Elektron Digitone as the MIDI clock leader

Aeros Loop Studio
#1

Hello!

I have a synth setup where an Elektron Digitone is the clock and transport leader. All other gear receives MIDI clock and Transport from the Digitone.

I currently have a Boss RC-500 which I cannot use because it doesn’t handle being a clock follower well. The exact problem is that the time stretching algorithm is bad, and small changes in the tempo are enough to cause audible artifacts.

These artifacts are also triggered when there is a small jitter in the MIDI clock. Another case when these artifacts pop up is when I press play on my Digitone. The clock is reset to be on time with me pressing the start button, which results in one clock message being timed incorrectly.

There are other issues with the RC-500, like no default MIDI settings, or no way to save a recorded loop with a MIDI message, which make it very hard to be used for live looping with a more involved setup.

I am wondering if anyone is using the Aeros Loop Studio as a clock follower, where the looper is just another instrument that is controlled by a main sequencer.

#2

The Aeros was designed around the idea of being a midi slave to the Beat Buddy’s clock. I would guess many Aeros users are using the pedal that way. In my experience the Aeros responded well to following the BB’s clock. Problems seem to arise when there are songs with tempo changes within a song. The Aeros does not have anything like Ableton’s Warp algorithm built-in.

1 Like
#3

That’s promising. Let’s hope someone who has a similar use-case to mine will also confirm what you wrote.

About tempo changes within a song, I don’t thing I would do that with something that is already recorded but I might have different songs at different tempos. In that case there would be a PC change message sent from the Digitone to the looper.

#4

Hey there,

Thanks for the question,

We definitely would be interested in having a time stretch/compress algorithm but we do not want to go this route unless it creates a good quality playback with few artifacts. Ableton’s use of time stretching is a good example of a gold standard.

Because of this, it is possible but very unlikely we will go in this route, if we do go this route it would be a while from now. It may not even be possible given our standards and what the cpu could handle.

We are however working currently on allowing for multiple tempos within a song (one per part) setting us up for the upcoming autoquantize feature which is currently being worked on.

Stay tuned!

#5

I think I was misunderstood. I don’t need time stretching. I was just curious if the Aeros Looper can work when it’s not the clock leader.

#6

Here again,

That is currently the only way the Aeros works, it cannot be clock leader yet, although this is coming soon.

The Aeros cannot change tempos once it has already been recorded to. Currently, the Aeros only supports one tempo per song but we are exploring multiple tempos per song, one per part. Stay tuned on that.

Does this answer your question? Let me know!

Thanks