Is KP3/KPRO the only/best product for live sync looping.....

[RonF]

kollage...

a few thoughts in response to your post.....

1. The Soundbite Pro is good...but has its limitations. In particular, it does NOT sync to midi! Rather, it syncs to the BPM of an incoming audio feed using a bpm-sync algorithm. This works VERY good....but its not midi. So that is something to consider. The thing I like about it the most is its ability to auto-sample an exact beat matched 32 bar phrase. Everything else I have found that auto samples in this style is limited to 16 bar phrases....such as the KP3. But due to its sync implementation (audio rather than midi), its an entirely different way of thinking about your set up

2. As far as the KPRO and KP3 goes....the QUALITY of the sync source seems to make a huge difference in my system (I have both units) in the sync result via midi. I find that the best master clock is my Roland Fantom G or Korg M3 DIRECTLY plugged into these units! Sending a midi sync signal through a router, or from my computer.....is NOT as stable. Try this.....you may be surprised with the result.....I know I was. It made the difference between unusable vs. completely usable for me.

3. The 2880 is a different animal from the KP3/KPRO...not an "auto-sample in sync in real time" unit. Which means you need to master using the record and play buttons to create clean loop points in sync with your music. However, once you have this figured out.....it works great, and is absolutely rock solid sync. But due to its lack of auto sampling......I tend to mess up the loop points from time to time....

4. My latest success came with the Looperlative LP-1. Its expensive and a boutique item. They are about to release the LP-2 which is less expensive, but still a boutique item (read: wait time to deliver, and limited customer support). Its midi sync was always horrible for me. But just about a month ago they released an OS update which focused on midi sync capabilities, and suddenly this thing is VERY solid (though not perfect), and I am using it the most right now. New updates and improvements to further address midi sync are purported to be forthcoming soon.

My best advice to you.....play around with various master clock and hook-up strategies with the KPRO and KP3 (series, parallel, through a midi router, direct, with a computer, or a keyboard or other external dedicated clock source). If you find the right set up, the KP3 and KPRO work great and do what nothing else really does right now as far as auto-sampling to beat matched sync in real time.

Good luck!

Ron

[kollage]

Hey Ron, thanks for taking the time to reply.

Personally, I never use midi syncing with my setup, I only tried that with the KP-3 and the Kaossilator Pro as a last ditch effort to make it sync up the BPM exactly, which I was unsuccessful. That said, your thoughts on the Soundbite Pro do sound even more interesting to me since midi isn't a requirement in my world and you make it sound as though the syncing algorithm is pretty solid. Also, your thoughts about finding a better master clock to slave to the Kaossilator Pro & KP-3 to is interesting...

To give a better idea of what I'm trying to accomplish, one of the main things that I am looking to do is move seamlessly between the two machines. So as an example of how I had hoped the KP-3 and Kaossilator Pro would work together....

I make a piece on my Kaossilator Pro using all 4 banks on that machine, then record each of those banks onto individual banks on the KP-3 and completely mute out the Kaossilator Pro. Giving me control to single out banks on the KP-3 while also freeing up my Kaossilator Pro to either clear the banks on that for new looping or to add to what's already on the Kaossilator Pro and bounce back to that while freeing up the KP-3 again, the whole while staying on BPM with each other. Then repeat.

I'm not sure if I'm asking too much from the machines, as this is my first step into a complete analog live performance setup like this, but this is what I envisioned. With all that said, do you think it's possible to get that configuration working with the Kaossilator Pro & KP-3, and if not, then the Kaossilator Pro & Soundbite Pro?

[RonF]

Yes, the Soundbite will handle this for you well. Its BPM sync algorithm is excellent. They have a few models too, but the Micro is the latest and seems the most robust.

I do exactly what you are suggesting, successfully, between the KPRO and KP3. My hook up is.......Roland Fantom G as master clock, midi out into the KPRO, who's midi out is into the KP3...so they share the same clock. Audio out of the KPRO feeds the input of the KP3.....so that is a one way street.....I can create loops on KPRO and feed them in perfect sync into the KP3. Perfect sync is all relative, in my experience, to how in sync you first press the sample start key! Not only do these two units stay in sync....but anything else I sync to the Fantom G stays tight too. I works great. I do notice some minor drift on the KP3 after about 10 minutes or so....but its not bad at all (using the direct master clock improved it dramatically), and a simple start stop of the sample pad will reset it to the rest of the music. KPRO seems to me to keep better sync over time.

[kollage]

Your point about pressing the bank key to sample at the precise time is true, and something that didn't occur to me. That's interesting.

I don't have a Fantom, but I can try out my MPC 1000 as the master clock and see how that works. I'm really interested in if that will solve the issue. If so, that would be great!

Syncing the K.Pro into the KP-3 was never an issue, it's just going backwards that gets all wacky (KP-3 -> K.Pro). If any of these nuggets of info do work, then you will have saved me a lot of time and money!

Thanks for your time Ron.

[RonF]

You shouldn't need a Roland Fantom G. I would expect any MPC would have rock solid hardware midi sync.

My theory on that issue is as follows: I think that ITB, a computer and most any DAW will calculate midi sync very accurately. Too accurately one might say. Therefore, natural drift is not necessarily compensated for in the way that an external hardware unit might handle it. I find that the Roland allows minor drift without reacting to it. It stays steady. Not sure if that is an intended programming in the Fantom G, or just the way it is in practice.... Whereas, I watch the BPM of say, Ableton Live on my MacPro, react to every single little 100th of a BPM in drift. And its a mess for syncing external gear.

I just find that dedicated hardware midi sync is pretty spot on. Its when that signal gets diffused, by either complicated routings (hardware), or any software routings, it gets dodgy at best. YMMV...but it has proven itself to me with this exact situation....the KPRO and KP3. A direct hardware hookup just works.....other hookups were a mess.

[kollage]

Awesome Ron! You've helped tremendously with your suggestions, I got it working as I had hoped. I initially tried daisy-chaining the midi sync from my 1000 through the K.Pro down to the KP-3, but it still fell off BPM going back and forth, most likely from the latency in the Korg machines.

But when I synced the KP-3 and K.Pro individually on their own channels from the 1000 it worked! They now maintain the same BPM going back and forth between the two, which is fantastic! Thanks again!

PS - The 1000 is a bit of a brick and I'm building this setup for my studio, but also to potentially gig, I looked into the 500, but it only has one MIDI out. Do you know of any affordable sampler/synth/drum machines with two MIDI out channels that are lightweight/smaller in kin with the 500 and Kaoss pad series?

[RonF]

Great to hear, man. Glad to help. Now that its working....KP3 and KPRO are great fun! And together they far expand the possibilities of either alone.

Take a look here for some ideas about hookup solutions: http://www.midisolutions.com/products.htm

Seems to me a simple passive midi merger or splitter would work, even with any clock source that has only one midi-output jack. Therefore, an MPC500 would work fine. With a 4 or 8 port box.....you can have many external units...albeit limited to 16 midi channels, all from one midi out jack. But for a simple set up that's probably enough (one channel to each external unit). Its hard to think of a unit with a smaller footprint than an MPC500 which has its capabilities for midi sync, at a reasonable price point too.

[FranzK]

I've looked around a lot, and to my thinking:
Kaoss pad 3 IS actually the best looper available for what I like to do.

BTW - is there any way to run it by foot switches?
My brother is a guitarist, you see...


HEY! Looperlative 2 looks like it will actually come out!
Looks good, much more affordable than the first
Just a single loop, though - not 4
http://www.looperlative.com/proddetail.php?prod=LP2


oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the soundbite pro!
(aka earlier "cycloops")
looks decent, BUT
the lack of MIDI sync there is of course ridiculous

EVERYTHING should have MIDI - even the kitchen sink. (sync? ha ha)

[RonF]

I concur with most of your statements. To my knowledge, there is no direct way to hook a pedal up to a KP3, unless there is a midi angle with a midi pedal controller. I suspect you can trigger the sample pads with CC messages or SysEx, if you know the specs, and have a programable midi foot controller.

BTW...the Looperlative LP-1, the orignal, has 8 parallel loopers on board, not 4.

KP3 is the bomb....if only its midi sync was less sensitive to time clock variations, and if only it provided for more loop time at lower BMP's! Otherwise, it is truly perfect.

[FranzK]

weirdly enough - the Kaosillator pro has more advanced midi.
I wonder IF there might be a way to trigger it's (similar but not the same)
looper buttons by midi?


Of course, there's always the DIY way!

Open the KP3 and wire button triggers onto a foot pedal "breakout box"!


I used to have a lot of drift, but now somehow I have less?

BTW - Using loop realign - ( shift + tap tempo is it? ) really helps
to get things back on track if timing drifts.
That, and just keep looping a lot of new loops!


MIDI Electribe EMX -> Kaoss 3 -> K Entrancer = space madness!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kvy2JCpFOc

I concur with most of your statements. To my knowledge, there is no direct way to hook a pedal up to a KP3, unless there is a midi angle with a midi pedal controller. I suspect you can trigger the sample pads with CC messages or SysEx, if you know the specs, and have a programable midi foot controller.

BTW...the Looperlative LP-1, the orignal, has 8 parallel loopers on board, not 4.

KP3 is the bomb....if only its midi sync was less sensitive to time clock variations, and if only it provided for more loop time at lower BMP's! Otherwise, it is truly perfect.

[koneyn]

I am a little bit late to the party, but I just need to clear out something... in the beginning of this thread people kept saying that KP3 can loop 8 bars. This got me pretty confused, since I have been using it for the past 6 months or so and I was pretty sure it cannot do that - it's limited to 4 bars as far as I know (under correct bpm at least). Strangely enough, I couldn't find any official info about the max sample length in seconds (only "beats" - a musical term I personally am not really used to).

In a Sound On Sound review it says:

The lowest tempo supporting 16 beats is 74bpm — suggesting that the maximum sample time is about 13.2 seconds for each pad

I checked again by trying to import an 8 bar loop at 120bpm. It got cut right at half, just as I thought so. I could turn down bpm to 80 and trick the KP3 editor to let me use the full loop, but that's just a way around the limitation, not an intended capability. If I want to slice that loop it won't do it properly due to bpm mismatch so it's not really meaningful, to me at least.

Soooo... those "8 bars" were just a mistake or am I missing out on something here?

[Telengard]

I am a little bit late to the party, but I just need to clear out something... in the beginning of this thread people kept saying that KP3 can loop 8 bars. This got me pretty confused, since I have been using it for the past 6 months or so and I was pretty sure it cannot do that - it's limited to 4 bars as far as I know (under correct bpm at least). Strangely enough, I couldn't find any official info about the max sample length in seconds (only "beats" - a musical term I personally am not really used to).

In a Sound On Sound review it says:

The lowest tempo supporting 16 beats is 74bpm — suggesting that the maximum sample time is about 13.2 seconds for each pad

I checked again by trying to import an 8 bar loop at 120bpm. It got cut right at half, just as I thought so. I could turn down bpm to 80 and trick the KP3 editor to let me use the full loop, but that's just a way around the limitation, not an intended capability. If I want to slice that loop it won't do it properly due to bpm mismatch so it's not really meaningful, to me at least.

Soooo... those "8 bars" were just a mistake or am I missing out on something here?

Someone can correct me if I am wrong but wouldn't 8 bars be 32 beats since the KP3/Kaossilator Pro are both using 4/4? 4 beats per bar would give you only 4 bars to work with to get 16 beats. (4*4=16)

[koneyn]

That's what I thought (and still do), but this got me confused:

The beauty of the KPRO is that is does sound on sound looping, and it syncs well to an external midi clock, and its all real time for live performance. But, at slower tempos (say 90 to 100 BPM), its just way too short, limited to only 4 bars loop time. If not for that limitation, the KPRO would be perfect.

The KP3 has slightly better sample times....allowing for 8 bars at those slower tempos......

... along with further explanations about sync problems involving 8 bars at 120bpm.

[RonF]

Forgive my error. You are correct I mixed up KP3 and KPRO (and/or bars and beats) when I typed that sentence.

KP3, to my recollection, has twice the sampling time as KPRO. At slower tempos below 100 BPM (or something close to that, can't remember the exact threshold), KP3 will record 4 bars, or 16 beats to say it another way, in 4/4 time. As I remember, KPRO has half that time at slower speeds. I also remember, without breaking out the manual, that there is a difference between tempos below 100 BPM (or something close to that) on both units....so you can record more bars at faster tempos, than at slower tempos....which of course makes sense.

Sorry, I'm away from the studio right now so I cannot be more specific. But I record the 4 bars at 90 BPM all the time on KP3. Half that on KPRO.

[koneyn]

I remember (before actually buying KP3) I visited this section many times and read as much as I could - and it stuck in my mind that KPRO cuts down from 16 to 8 beats on a higher BPM "threshold" (let's call it that way for now). Maybe the difference isn't exactly double, but KP3 definitely has a bigger buffer. I also remember many people complaining about it, quite reasonably.

You got my hopes high for a brief moment
I was perfectly happy turning out to be a complete jackass if it would have brought me four more bars

8 actual bars would make an enormous difference to me, not so much because of the length itself, but because of loop slicing that is crucial to the way I use KP3. If each one of those 8 buttons represented one bar instead of it's half, performance and loop structuring would be soooo much easier!