If I supply MIDI Clock to the MIDI input on my Ribbons, the Looper is always constrained to a speed scale of 8ves (1 up, unison, or 1 down). This constraint goes away when I stop the MIDI clock.
I assume this is intentional? What’s the reasoning there?
Yes, the loop length is quantized when receiving midi clock. Can only change the speed by divisors or multiples of 2
Otherwise, if you switched the timing to a non multiple of the original, the loop would need to trim/add time to stay on beat.
Yes, it’s intentional.
The goal with syncing to MIDI clock is to keep things synced to a grid. So the speed is constrained to 0.5x, 1x, or 2x speed because other division/multiplications would throw the loop out of sync.
We considered doing sub-divisions / other multiplications but it became confusing when you recorded something at one sub-div/mult and then switched to another. Especially if you adjusted the speed in the middle of a loop that didn’t align with the grid.
If you don’t want your loops to be synced you can always send MIDI CC 51 to tell Ribbons to ignore MIDI clock. If you have the latest Ribbons with the 2.0 firmware, then this is persistent between power cycles. If you have an OG unit, this update is on the way.
