Effects

Looper

A 28 HP performance looper with overdub feedback, variable speed/reverse, and 60 seconds of buffer for live ambient layering.

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What is a Looper?

A looper records a chunk of audio into a buffer, then plays it back continuously - a phrase becomes a loop becomes the foundation of a performance. Add a layer on top while it's playing (overdub), and the loop grows. Add another. Build an entire piece of music in real time, alone, on stage, by stacking yourself.

The technique predates digital. Robert Fripp invented Frippertronics in the early 1970s using two reel-to-reel tape decks, the output of one feeding the input of the other through a delay line - he could perform live, layer guitar over himself, and have the loops decay slowly as the tape physically wore. Brian Eno used the same setup for ambient records. The technique was beautiful and impossible to set up.

Digital loopers turned the impossible into a stomp box. The Echoplex Digital Pro (1994) was the first widely-used pedal version. The Boss RC-505, Line 6 DL4, and dozens of others made looping a standard live tool. In modular, the Make Noise Phonogene and Morphagene reinterpreted looping as tape-style sound design - speed control, splices, granular playback - rather than just performance recording.

The vocabulary is small but the workflow is everything. REC starts capturing; press REC again to set the loop length and start playback. OVDUB mixes new audio over the existing loop. PLAY repeats without recording. CLR empties the buffer. The interesting parameter is feedback during overdub: at 100% old layers are preserved forever (additive looping), at 50% they fade by half each pass (evolving textures, where what you played 30 seconds ago is now ghostly background), at 0% overdub erases instead of layering. The whole expressive range of looping lives in that knob.

Our Looper

Our looper is a 28 HP performance module - the largest in the rack, designed for live use. 60 seconds of stereo buffer, state machine across STOPPED, RECORDING, PLAYING, OVERDUBBING. First REC press starts capture, second REC (or PLAY trigger) sets the loop length and starts playback - the same workflow every loop pedal uses.

Speed runs -2x to +2x continuously, including reverse and half-speed, with cubic interpolation for clean pitch shifting. A 256-sample crossfade (~5 ms) at the loop boundary hides the wraparound seam, so seamless ambient pads don't click on each pass. The feedback knob controls overdub layer persistence: only active during overdub mode, ignored during plain playback (so loops never decay unexpectedly).

Every transport button has a duplicate gate input (REC, PLAY, OVDUB, CLR), so the looper is fully voltage-controllable. STATE, POS, and LEN outputs and a play-gate output let other modules sync to the loop transport. Real-time waveform display in the panel shows what's in the buffer. Excellent for ambient, drone, found-sound performance, and tape-style sound design.

In a patch

A looper sits late in the chain, after VCA and any per-note effects, before time-based effects like delay and reverb (you usually want the reverb to live on the *whole* loop, not be baked into each layer). For solo improvisation, patch your full voice into IN L/R, take OUT L/R into your monitor, and hit REC to start.

Modular loopers earn their keep through gate inputs. Patch a clock into REC, PLAY, and OVDUB and you can quantize loop boundaries to a tempo. Patch an LFO into the speed CV input for varispeed pitch wobble. Send a random gate to OVDUB for stochastic layering - sometimes you record, sometimes you don't, and the loop evolves on its own.

The STATE and POS outputs let you sync other modules to the loop. Patch POS into a VCA to fade something in and out across the loop, or into a quantizer to play notes that track loop position. Looper as transport master, rest of the rack as accompaniment.

Inputs

IN L (audio) — Left audio input. Recorded into the loop buffer when in REC or OVDUB state.
IN R (audio) — Right audio input.
REC (gate) — Record gate. First rising edge starts recording; second rising edge ends recording, sets loop length, and starts playback. Equivalent to clicking the REC button.
PLAY (gate) — Play gate. Rising edge starts playback (after REC). Toggles infinite-repeat mode without overdubbing.
OVDUB (gate) — Overdub gate. Rising edge while playing starts overdubbing - new audio is mixed with existing loop, modulated by Feedback knob.
CLR (gate) — Clear gate. Rising edge resets the buffer and stops playback. Start fresh.
SPD (cv) — Speed CV. Adds to the Speed knob - bipolar +/-V scales playback rate from -2x (reversed double-speed) to +2x (forward double-speed). Patch a slow LFO for tape-warble pitch effects.
FDBK (cv) — Feedback CV. Adds to the Feedback knob during overdub - lower = old layers fade faster.

Outputs

OUT L (audio) — Loop playback output, left.
OUT R (audio) — Loop playback output, right.
MIX L (audio) — Dry input + loop mix, left. Use when you want a single output that includes both the live performance and the loop.
MIX R (audio) — Dry input + loop mix, right.
STATE (cv) — CV indicating the current looper state: 0 = Stopped, 1 = Recording, 2 = Playing, 3 = Overdubbing. Patch into Compare to drive other modules differently per state.
PLAY (gate) — Gate that's high while the loop is playing or overdubbing. Useful for triggering visual feedback or ducking other voices when the loop is active.
POS (cv) — Loop position output. Voltage that ramps from 0 to ~10V over one loop pass. Patch to oscillator FM or filter cutoff for sound that morphs in lockstep with the loop.
LEN (cv) — Loop length output. Constant CV proportional to the captured loop duration in seconds. Useful for setting other module timings to match.

Controls

Feedback — Overdub feedback, 0-1. 1.0 = layers stack indefinitely (pure additive); 0.5-0.8 = old layers fade over time creating evolving textures; 0 = each overdub fully replaces previous content. Only affects OVDUB mode.
Speed — Playback speed and direction, -2 to +2. 1 = normal forward, 0.5 = half-speed (octave down), 2 = double-speed (octave up), -1 = reversed normal speed, etc. Cubic-interpolated for clean pitch shifts.
Mix — Dry/loop blend for the MIX outputs, 0-1. The OUT outputs are always 100% loop.
REC Btn — Record button (panel UI). Same as the REC gate input - first press starts recording, second press stops and starts playback.
PLAY Btn — Play button. Same as the PLAY gate input.
OVDUB Btn — Overdub button. Same as the OVDUB gate input.
CLR Btn — Clear button. Same as the CLR gate input - resets the loop buffer.

Inspired by

Loop-based performance descends from Frippertronics - Robert Fripp's 1970s tape-loop setups using two reel-to-reels - and was made portable by digital pedals like the Boss RC-505. Eurorack inherited the idea via the Make Noise Phonogene and Morphagene. We sit closer to the pedal-style workflow: REC sets loop length on the second press, OVDUB stacks layers with controllable feedback decay, PLAY repeats indefinitely.

Boss RC-505
Make Noise Morphagene
Frippertronics tape-loop technique
Echoplex Digital Pro

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