Meris? Blade Runnery? Ottobit, Polymoon & Enzo!!

[Seance]

IIRC, somebody from Meris posted on the TGP thread that an online manual would be coming out sometime.
Not sure when.

[elevenstrings]

My main qualm with the pedal is that the stutter is primarily auto stutter in a pretty rigid structure. It may be constantly filling the buffer for the stutter function but if you hold the switch to try and freeze the next thing you play, which is apparently how it works, you dont get anything until the full next cycle. So its not really stutter on demand like I was hoping. It works a little better if the tap speed is set really fast.

Im playing with this thing all day to get a better handle on it. I might just have to continue posting every possible question to get a de facto manual out of them now rather than waiting.

Edit - people used to bitch about rack gear as having too many menus and liking the simplicity of pedals. This morning I was thinking that I would vastly prefer menus for setting this pedal up rather than making a minute turn on a knob and then waiting and trying to count how many times something was happening or counting the steps from unison to find where the intervals I wanted on the pitch sequencing were. This pedal is all the complexity of a piece of deep rack gear but with blinders on so its tough to tell what is really happening.

You and I are having completely different experiences here. The stutter knob I figured out just turning the knob and to me was pretty obvious what was going on.

(going back to Marco polo)

Marco - polo
(move knob a little bit)
Marco - polo polo
(move knob a little bit)
Marco - polo polo polo
etc.

The other two divisions (double speed and 1/2 speed) did the same thing, except twice as fast, twice as slow.

I'm not technical as far as electronics, but I believe pedals like the Revolver and Raptio have some kind of recording buffer that's always recording, so when you hit the stomp it captures what you had just played instantaneously.
It seems the Ottobit Jr. doesn't do this - the recording buffer kicks in after you've plucked a note. Which is similar to "Auto" mode on the Revolver, except this has a lot more variety with the 1x, 2x, 8x, 16x repeats etc.
I guess Auto Stutter fits the name - auto/otto.

I have this pedal pretty much 100% figured out as far as what it does. To make this pedal useful in a band situation, presets are definitely necessary so I'll need the manual for that but it looks like Disaster Area are already on top of adding MIDI coverage for the Meris stuff.

[whoismarykelly]

I believe the auto mode on the Revolver just fills the buffer and dumps repeatedly without you having to hit the capture switch. The Malekko Charlie Foxtrot does something similar but much more electronic sounding to me.

The 7 divisions per stutter range were not apparent to me until the explanation because the other knobs on the bottom row have similar graphic layout and only one function per section. To me that meant the Stutter knob functioned the same way as the other knobs. I asked the question when I wasn't getting consistent results and now we have a full explanation of the control so that's cool.

I'd really like to see a version of this pedal that has sequencing of the stutter function. After writing some riffs with it I think there is potential but I'd love to be able to mix between sections of the control.

[elevenstrings]

I believe the auto mode on the Revolver just fills the buffer and dumps repeatedly without you having to hit the capture switch. The Malekko Charlie Foxtrot does something similar but much more electronic sounding to me.

Same with the Stutter knob on the Ottobit. You only have to use the Tap stomp to lock/hold the stutter, but as long as you have the knob anywhere past CCW, it will auto-stutter after each attack/pluck, based on the tempo.

The 7 divisions per stutter range were not apparent to me until the explanation because the other knobs on the bottom row have similar graphic layout and only one function per section. To me that meant the Stutter knob functioned the same way as the other knobs. I asked the question when I wasn't getting consistent results and now we have a full explanation of the control so that's cool.

I'd really like to see a version of this pedal that has sequencing of the stutter function. After writing some riffs with it I think there is potential but I'd love to be able to mix between sections of the control.

There's a few things I would like to see - more than 16 presets (not sure why they didn't go to 127), more stutter options, would have been cool to implement a tertiary alt to adjust the pan of each note being sequenced (to simulate the rad stereo panning options of the Boss Slider. All the knobs seem really cool as far as width/range - the filter is amazing. The only knobs that seem like Meris went a little too far is the Sequencer multi at 64x/128x and the SampleRate between CCW to 9oclock is just pure destruction and I'm not discerning any difference, but maybe with something like a sinewave you can hear it.

[whoismarykelly]

I believe the auto mode on the Revolver just fills the buffer and dumps repeatedly without you having to hit the capture switch. The Malekko Charlie Foxtrot does something similar but much more electronic sounding to me.

Same with the Stutter knob on the Ottobit. You only have to use the Tap stomp to lock/hold the stutter, but as long as you have the knob anywhere past CCW, it will auto-stutter after each attack/pluck, based on the tempo.

The 7 divisions per stutter range were not apparent to me until the explanation because the other knobs on the bottom row have similar graphic layout and only one function per section. To me that meant the Stutter knob functioned the same way as the other knobs. I asked the question when I wasn't getting consistent results and now we have a full explanation of the control so that's cool.

I'd really like to see a version of this pedal that has sequencing of the stutter function. After writing some riffs with it I think there is potential but I'd love to be able to mix between sections of the control.

There's a few things I would like to see - more than 16 presets (not sure why they didn't go to 127), more stutter options, would have been cool to implement a tertiary alt to adjust the pan of each note being sequenced (to simulate the rad stereo panning options of the Boss Slider. All the knobs seem really cool as far as width/range - the filter is amazing. The only knobs that seem like Meris went a little too far is the Sequencer multi at 64x/128x and the SampleRate between CCW to 9oclock is just pure destruction and I'm not discerning any difference, but maybe with something like a sinewave you can hear it.

I've been trying to hold stutters but its pretty tough. It seems like the stutter happens on the pick attack but only the first pick attack of a measure as determined by 4 beats of the tap tempo. So you cant hit a triplet stutter on every beat of a measure or anything like that. If you have a fast tempo tapped in then you're trying to hit the switch to hold exactly on a 16th note. If I dont hit it but then try to get the next one the pedal thinks Im tapping a super slow tempo half the time and that mucks things up.

The alt functions of the knobs seems like they're done a bit of a disservice by being alts. Im finding that I'd much rather have twice as many knobs on the pedal to just be able to see where things are and then if I want to make a change I dont have to go and figure out where something was 2 knob movements ago and reset it to the new setting. Im talking about like if I want to move a pitch one step or move the stutter to have a couple extra hits.

Most of all I'd like to have the rate of stutters separate from the number of stutters. Having them as divisions of the tap tempo is cool but it would also be cool to have the sequencer repeats function for the stutters. Either infinite stutter until the next pick attack or just 8 at the tapped tempo rather than that one beat where they stutter dived into 8 tiny stutter fractions.

[UglyCasanova]

Dude tweakin' knobs

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hbluWp4F10[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7wnH2ecU8w[/youtube]

I'm glad I got in on the Mercury7. Sounds absolutely beautiful! I wonder how it deals with fuzz.

[dismembermentplanned]

How does the bit crusher on the Ottobit jr compare to, say, the Frantabit or the Bitmap?

[njschneider2]

I've not played the Frantabit or Bitmap, but I've played the Bitquest. I'd say the bitcrusher on the OBjr is at least as good as the bitcrusher setting on the BQ.

As far as a manual, I agree it would have been nice to have up front. The pedal is intuitive as far as basics go, but there is little explained on the deeper features. But as a buyer I'm more to blame than the manufacturer, considering there was no indication there would be a manual other than the quick start. If we had more patience before pulling the trigger than we wouldn't be in this situation. But they're coming out with a manual soon, so in the meantime just have fun!

[molokaio]

Man... I' ve been watching that ottobitjr video all day, it's so good. A small sized bitcrusher doing so Many things!
Any idea wheter these is a wet/dry Mix in the alt controls?

[whoismarykelly]

The alt controls are the sequencer steps. I do wish there was a mix control after playing with it for a while.

[cherler]

Marco - polo
(move knob a little bit)
Marco - polo polo
(move knob a little bit)
Marco - polo polo polo
etc.

It almost sounds like a delay then?

[elevenstrings]

Marco - polo
(move knob a little bit)
Marco - polo polo
(move knob a little bit)
Marco - polo polo polo
etc.

It almost sounds like a delay then?

Not really. The "polo" is the same volume and only happens once (or twice, or 8x) - delays typically keep repeating and fade away, though you could probably use a multi-tap delay set with 1-repeat and get a similar feel.

[UglyCasanova]

A delay would (in most cases) repeat ALL input and add digital or analog artifacts/filtering and fade out. This repeats parts of your input/samples and outputs them sounding pretty much as the input, so while it does repeat itself it definitely doesn't sound like any conventional delay I know of. More like a sample and hold, I'd say.

Edit: got beaten to it.

[cherler]

Yeah I guess by delay I meant thing that repeats sound on a fixed time interval, which maybe is a bit broad haha. Thanks for the info though! I'm actually a little more hesitant now since I was actually thinking I wouldn't have to get a revolver ever if I got this.

[whoismarykelly]

Its also cutting your dry signal on the stutter so you don't get the layering effect of delay.