i bought one of these because of this thread and it was finally something i could afford again.
i accidentally figured out how to use it and this lil thing is pretty neato. can’t wait to explore the community firmwares
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changelog for 2.7.2
- USB streaming: no more dropouts at normal speeds. USB traffic
made each storage read take twice as long. Now the tape streamer
gets priority when a loop runs low. It steps back when the loop
recovers. Buttons stay responsive. - Max speed while streaming: much, much better. Dropouts
are rare now. Max speed without streaming is clean. - Heads mode: double-tap reverses the source track. Before, the
other heads reversed and the source did not. Bug since v2.3.0. - No more short silence when you let go of FUNCTION after a window
change. Releasing FUNCTION after you move the window (or glide the
chop) always caused a short gain dip. Now the dip happens only if
you release while still moving a fader.
road to 3.0 
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i was super excited about the looper fw because it looks great feature-wise. but then i learned that it’s mono. now i’m not so sure anymore.
according to the looper fw readme, 16bit 48khz mono was a “storage-bandwidth choice”. if bandwidth is an issue here, i guess i would still have preferred stereo at a lower bitrate/sampling frequency…
maybe i’ll stick with the stock fw for the time being and use it to play my own stereo stems - although compared to the looper fw, it looks rather limited.
if i do install the looper fw, would there be any way to revert to stock fw? can’t seem to find any info on that.
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You cannot return to stock FW
Looper is really fun and 3.0 update is eagerly awaited
It’s amazing what the people responsible are capable of, but let’s not forget that this wasn’t designed to do anything other than play JIK “stems”
For the money, I don’t think there is anything that packs as much punch as it does stereo or mono
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For what it’s worth, I’ve been loving the Tape Looper firmware and didn’t even notice it’s mono
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it’s really a vibe as is, for the moment it’s so experimental in usage (with that I mean super stable, long sampling and manipulation in such analog fashion!! 
) it’s so nice you won’t notice a missing stereo field, it’s really cool 
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I wish there was at least an option to record two mono tracks on 2 channels for saving purposes. Though I may be the only one who desires that, as I use it to sample my phone for use on other devices. I dunno how you would add it into the UI, maybe someday if there is an external configuration “app” for the device.
Edit: maybe when the firmware hits a more steady state I’ll add it myself in a fork 
it all depends on what you expect to do with it. i’m sure there are some excellent use cases for a 4-track mono looper - especially one with such cool additions as heads mode.
but when i first saw this, i immedeately thought of it as something like a miniature, battery-powered c&g 5 moons (which got a stereo update in 2023) - great for playing back binaural ambient loops. so it came as a disappointment when i learned that it’s mono.
we’ll see what tape looper fw 3.0 will bring, and what other developers will come up with.
maybe somebody will write a midi looper fw for it - that would be very cool! should even work (semi-)standalone with a usb midi host like behringer’s or cme h2midi pro…
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well, there’s already a draft for a pull request to feldd that would incorporate a midi looper function (but worth noting it hasn’t ran on the sp-1 quite yet). I plan on spending some time with it soon and testing it / providing some hardware implementation suggestions for it (and it would represent a pretty big expansion of the feldd firmware as a platform, which is worth putting in thought on how to do that in the best way possible), but regardless of how any of that turns out, a midi looper or sequencer or something along those lines is probably going to appear at some point soon
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i just noticed that the built-in audio codec chip has a mono mic input! i wonder whether that is connected in the sp-1 and could be used to record mono loops without a phone attached…
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unfortunately there is no mic on the sp-1 and to my understanding the audio inputs on the audio codec chip are not connected to any pins. you might be able to do something about it if you’re extremely skilled at soldering, but I would bet against non-digital audio input becoming a thing.
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i see. i guess i had been hoping that the headphone jack might be trrs with a mic input connected to the codec. but why would it, if this thing was originally only intended as a player…
i wish there was some kind of audio equivalent to the usb midi hosts mentioned earlier, then. but i don’t think such a thing exists…
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My impression has been that the idea for this firmware was based on the experience of using a diy cassette tape loop in a 4 track
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somehow this is such an inspiring line when handling the SP1 ^^
I think it’s fair to say that you can collect all of your nice Elektron pattern-performances easily via USB routing it thru AUM on IOS. that’s really handy and a lot of fun, along with tape tracks from the OP1 or ambient recordings of birds and things with the iphone hardware mics. 
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S T E R E O update sneaked into 3.0 that’s dropping in a few days…along with input fx, envelopes in heads mode and a lot more stuff, it’s a big one coming along
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can ios devices address multiple usb audio devices at at time? so, would it be possible to route an audio signal from, say, the line in of a zoom h1n via aum to the usb audio in of the sp-01?
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exactly, that works a treat.
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you should all prepare your (tape looper flashed) SP1s for the weekend ^^
it will be surprisingly advanced as a standalone unit and it‘ll introduce fx pages along big other things 
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huh, so is there a mic hidden in there, after all? or will it be able to host usb audio interfaces?
there’s no mic unfortunately and the traces on the pcb are not connected, a diy solution would be possible tho.
as long as it can’t ba a host it’s really easy to use AUM on IOS to distribute audio between any hardware interface - IOS apps fx/synth - SP1 with ease.
you can mangle your sounds for days if not weeks once you’ve uploaded or sampled some stuff. it is really the best little hardware device with a killer vibe in operating it. the next step-up is right around the corner with a few surprises for all of us. got damn that’s niceeee
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