Aeros Feature Request: Auto Zero Record

Your forum appears targeted at Beat Buddy, but with the new Aeros out, I assume this is where feature requests for it will also be posted.

I want to buy the Aeros, but I could not get a straight reply from customer support via email about a feature. On the Pigtronix Infinity that feature is known as “Auto Zero Record”.

What this feature does is allows you to recalibrate the looper to the start of a measure of a pre-recorded track when the track measures are not perfectly lined up with your MIDI Clock (in terms of start point…obviously the BPM still must be identical). This allows those of us who use MP3 backing tracks (as opposed to a Beat Buddy) to have them in sync with the MIDI clock. On the Infinity this is a setting you can select, and with Auto Zero Record enabled, your first Loop 1 Record press becomes the measure start point for the rest of the song. That way, if your MIDI clock and your MP3 recording are in perfect time as far as BPM, but the MIDI Clock Start is, say, 300 msec earlier than the actual measure start for the backing track, the Looper is now recalibrated and knows that the measure starts 300 msec late.

When I explained this in detail to your customer support, the response I got was “The Aeros will start recording as soon as it received a start command and will keep in time according to the bpm from that point”. The problem here, if I am understanding the reply, is that the “Start Command” comes from the MIDI clock, which in my scenario above is known to be slightly off from the MP3 recording. In my set-up I use Bandhelper to manage my setlists and pedalboard presets, as well as play backing tracks and as the source of my MIDI Clock. It does send a MIDI Start command when songs are selected, but because of some latency the mp3 is usually slightly off.

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Re-reading the reply I think the tech guy was saying it will do what I am needing…my confusion was with the term “Start”. Midi clocks include a “Start” command which triggers slave device clock timing. This is different from a “start recording” command. If he means a start recording command, I am in business. My concern was that when you press to record your first loop it must start on the first beat of the measure according to the Midi Clock that is currently running, rather than the record command actually defining the first beat.