and time stretching. It'll maintain pitch with tap tempo, but it'll only go so slow. Plus, it doesn't sound like a true time stretch. It sounds like when you copy and paste a wave form to make something last longer, like a tremolo effect.

[D.o.S.]

The 856 Now We're a Real Business or whatever it's called?

I think so:

not really. it's a looper of sorts, so not totally different, but the patches are not the same as the ct5, i would say they are more advanced/twerkable (8 knobs, hello buhday).

For example maybe you can compare some of what it does a bit to mode 3 of ct5, only you can have each "head" play a different portion of the loop, spaced out in time, according to a rhythm, or an arpegiated pattern etc. So rhythm wise it is way more coherent than mode 3 of ct5 because you can schedule the slices to play according to a base tempo or clock etc. You can change the tempo and everything will move accordingly...

Also once you have rhythms or slice patterns setup, you can keep the structural pattern/schedule and apply it to a newly recorded audio sample, or just have it constantly applying the pattern to an input stream of audio, ie not a sample, just have it apply the pattern to what you are playing .

...I never realized how many weirdos only post in like, two shark tank threads and nowhere else on ILF.

[backwardsvoyager]

Eh its like the people who just lurk in the BST. Some people want to be part of an online community, some people wanna nag builders for details and release dates because they want something.

[D.o.S.]

They're on the list.

[twincities]

Even just changing the CT5 so that the direction only changed the speed instead of pitch would do a lot for me. (Perhaps the 856 will cover that?)

my email exchange with scott regarding the GB24 a few years ago, before the CT5 was a thing.

me - "also, long shot chance i know, but what're the odds of disabling the pitch shift aspect to the buffer speed adjustment, so that it just expands/compresses the rate at which the loop plays back all still at the original recorded pitch? could be really useful for what i like to make!"

scott - "On this model/revision whatever you want to say, there is no way what you are asking will happen but it is a good idea and if i make a better version i may try to incorporate it. I had not actually thought of that at all but i like it."



considering it wasn't incorporated into the CT5 at all, i'm guessing the architecture of the pedal is still generally the same, and would still be impossible?

[resincum]

maybe he's planning on adding it

[jrfox92]

Considering how normal recording technology adjusts pitch with speed (because it doesn't actually change the sample/recording itself), I'm not surprised it wasn't incorporated in the CT5 considering just how much R&D would have to go into it.
For a company as small as Mtl Asm, it'd probably take several years to write the code + figure out a way to increase memory to allow for, essentially, expanding the sample itself several times over rather than just changing the speed.

[zoooombiex]

I mean they reissued the 16SDD a few years ago, right? I presume it didn't sell because it's no longer in production? (no idea on that just thinking out loud).

Is this the EHX pedal? I'm not familiar with it. If so, what's the big deal about it? Doesn't seem very innovative at all.

Yep, it's the EHX. It's not a great pedal for one-man-band type looping. It is a very great pedal for mangled loops and soundscapes as a result of several features that aren't on a lot of current loopers

-ability to select whether to control pitch and speed together (like the CT5 and most loopers with a speed control), or just speed (ie, timestretch)

-ability to apply modulation to the loop (depth/rate controls)

-feedback control for the loop, (ie, when you overdub on a loop, you can set how much of the volume of the prior loop fades, from 100% to 0%)

-it can be listening passively in the background while you play, and then you can switch in the last buffer's worth of what you were playing as a loop (trickier with the reissue)

There's also forward/reverse, which is more common. And then of course it also has a delay mode (with the same modulation section)

In terms of what is technically possible today, you are right that none of these features are innovative. But it is, for whatever reason, uncommon to have them all on a pedal. (As others have noted, they seem more common in the software and modular markets)

[jrfox92]

Isn't the reissue also considered less desirable (granted, that just means they go for ~$500 instead of ~$1000) to the original since it has a fairly standard looping function rather than the sound-on-sound type function the original has (I think that's right but I don't own either)?
Also, I think they haven't reissued it since because the cost for it was probably fairly high (there's something like 50 IC's in the original).
http://www.sdiy.org/xyzzy/eh16/boards/index.html
Big pics:

NSFW: show

[zoooombiex]

Isn't the reissue also considered less desirable (granted, that just means they go for ~$500 instead of ~$1000) to the original since it has a fairly standard looping function rather than the sound-on-sound type function the original has (I think that's right but I don't own either)?
Also, I think they haven't reissued it since because the cost for it was probably fairly high (there's something like 50 IC's in the original).
http://www.sdiy.org/xyzzy/eh16/boards/index.html
Big pics:

NSFW: show

The reissue definitely does sound-on-sound, and can actually do most of the same stuff as the original (maybe all, actually), though the steps may be different.

E.g., the original one is by default always listening and recording in the background, and you just hit a button to start playing back the existing buffer material. You can do that on the reissue, but you have to:

-put in continuous loop mode, with coarse slider at max
-set feedback to 0% and wet mix to 0%, and hit record
-when you reach the length of loop you want, hit play. nothing will come out, because wet is at 0%
-hit record again. now it will be listening and recording whatever happens, and because feedback is at 0%, every time the loop starts over it will be recording over and erasing whatever was recorded to that point in the last loop. and still, nothing will be playing because wet is at 0%
-when you want to play back the loop, turn up the wet mix level and hit play to stop recording. if you want to do sound-on-sound, turn up the feedback and hit record. if the feedback is <100%, the recorded material will slowly fade out over time. at 100% it is infinite.

-alternately, you can put the reissue in short delay mode, and then when you flip it over to loop whatever is in delay mode will be in the loop, but you again have to flip the wet mix from 0 to 100 if you want the loop to pop in out of nowhere. and short delay mode is only 1s, so that's all that would loop.

-alternatively alternatively, if in short delay mode and you hit play it will play back as a loop the last 4 minutes of whatever happened. 4 minutes is a weird choice IMO - had they made it loop something like the last 10s or a multiple of your delay time that probably would have been perfect for fans of the original

I think they changed the reissue to try to appeal to the more normal looping crowd (that mainly has to do with the loop length controls, which they changed from time-based to bar/measure based), but they kept most/all of the unique functionality of the original in some fashion. And I think some of the features on the reissue are actually preferable (at least for my uses):

-the reissue has separate wet and dry mix levels, while the original has both on one slider.
-the original has a hi/low octave switch that jumps speed and pitch, while on the reissue you can (in pitch+speed mode) slide up and down in half-steps
-the reissue has an input gain control
-I'm not sure that the original does time-stretching like the reissue. I tried to look for video, but the only things I saw showed it varying pitch and tempo together. Though I haven't had one in my hands to try it out.

The reissue dropped the separate wet/dry outputs though, which is too bad. And some people also like the tone of the first one better, though I haven't tried them side by side (the reissue is relatively neutral sounding).

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

kinda not the same thing, but the octatrack does this kind of sound mangling in spades plus like a billion other things

[zoooombiex]

kinda not the same thing, but the octatrack does this kind of sound mangling in spades plus like a billion other things

holy cow, that thing looks insane. big as it is, definitely worth some investigation

[D.o.S.]

kinda not the same thing, but the octatrack does this kind of sound mangling in spades plus like a billion other things

Yeah but that leads down the same path we talked about earlier, right -- it's essentially not a pedal, which is where this kind of tech is lacking (outside of the 16SDD)

[zoooombiex]

true, and the same goes for the organelle, which could undoubtedly be programmed to do a lot of this

[Dandolin]

Erm, also not a pedal, but the BASTL Microgranny creates some nicely grainy time-stretched samples that you can then trigger by midi--get a cheap Sonuus G2M pitch to midi converter and happily plunk out time-stretched samples of trombone kazoo orchestras in real time?