Sim'n Tonic Forums

Hi there,
did anyone practice the Nome with a looper and could give some feedback?

With my band we've very recently acquired a Nome 2: our aim was mainly to control a looper
(pigtronix infinity 2, has midi in) to do loops (with a guitar typically) while following a metronome.

We had read on forums that the Nome was compatible with this looper, but it does not seem to work
like we had expected: the looper is well controlled by the Nome, but in practice it makes the loop
much more difficult to perform as compared to standard use without midi control:

Normally when doing a loop with a footswitch, even if being very precise there is unavoidable latency
due to limited human precision (which to my knowledge cannot be below 30-40 ms at best, normally not
perceptible). But with the Nome controlling the looper, one fails the loop much often: occasionally
it sounds fine but more often the device seems to add about a eighth note to the performed loop,
resulting in very audible latency. It looks as if the device does not allow any tolerance for human latency.
Or perhaps we don't know how to set this? Does this has to do with the "ppq" (pulse per quarter) choice
in the "Analog clock" setting option? We've tried to change this setting but it does not seem to have much effect.

Thanks for any feedback!
Jlok

Hi Jlok

Thanks for joining the Forum, and welcome to the community. Maybe someone else with more experience with loopers will respond.
On the FB group the community made a list for which devices work well with Nome - https://www.facebook.com/groups/simnton ... 4555808930 - and there are a lot of loopers in that list.

Loopers can be difficult to sync generally, and it's obvious why: they have to stretch the recorded audio toi the tempo and be smart about when the loop starts and end so you can record on time. But actually you're lucky, it seems Infitinity is one of the loopers which can decently sync to MIDI Clock, according to this post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/simnton ... 213686064/

Now regarding your specific problem, this has nothing to do with the Nome, but with the fact that your looper is syncing to MIDI Clock while you are looping. Why do you need to sync it? Another approach could be to use the looper as standalone and sync the other machines "manually" using the tap of the Nome. My guess is since you are playing Live you do not need insane precision sync but more of a "it sounds good" sync, which manual sync will be good enough for (after some practice with the tap).

The Nome's tap is very smart, it will follow your taps and it can also count in and count off, and you can connect a pedal/footswitch or a drum pad to tap on something else than the button.

Simon

Hi Simon,

thanks for your quick reply!
yes we don't need insane precision sync, specially when playing Live. Perhaps I can better explain why we'd like
to sync the looper as we're probably not the only ones. As far as I can tell from previous practice with loopers,
the limited human tap precision (about 30-40 ms at best) when performing loops is normally below perception if the loop
is well done: the looper restarts at each cycle (say every bar if the loop is matched to one bar), the loop audio contains
this 30-40 ms late or advanced lag, but no human can hear this so it gives acceptable "sounds good" sync,
specially because ears do not compare to another "reference" tempo.
While if running aside an independent metronome, this gives a "perfect" reference tempo, so with respect to it,
the looper latency accumulates at each loop cycle: after say 10 bars, one hears 30 ms x 10 = 300 ms, very audible
lag between the metronome and looper audio. The same happens with your suggestion of using the looper standalone
and tapping the Nome, for the same reason: the Nome then runs independently with perfect tempo, so after a few bars
the looper audio has accumulated large latency in comparison.

That's why we had thought that midi control would exactly solve this (perhaps, because we have little understanding
of how midi signal actually works...)

Up to now we've used the looper standalone, but some in the band may not hear well the primary loop once playing
over it, so could get out of sync with respect to looper, specially if performing live with not very good monitoring.
That's why we'd like to send a sync Nome to the drummer (of course there may be cheaper solutions, like sending just
the loop audio louder in monitors, but we have other reasons to possibly use a sync metronome)

Coming back to Nome 2 features, I'm not quite convinced that the problem has nothing to do with it: my practice of loopers
is not perfect but using it standalone it's good enough more than 95 % of performed loops, "good enough" meaning no
audible latency. But the first time I've tried the Nome midi-controlling the looper, with default setting it was just impossible
to get any proper loop: audio was cut with unacceptable very audible lag.
But I've soon noticed a "resync" stuff with play button "1", described in the manual p.4: "hold down to resync/restart
your gear" and this really had positive effect! After holding this button until "sync" appears on screen, my loops reach
about 60-70 % success rate. And when it's ok it does exactly what we wanted: a "sounds good" loop staying synced
forever with the Nome. Not too bad and huge improvement compared to 0 %, but still not ok for playing live...
(moreover this "resync" is not saved when switching off the Nome: one has to redo every time, not very convenient.)

Anyway, since changing this setting already improves much, it looks very much that the problem does not depend only
on human tap skills but also on specific Nome setting. Perhaps my 60-70 % of "good" loops could be further improved
with practice, but clearly with the Nome controlling it's much more demanding in taps precision, it's not convenient.

Sorry for long explanations, so to insist that's why I wonder if perhaps some of the many Nome options could add more
tolerance to human latency (don't known how to express this "tolerance" technically in terms of midi signal features ).
Perhaps something in "advanced setting"? (as I do not fully understand the purpose of some "advanced setting" options).
It would be nice to get good sounding + synced loops "most of the time" without training for years in best human tap sync

NB the FB link you gave was useful: some posts describe very same problems with different loopers, and as you mentioned
the infinity is said to better sync midi. But I've posted questions in FB about the precise setup used to make it work well.

Jlok