I am back to Infinity. Bought two Infinity 3 loopers that I run in series so that I have four loops. An expensive solution, but after looking over documentation for the Looperlative, I decided to go with a product that I was already familiar with that I knew could provide a workable live looper operated by MIDI commands. When I saw that they had released a new model, I jumped on it. Interestingly, I’m hard pressed to understand what they changed from the original Infinity. Different casing and buttons are different, but I think it’s basically the same looper. It also seems to have some of the issues that I encountered with the original Infinity, including a tendency to freeze up if it receives a program change command to switch presets without erasing or saving the loops. This is annoying, but with my setup I can avoid it by including erase commands at the end of every MIDI file for a song. It does not seem to happen if you change the preset manually on the looper itself, but I have seen it seem to freeze up occasionally after sitting for a while. Overall however, freezes seem to be minimal and avoidable if you erase or save loops as described above.
I have already discovered that some of the issues that I had with the original Infinity probably came down to not understanding Some of its quirks. I was having an issue where loops would record and then play back at a different speed as if the varispeed was enabled. Having worked with it over this past weekend, I now understand that loops that are closed with a stop command using the trails setting will indeed do this, probably only avoiding it if the stop command is perfectly timed. Setting the stop mode to full avoids this, or alternatively, in trails, closing the loop with a loop switch command followed quickly by a stop command can work. Anyway, this seems to be a quirk more than a malfunction, and was one of the reasons I dropped the infinity looper before. I don’t know why they would build this behavior in, as I cannot see an advantage of routinely having a loop change speed and pitch because of a poorly timed stop command, but whatever. Now that I know how to work with it I’m realizing that it is probably the best MIDI looper available for full functioning MIDI.
They have not changed the MIDI implementation chart from the original Infinity, including the scope of MIDI implementation. There is a lot of room here, and I am hoping with this new product they will expand MIDI function with firmware upgrades in the future. I am not sure some of the MIDI commands are working as intended, and am giving them feedback. For example, I programmed in the “one-shot” command And it didn’t seem to do anything. My expectation for that command was that it would play a prerecorded loop once and then stop it.
I initially had some issues getting it to work with the PC application that the old Infinity utilized for backing up presets and more rapid creation of presets, as well as some functions like the time signature setting, which cannot be controlled on the looper itself. This was about to be a deal breaker until I went through some old email notes about the original Infinity, and remember that selecting “run as administrator” Is necessary on newer PCs. Now it is working fine.
I see they have closed the thread on MIDI Implementation Scope that was started, but my impression here is that we are months away from an update that provides full MIDI function. If I could have a do-over I would not have bought the Aeros before this was completed and seeing some feedback, but I was very excited about this product, and misunderstood how long of a process this would be when I first came across this MIDI implementation thread. Painful, but I guess my Aeros will sit in a box and wait for full MIDI implementation to come out. Once they get that going I certainly will try it, and compare how well it works to what I’m getting out of the Infinity 3. I’m not sure that I will end up keeping it, it kind of depends on how much better it works. With live looping, for my purposes, it might be pretty unusual to need more than four loops, and I don’t truly need all the “studio in a box” frills. I’m sure all of that and the touchscreen are useful for those who are creating loops at home that they later use live, but for pure live looping you just need a reliable way to record, stop, and replay loops in a set it and forget it type fashion.
I will likely keep my Maestro either way. I don’t generally do live looping that involves use of the foot switches, since I discovered running the looping in my entire board with a MIDI file running parallel to either click tracks (with a drummer ) or a backing track if I am playing solo. But it is still nice to be able to do that, and I do like the Maestro set up and size. Even if I sell the Aeros I can use it to expand infinity functions.
