Dear Kinotone! Here I am - the new and happy owner of the Ribbons. To say that I was blown away by Ribbons is to say nothing. Kudos for creating such an incredibly inspiring and versatile masterpiece of pedals!
Now on to the request: would it be possible to add the option (another Touch mode? A variation of the existing touch mode?) of making your excellent Tape Stop touch mode truly “tape stop” if applied to a recorded loop?
What I mean by this is when I stop the “tape” with a recorded internal loop, the loop would actually stop at a point where it needs to stop based on the Stop speed, and when I restart it, it actually re-starts from the point where it stops?
At present, if I am not mistaken, the “tape stop” is a beatiful effect, applied “on top” of a recording that actually never “stops” And when we “restart” the loop, the loop “restarts” at a point where it would be as if it never stopped. Don’t get me wrong: the end result is truly spectacular, and this is one of the most convincing, if not the most convincing, tape stop effect I’ve ever heard.
And while I totally understand it is impossible with the incoming “dry” signal, it looks like it may be doable with a recorded loop track, where we have full control over the playback speed.
Is it something one can hope for? )
And once again, thank you for creating Ribbons. It’s mind-blowing. Full stop. Or shall I say, full tape stop LOL.
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With the tools available in the current firmware:
I wonder if you could achieve a similar effect with the disintegration looper, since the direction and speed are linked to the same knob/MIDI CC.
For the 4-track looper, you might be able to do it with enough MIDI automation. By sending rapid forward/backward commands you can essentially hold the playhead in one location. And then you can modulate the speed and volume on their own MIDI CCs.
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This is interesting, thank you, haven’t really thought about the disintegration looper.
As far as the rapid forward-reverse command sequence, I am not sure I can achieve what I want, because if I understand this feature correctly (which I may not, and will experiment more), this change of direction always happens at the loop’s end/start point, doesn’t it?
Actually the 4-track looper reverses direction whenever it receives the command, not just when it loops around to the start.
I suppose you could do the same thing with the Disintegration looper to “park” the play head, but since the controls for speed/direction are “thru-zero” you can hold the play head by slowing it down to 0%. One caveat being that overdubs will be captured at a different sample rate compared to when the Disint Looper is running at full speed.
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Hm, very interesting. Apparently, I misinterpreted this sentence from Ribbons manual:
“Speed and direction changes go into effect when your loop wraps around to the start”…
But I tried the Disintegration Loop trick (manually, with knob twisting) - bingo! This is exactly what I was looking for!
Now my question is whether there’s a way to know what exactly MIDI CC I need to send to hit the full stop spot on the disintegration looper…
I just sat down with my Ribbons and delved into this a bit.
The manual is correct - and you can also use it the way I described! If you sync the MIDI clock then it will wait for the loop to come around. However I’m finding it works great without syncing the clock, and just sending it MIDI CC data. I’m using a Dirtywave M8 tracker to talk to my Ribbons.
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I also just confirmed that sending a value of 64 with MIDI CC 29 to the disintegration looper will stop playback.
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Wow, thank you very much, this is indeed very useful. Will experiment with my setup (I am using the Pirate Midi Bridge 4 as my main MIDI controller, will try the Disintegration Looper trick with CC29@64.
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Hi @SV_huMMer
Thanks for posting! Glad you’re having fun with Ribbons so far.
It’s funny because this is how it used to work. In all firmware pre- 2.0, if you have 4-track loops playing back, the Touch footswitch is just a tape stop effect for your loops (and it brings your loops to a full stop).
There was a big demand to be able to use the Touch Modes and 4-track looper simultaneously though. In the latest firmware, if you have loops playing back, the tape stop is applied as a global effect “on top” of your audio as you’ve described. To do what the old firmware did, you’d basically need a separate tape stop dedicated to the loops. But then it would just clash with the global effect, so it doesn’t really work anymore. I don’t think we’d consider making a new Touch Mode as a workaround.
That said, it sounds like you’ve achieved what you were going for with Disintegration Loop! Thanks for sharing that tip @Dustodust. If you want the pitch to match before and after the “tape stop”, just make sure that when you record you have the knob at 2x speed (MIDI value of 0), then you can stop it by putting the knob in the noon position (64), then start it again by bringing it back to 2x.
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Hi, thank you for your reply, and for the Ribbons!
Don’t we always want “both”? ))))
I can totally see your point now, I haven’t thought about the “global” nature of the Tape Stop getting in the way of a proper “tape stop” for the 4-track looper.
Is it at all possible to flash the earlier firmware (pre-2.0) into the newer unit? And, if necessary, flash the new FW back?
I am really curious about the earlier Tape Stop effect for the 4-track looper, the way you described it seems a lot of fun!)
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You can’t flash earlier versions - it wouldn’t work.