Hey,
After watching https://youtu.be/pEkC-kD3fpU
From Dave mech, I started thinking if it was possible to recreate the xone db4 in ableton live
Obv it would be “easier” to just buy the mixer. But it set me off to find something that has comparable looper ability.
Sadly I haven’t found anything that comes even close.
The built in ableton tools are okay but don’t really do what I want.
Using ableton clips is okay but having to arm every track just to hear it feels dodgy for live looping (imagine accidentally unarming a track and suddenly your input no longer gets heard)
The built in looper has a minimum resolution of 1 bar.
The beat repeat tool doesn’t have a quantized start point.
Even the max for live loopers are either broken or just not that good.
Has anyone found or use a good looper workflow or plugin, I’d like to avoid buying MORE gear as I think this seems like something ableton should be able to handle easily.
Listen, I’ve been down this road. Walk away now. If you’re not willing to do that, you might want to look into clyphx pro scripting and using the beat repeat.
Edit: You could also use dummy clips to get a quantized start to the beat repeat. Grouping tracks and sending them to channels with beat repeaters, using dummy clips to turn the beat repeater on/off. Don’t really know how and what you wanna route, but this works fine for db4-type looping.
You don’t have to arm your tracks to hear them in ableton live though. You just have to change your monitoring settings to “in” instead of “auto”. In sets your monitoring to, always on, and auto is only when the track is armed. It works for midi monitoring too, but you have to specify from which device (& midi channel) to receive from, if you have multiple keyboards.
Edit : The problem with that approach is that it overrides your clip, so nevermind, it wouldn’t work for your workflow
With Monitor = “IN” then you can’t hear clips from that audio channel, so if I wanted to record a clip, then play it back after launch (without relying on arm track) then this doesn’t seem possible? But maybe i’m missing something because I’m still a noob with all this
I might be able to do most of what i want with the beat repeat tbh.
I guess if I have the audio track playing, then record a clip, then do some beat repeat if i want to have sounds repeating faster than 1 bar.
Then I can use a second identical audio track for my “live” and slowly increase the volume of that to fade between the 2. and then just switch back and forth.
Perhaps this problem goes away with more learning, but the looper tool does seem a bit useless tbh
The looper is great as a looper, but not as a live resampling tool. I would urge you to check out clyphx pro if you’re stuck with abletons limitations. I basically re-created the octatrack presliced functionality using it. I’m not sure if you need it for what you’re trying to accomplish, but you can use simple commands contained within one clip to do a series of commands in ableton. So, launch the clip, and it will start the beat repeat, arm the track with beat repeat on, mute the original track, if you want, press it again, it mutes the beat repeat channel, unmutes the original track. Just as an example.
But if you don’t want to get into that whole mess, the beat repeat is the way to go for what you want, the looper works best for layering instruments.
