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Enso is a great looper
hello Forum,
Just a topic to speak out my appreciation for AUM and the possibilities.
I added Enso to my THU/Ibassist and the drummer apps, and this is in my opinion a very powerful combination. This really expands my possibilities for jamming, composing and practicing.
I have a Trio+ pedal, but the Ipad gives me much more joy. In the setup on the picture I have a reggae bass en beat going and the Dubstation delay.
I have routed Enso via a bus connection, I can close or open the connection, and mute/unmute the guitar channel. Enso in series with the other guitar EFX is also possible, then the dry signal has to pass through in Enso.
What I want to do next is routing all the channels to a master channel, with a master bus compressor (Push).
I do have Quantiloop too, that one is also very nice. But in AUM I can experiment a bit more.
Comments
Nice setup, and interesting to hear that you prefer this to the Trio (Which I've been considering getting).
One question: how are you triggering the loop start/stop in Enso, is it with some kind of footswitch or are they quantized to a certain number of bars?
I use a similar setup with Loopy Pro inside AUM, which might be more flexible than Enso:
What I did was setting Enso like this:
Feedback 95, length 4 is the same as the bass loop in Ibassist. If I create a longer bass line progression in Ibassist, this one has to match.
I let AUM play a few drum and bass loops, and when I am in the groove and ready with my guitar, almost at the end of the drum & bass loop, I press the trigger button, and I start playing guitar at the beginning of the loop, and then recording of the loop starts.
I found out if I press the trigger button too soon, the recording will start anyway after some time. I don't know why. And I have to set up the midi control section, for controlling record and stop with a midi controller, to see how this works.
I think the drum and bass sounds of Ibassist are richer, more random fills, more humanized, than the Trio+.
Also if you want to build a composition, it is hard to do, there are 5 parts, but to get the same groove and style on all parts, is a lot of try and error. But don't get me wrong, for just some playing and looping it is a nice (screen and computer free) solution.
I also bought Band in a Box after I bought the Trio+, because I wanted more control over the chord progression. The Ipad with Ibassist and a drummer is a more "lightweight" solution for this.
I forgot to mention, Ibassist sends out chords to an other AUM synth, this is a nice feature.
And it is possible to load multiple ENSO loopers, so you can split the loops instead of bouncing them to one recording. Could be handy when you want to use the recordings of the loops in a DAW for a production.
@raabje , would be interesting to know your experience with more than one incidence of Enso. As is well known from other threads, it crashes quite often. Wish I the dev would try to fix it because it’s a great looper otherwise. As mentioned, Loopy Pro is an appropriate substitute.
Okay I will check what happens with more than one.
I did a quick test, I had 8 enso loopers running, 4 bar loop. All in parallel like on the photo above.
Just record a loop, and let it play, no weird stuff with play heads and direction and different lenght etc.
I could start and stop and again and again, no problems.
Maybe I could run more Enso´s, but 8 is already way too much, it´s overwhelming. For a guitar track 4 is enough for me, rhythm guitar, lead lines, bass notes, little accents here ands there.
For a while after launch, Enso had some stability issues but any time I’ve used it in recent months, it’s been a crash-free experience (and that’s with multiple instances).
@richardyot I'm using keys so I don't use a peddle to trigger MIDI commands but I have a pal who does a lot of live looping via guitars and he swears by the Keith McMillan MIDI foot controllers.
https://www.keithmcmillen.com/products/softstep/
For straight-up looping (no reverse, segments, etc. yet), Loopy Pro AUv3 is an excellent choice that works similarly. I mention it because Loopy uses disk streaming, which helps overcome memory limitations that can trip up Enso and other RAM-only loopers for longer segments of audio.
I love enso for everything it can do besides just the basic looping part but it crashes so easily that i use it together with Loopy or aum loop recording to capture all enso moments without losing anything.
Last time it crashed by simply hit start from beginning in AUM while playing.
With 1 enso instance on a iPad 6th gen.
Hopefully Audio Damage will fix it one day because its a one of a kind.
I have found a method for recording loops while you have a guitar in your hands.
The right settings, I don't know, I just pressed buttons until it worked. I start a loop recording on the right moment, and then let it run a few times, in continue recording mode ( + the recordings get layered on top of each other). When I am ready I start playing, and the loop will be recorded. In the next run of the loop the recording will not be erased.
The right setting is still a but misty, I have to figure this out. Pressing trigger on the right moment with higher BPM is not possible. The count in is only 1 measure, should be at least 4.
And I wonder if I need a noise gate on my guitar signal, to prevent the background noise or hiss will build up, because each run the input signal is layered on top of the previous recording. Degrading the sound quality is a feature in Enso, but I like a clean recording to work with.
Thanks for that. I still don’t trust Enso though…..
(edit, it is more simple than I thought)
okay, now I understand more the way it works. The interface is a not very clear.
When you want to record a loop, and after the first round, keep recording, you have to execute two actions in Enso, when the transport bar is not running yet.
rewind to zero in AUM
first press record, trigger button
then press post record, trigger button
then press play in AUM.
When feedback is 100, a new recording doesn´t affect the volume of a previous recording. Otherwise each new blank loop recording will push the volume level of an earlier recording down to zero after some rounds. When playing guitar you have to get ready, and sometimes the loop runs a few times before this moment.
And you have to press dub in place to bypass the EFX section of Enso, to keep your recording clean.
I think this is a workaround when you don´t have a midi footswitch for start/stop a recording.
Enso is very stable for me.
Here is short video I just made to show you how to use Enso in AUM, just use presets or reproduce settings and use left big button instead of normal rec button.
I also made a similar video for GarageBand one year ago.
The easiest thing to do in this case is to set the "Post Record“ control to "+", which means that when you hit the trigger at the end of your first round of looping, Enso will enter the Overdub state, and you can continue recording. This is actually pretty well laid out in the manual, and in the video tutorial for Enso on the AudioDamage site.
>
Well, this could be, but you know the way it goes, you think, how difficult can it be, and just load up the efx and start fooling around. I read the manual a bit in front but it takes some time to really understand what is explained. And when you play guitar you need an extra hand to press the buttons, that makes it more complicated.
I had all kind of unexpected things happening, loop starting on the wrong moment, loop to short or to long, loop overwritten, loop fading out after a while, etc.
I think this pre and post section in the interface could be more clear, with more colors, or more buttons, so you can better see the way it is armed before recording.
I still don’t understand what you mean by this. There’s no "pre and post section" - there’s a single "Post Record" control that determines what Enso does when it finishes an initial recording.
well I have to check this, I thought I had to press "record" and then the trigger button, and then also "post", and the trigger button. But I shall be wrong then, and only post+trigger is the way to go to start a recording and keep it going in recording mode (without clearing the previous recording).
I looked up on the picture, I ment "record" instead of "pre", my mistake! And it looks like two buttons on the screen, it´s a single button, that was my mistake too.
Enso just got an update!
Distressingly vague though:
"General bug fixes, optimisations, and modernisations"
I only had occasional issues before with it, I might try contacting the dev to see if they can elaborate on fixes. Happy to see it getting some love though, long overdue.
I saw that! (The update)
I honestly could never figure out how to really operate this app, even after watching the tutorial videos, it just didn’t click with me.
Now I don’t know what kind of magic sauce they added with this new update, but I tried it tonight, and played around with some of the buttons etc., and all of a sudden had something musical happening! Maybe it was the “modernizations”?
Or maybe it's you that's been modernized.
I got in touch with the dev, very fast response but not a lot more info:
There are quite a few little things, plus it desperately needed to be built against current JUCE and current iOS.
So hope this works out for folks that have struggled with this in the past, I got occasional issues but nothing too bad.
I love Enso. I hope the update will make it more stable because i lost too many moments because it. I simply use it in AUM with loopy pro in retrospective mode in chain so whenever it crashes there is a buffer in Loopy Pro. Or with AUM recorder running.
Enso is a special kind of looper for sure.
I haven't used it for a while, from my memory I have trouble with the count in, it is too short to arm the looper and then play my guitar. A foot switch would be the solution but I don't want to connect too much gear with my Ipad.
I just have seen the Loopy Pro post https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/54764/loopy-pro-tips-recording-loops#latest
And that looks like a more sturdy or robust solution to me.
It must be looper day.
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/quantiloop-pro-live-looper/id1156213359
Got an update today as well
Enso is working great for me in Loopy Pro for decaying loops, feedback set to 50%. It's been rock solid for me and I'll keep with it until that feature comes to Loopy Pro. I set up a duplicate input channel and stick it in an effects slot with the input monitor (pass through) in Enso set to 'never' (as I'm monitoring that already on the other input channel).
@raabje if you set 'Length Unit' and 'Mode Quantise' to 'Measure' then you get up to a bar count-in, if that doesn't give you enough time just let it cycle round in Overdub without playing anything (but yes, foot pedal even better).
Nod to Quantiloop too, still gets regular use here if I want to stop myself going down Loopy Pro's endless possibility rabbit holes.
This could be the case.
Okay, thanks for the advice, I will try it again soon. I remember I was fighting with the cryptic interface and then I lost interest.
When I get stuck I get the feeling it is better to play my guitar and practice some licks, than to solve software problems. Seems in IOS there is always a new problem to solve.... I am looking at you Lumbeat apps :-)
Very wise
Although sometimes I wonder if it's actually the problems that our brains are addicted to seeking out (mine apparently anyway).
ha! that is true. It is indeed a compulsion. If stuff is working we still try to repair it... Or we start making bigger plans that needs a lot of tinkering
lol I swear I’ve had the same thoughts at times! Getting stuck trying to figure out how to get something to work, then giving up and grabbing my guitar and start playing some super fast, legato heavy, Satriani style scale runs up and down the neck to convince myself that I’m not as dumb as this app is making me out to be!
Of course then I realize I’m playing the same old scales and licks on the guitar, so I put it down and return to the iPad. It’s a vicious cycle, but usually end up having made some music at the end of the day. I reckon it’s worth it. 🙂🤙
Well that is good coaching, thanks, I will try to hold on longer :-)