Easy looper for drum machine?

The Lounge General Discussion
1

Hi, I had an octatrack, but needed to sell it, because reasons.

Im searching for a tabletop looper with the following options:

stereo line in
very easy to use loop function without breaking simple minds
midi sync
faders (per track or xfader)
i want to mix between live input and recorded loops

what box could you recommend?
please no octatrack.

2
Summary

octatrack :wink:

6 Likes
3

:confused:

4

Whats your budget?

5

up to 600 Euromonies

6

An Ipad with an app called Loopy.

Ableton Push 2 second hand, or apc 40. Most stuff things nowadays give ableton for free.

The Roland looper 505 with faders its 400 euros.

2 Likes
7

roland rc202

4 Likes
8
1 Like
9

Boss RC505mk2 (or original) - looks no further. As a straight ahead looper I think it runs rings around OTā€¦ of course the OT does so much more than that.

2 Likes
10

Rc-505, but better look for later revisions or RC-202. The original had quite meh sound quality (not up 2024 year standards)

Upd: new version even mentions the rate, if itā€™s a Boss DD500/RV500 level tech, no problem with that, should be good

  • Class-leading sound quality with 32-bit AD/DA and 32-bit floating-point processing
1 Like
11

The ā€˜midi syncā€™ part of your wishlist, seems so small and easily found, but if youā€™re serious about it actually syncing, I would advise careful examination. A lot of loopers, that claim to have it, will drift out of sync. I ended up with Pigtronix Infinity 3, which is expensive, but it has rock solid midi sync. No faders, though.

2 Likes
12

Thank you for all your mentions, quite a lot to look into.

13

Another vote for the trusty old RC-202 itā€™s a great looper, I had great fun layering up synths with it.
I wish it got a mk2 like the 505 did, coz that display pushes Roland/Bossā€™s extreme use of 7 segment displays to a new high (well, low actually)

1 Like
14

ā€¦ and another vote for the Electro-Harmonix 45000, or the 2880 for an older version with less ā€œsecondsā€.
The 95000 has 6 tracks rather than 4, too.

1 Like
15

Aeros Loop Studio by Singular Sound?

Found a used one in near mint for about USD400.

Can input/output two mono and one stereo sources. Good MIDI sync.

Designed as a footpedal but Iā€™m thinking of using a MiDI foot controller for play/rec functions and keeping it on a tabletop.

Still getting my head around smoothly using the six track mode but the 2 track/2 part mode is really straightforward.

Iā€™m also using it as a foot controlled multi track recorder.

2 Likes
16

Yeah, my thoughts as well. Never had one of those loopers, but looks like a lot of fun and designed for tabletop use, which most arenā€™t.
Regarding good sync, Iā€™ve heard EHX 1440 to be among the best.
No faders though, but in my case scenario I would use it along a DJ mixer.
Iā€™m still using OT because all this little caveats, and always felt like thereā€™s that empty space in the looper market.

17

EHX 45000 is very solid to midi clock, I used that for years and Iā€™m very happy with it.

18

The form factor was a big draw for me too, I have a slightly irrational hate for the shape/design etc of guitar pedals, mainly because well, Iā€™m not putting it on the floor & plugging a guitar into it.

The MIDI sync on the 202 was good as I recall, and had several options allowing you to capture well quantized & clean looping 2/4/8 bars from MIDI sources. Of course nothing is going to beat the recording trigs on the OT, and frankly I doubt anything ever will

19

Thereā€™s a fairly long thread on here about loopers, with a ton of very useful information, opinions, and reviews.

I highly recommend reading the whole thread. Many loopers have issues that may or may not be deal-breakers for you.

Worth doing the research!

3 Likes
20

I decided to read and watch into the rc-505 mk2.
It looks like it fits my needs and budget.

Thank you all :pray:

2 Likes