plate Monkey RC1 (4x variable length stereo looper plugin)

[flamingRedDingo]

plate monkey (release candidate 1) ..

A multi-looper effect plugin which allows you to record and mix up to 4 independent stereo loops..

It's efficient.
It's pretty.
It's flexible.

The loops are each independently sizeable and controllable... you can free loops when you don't need them, to save ram...
They can be reaaaaally long..

This is probably better than angstromLooper. It might be buggier (it's first gen) but It's certainly prettier, and it can play and record in reverse too..... and it's free.. and it's an osm. So now get to downloading it. Because you want it.

any bugs you find are not my fault. It got them from you.

/shameless plug

Cheers,
flamingRedDingo

[MichaelBenjamin]

nice, seems to be a possible future competitor to soopa loopa.

[trogluddite]

competitor to soopa loopa.

I'll definitely be having a play (industrial espionage )as soon as I get over the beer festival I went to yesterday! The speed that Dingo's picking up SM, I won't have a headstart for very long!! Real interesting to see how a different mind takes a completely different route to achieving a similar goal - and a bit of cross-fertilisation/mutation could take this stuff in any number of unexpected and interesting directions.

[flamingRedDingo]

RC2 is here. It comes with some minor improvements.

First of all, the looper components have been updated to fix a potential problem when exporting to VST, thanks trogluddite!....

Secondly, I've made some minor tweaks to the buttons because they may have been somewhat confusing before...

Tips, and how-to:

You have up to FOUR independent loops. The knob on the left controls which loop you are currently editing - this Knob does not affect the loops. It just determines which loop you are looking at.


The Pan and Level knobs affect the panning and leveling of the buffer as it plays. They do not affect the contents of the buffer, only the output.

The length knob allows you to indicate the length of the loop. Adjusting this knob while the loop is active will reset it.
Use the beats/seconds switch to indicate the units used to specify the length.

Remember to use the SHIFT key when doing knob tweaks to get the lengths and such just right... or you can just automate the knobs from your host =)

Also, you must turn a loop ON before you can use it. Click the "Active" switch until it lights orange. Then the loop is available. Clicking Active again will deactivate it and release the RAM it was using.

You must set the Record option for incoming audio to be mixed into the loop. Ensure the loop is active (see above), then click the "Record" button until it lights to enable incoming audio to be mixed into the loop.

Use the Reset button to instantly clear the contents of the current loop.

When a loop has "Mute" lit, no output will be heard from that loop, but the loop is still running.

When one or more loops have the "Solo" option lit, only loops with the Solo option lit will play. Other loops are muted.

Use the "Erase" button to chop out the currently playing portion of the loop. Press and hold for the desired section to clear it.

Use the Step feature to control the ratio of the loop playback and record speed. Using this with non-integral values will often add digital artifacts to the output, since no interpolation is used, but it may be somewhat useful for creating transitions or effects... The button just to the right of the step knob controls whether the loop is running in forward or reverse. This affects recording as well as playing.

The feedback level controls the multiplier used on the audio as it is fed back into the incoming stream. Setting this to values of less than max cause decay, similar to a classic echo delay.

[nix]

Pics or STFU!(screen capture)
hehe,
Nick

[flamingRedDingo]

okay fine, if I must...

Disclaimer: this is RC3 which I haven't released yet... however, it's very close to RC2

plate Monkey RC3

plateMonkeyRC3.PNG (25.25 KiB) Viewed 1691 times

[nix]

Thanks man!
Very gracious of you to up the .osm, sorry for being Bolshy, it comes from hanging out at KVR too much!
I will check it out and see if I can help with anything. I love trying different loops together.
Cheers 8D

[flamingRedDingo]

NP man =)

I felt compelled to upload it. It's the least I can do after receiving so much help in the forums (particularly from trogluddite)... because of that, I was able to get up to speed in less than a week...

also I am a little proud of it, being my first real project w/ SM... it has turned out rather nice, if I do say so myself.

Enjoy

[flamingRedDingo]

plate Monkey RC3 is here!

Added mix capability. This allows you to punch in part of a mix from one loop to another... while you can use it to "bounce" tracks it's designed as a momentary transfer (hold for length of copy desired)..

A tip: Try muting the source loop (or soloing the destination(s)), and then mix - you'll hear the muted loop as you mix it to the destination which can be useful...

There's some optimization that needs to take place, and I've got a major retool of some of the bits in the works... I'll be adding to the mix feature as well (allowing you to apply level and panning, and adding a true "bounce" capability)...

Still, I think this is a worthy candidate as it stands, and I didn't want to leave any of you hanging because my picture in the previous post had some buttons that didn't exist in RC2 =) They are there in the latest installment, which I've attached.

[flamingRedDingo]

I'm continuing work on plate monkey RC4. I've significantly improved the maintainability of the code, and made some minor adjustments so far (pan/leveling applies to the "mix" operations now)...

I'm preparing RC4 as a MAJOR release. Any of you who have followed plate Monkey's progress so far know that I am providing updates very quickly... thank you SM for keeping my dev cycle so short!

tomorrow I'm going to be drugged out (I'm getting some wisdom teeth yanked) so that will probably hamper development for a bit... So expect a delay of at least a day, compared to my usually daily releases...

I'm adding track bouncing to RC4 as well. It's similar to the mix, but it's levelling and step neutral... plus bouncing will copy the whole loop, so it's not push-and-hold/"momentary" like the "mix" option...

I expect that RC4 *should* be the final "pre-gold" build... after that, it'll be version 1 (in which I'll be adding FX "racks" for each of the independent loops)... that should help work around the lack of VST3/side-chaining support, since you will at least be able to apply things like delay, chorus, 'verb and distortion to the output of each individual loop...

I've been happy with the project thus far, but I really would like some user feedback, so as you monkey with plate monkey, be thinking of me, and post your thoughts on it here. If I like an idea, and it's doable, I'll incorporate it, and credit you... Particularly, I'd like Frippertronics freaks to give me input so I can make this better. plate Monkey was designed for that crowd...

Cheers!

[flamingRedDingo]

ummm,

I ditched plate-monkey

doing something a little different now, and FL Specific.

finally got something where I can audition through headphones and then send loops out to PA

but....

since there is no sidechaining support is synthmaker ARGGGGG, I have to use host automation to control insert routing.
this methodology is very much FL SPECIFIC. I use the FL Internal Controller feature, and I have no plans to make a MIDI alternative due to the complexity required for the automation (MIDI would just fall over)

If many of you are avid FL users say so, I'll start posting contribs here.

Otherwise, I don't really plan to, since most of you are using (IMNSHO) inferior DAWs, and they won't do what my plugins require of them.

Sorry guys.

[flamingRedDingo]

Disclaimer.
BTW, when I said inferior - I wasn't trying to imply that you folks are stupid. I was alluding to the fact that FL does absolutely everything that any other DAW can do (with the notable exception of Ableton's live tempo adjusty thing)
and does it all for $199USD lifetime investment. And it does stuff other DAWs can't - example (pertinent - in this case) it's programmable host automation mops the floor with anything out there (save MAYBE reaper). I am using this very feature to do my fripp style stuff now.

It can't be done with your DAW. sorry.

FL is $199usd for producer edition - lifetime free upgrades. Best money you'll ever spend on a music product. no contest.

[flamingRedDingo]

oops

should at least post a pic of what I am doing now...

i built a thing called 4buques ("four bucks") - it is 4 buffer queues which slave 4 loopers that are automated by 4buques...
Insert routing is also handled.

4buques keeps track of the loopers so it chooses the first of 4 it finds that are not already sending data to a PA routed insert (maybe yet another looper)... it routes your incoming sound to that looper (which is currently running but overwrites input instead of overdubbing)... when u click send, it immediately changes the target looper to overdub (eg set the Fb to 1) and routes it to the PA instead of the headphones, it then chooses a new buffer, and routes it up for you, leaving the other one to complete it's task (fire and forget, like)

the upshot is, I can play a ditty into my audition headphones, decide I like it, and hit "send" in 4buqs (actually it's routed to my midi controller) .. and what I just played will be captured and begin playing on the live portion..
then I can repeat the process, and use it to build up tracks live, or whatever...

here it is inside a simple FL workspace, and in this case wired up to 4 Angromloopers (You should be able to use whatever loopers you want, including plate-monkey, Elotronixx or llama)
[img]4buques.png[/img]