Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
In case you didn't see the announcement thread, I have some big news: Audiobus – the app – is going to a new home. Francesco and Andrea are developers and musicians who are keen to pursue Audiobus’ further potential, keep it updated and enhance the experience for users old and new – and unlike me, they have the resources to do so! They’re full of ideas and energy, and I am confident that Audiobus will be in good hands.
The Audiobus Forum, however, is staying right here with me. After some consultation with the community here about what to do, I've decided to rename it to the Loopy Pro Forum, at forum.loopypro.com.
It has a new name and new colours, but otherwise, it's the same place, and nothing else will change.
Cheers,
Michael
LED issues
I've got a setup that's working perfectly as far as looping goes but I've got an LED issue that I haven't been able to resolve for months.
I use a Nektar Pacer fwiw.
The issue is, I am using 2x presets on the Pacer - one for RECORDING and one for PERFORMING.
The recording one selects tracks and records etc, the perform one lets me use the same MIDI buttons on the Pacer that I use for selecting tracks, to now be mute/unmutes.
It works great from an audio perspective, and the LEDs do line up in relation to reflecting what they're supposed to (eventually). I need 2x presets because the Pacer lets me have different coloured LEDs, so I can have the RECORD buttons and PERFORM(mute/unmute) reflect the colours I want.
Colours are - RECORD preset OFF for not selected, RED for selected.
PERFORM preset OFF for muted, GREEN for unmuted.
The problem is, when switching between the two presets - the LED on/off status is retained.
This means if I select a track on RECORD mode (LED goes red) and record something, stop recording.. then swap over to PERFORM mode.. the PERFORM preset LED will be lit up GREEN on that same button.
It retains the information from the RECORD preset.
Likewise, if I unmute all tracks in PERFORM preset, so all lights are GREEN on the Pacer - then swap back to RECORD mode, all of the LEDs on the RECORD preset will be lit up RED. Because it's retaining the MIDI information or status, or something.
If I have say, 3 of them unmuted in PERFORM preset, and one muted - then go to RECORD preset, the 3 unmuted buttons will now be lit up red. The one that wasn't will be off. It makes it confusing to use.
Is there a way to have this not happen?
It's frustrating as heck and is the only thing about my setup that's not working as intended, everything else is perfect. I don't understand why it's happening.
I suspect there might be a way to refresh LED status information when swapping presets? Is that something I can do? Is there a better way to do what I'm doing in Loopy Pro?
I don't believe Loopy Pro is able to change the colour of the Pacer's LEDs - so I can't use the method Michael suggested to me earlier, where you can press a button and it lets you reassign the MIDI CCs to new things, ie - using multiple pages with the same Pacer preset.
This would work on a practical level, but the LEDs wouldn't change colour and I prefer to see the LED status (as it indicates track selected in RECORD mode, or what tracks are muted/unmuted in PERFORM mode).. so I need to swap Pacer presets.
Anyone got any advice?
Is this something I should be trying to sort out with program changes?
Comments
Can provide pics if required.
Tricky one! I’m sure there’s a solution, but I reckon if you don’t get any replies here, it’s definitely worth checking one of the other communities, either Discord, or Facebook, as there are some Pacer uses there
Will do - I'm uploading a video to YT right now so people can see the issue as well, just incase it's easier to identify issues or whatever via video.
Here's the vid if anyone wants to see what's going on
I think the problem is that you are changing presets on the Pacer and the Pacer doesn't know anything about Loopy's state and Loopy doesn't really know anything about the Pacer. SInce you changed presets, the Pacer will set the LEDs to whatever you have stored in the preset -- it doesn't retain state information from your previous preset.
The reason that the state was correct earlier was that when you send a message to Loopy, it sends the message back which the pacer uses to update the LED. But when you change presets, Loopy doesn't now what state your pacer is in and so the two get out of sync.
At least, I think that is what is going on.
What's the solution to this?
I think you will have to talk to other Pacer users and get some ideas. I don’t have any experience with it. Is there a way to accomplish what you need without changing the Pacer presets ?
At a guess, I would think that you would need to have a button in LP, which both changes the preset on the pacer, perhaps with a PC, and also switches to a different control profile, so LP knows that it’s in a different mode. If you can get the Pacer to tell LP when it’s preset has changed, that would work as well, if you set up a binding from that message to a profile switch in LP.
I don't think the first option is possible, I've tried everything I can think of and went looking around, eventually found some people online talking about how the Pacer can't receive MIDI in.
I could be wrong, but I assume that means there's no way to have LP tell the Pacer to switch presets.
Still messing around with the second option, can't find any way to have the Pacer tell LP that the preset has changed - this would be where the issue is, I think. The Pacer can send PC info etc, but I have absolutely no idea how to use that to tell LP that a preset has changed yet.
Right after posting that, I found a way to have the Pacer send information when it changes presets - can send a whole slew of information.
I have no idea how to make LP read this information though - how do I get LP to react to the information it receives from this, if it's a program change?
I don't know how to make a widget for example, react to program change information rather than press/hold/whatever action etc. Not sure how to set up this binding.
EDIT - figured out how to do what I asked here - fingers crossed it works. Will update if I get it to work for future LP + Pacer users.
It worked.
I set up the same physical button on the Pacer, to send out a PC change from REC mode to PLAY mode, and vica versa, so that it's letting Loopy Pro know that that's been changed every time I press that button.
That same button is also the preset swap button, that swaps between those two modes.
In Loopy Pro, I created a new control profile called PLAY (changed from PERFORM to PLAY because less letters).. also renamed the default one in this project to be REC.
Then I went into each of those control profiles, and cleaned up everything that shouldn't be there - there was a lot of "trigger widget" type stuff in there that must have been for buttons I created in the past or something, idk, there was a fair bit of nonsense in there to clean up.
I also removed any overlapping buttons from the wrong control profile - ie, REC mode has no need for the CC information that mutes/unmutes loops because that's what PLAY mode is for. I figure this would just help clean things up and I'd run into less issues having it as clean as possible.
I then created 2x widgets - one for R PROF and one for P PROF - these are to signify REC PROFILE and PLAY PROFILE - pressing these buttons changes the control profile accordingly. I also mapped this button to the same button that changes presets on the Pacer + sends the PC change information.
I had some minor hiccups along the way but got there eventually and now it's working perfectly.
Now that I understand how to do this, I think I'll easily be able to repeat it for other presets/banks etc - so long as I do what I did here, the LEDs will line up correctly, I'll be able to have one button turn it into a guitar FX board if I want - awesome stuff.
I can't believe I'll be able to gig this again without having to mentally keep track of what's going on because prior to this, it was functioning properly, but the LEDs were borked - was reliant on looking at the iPad while playing which isn't what I want to be doing, and memory. Going to be so much better now.
I stopped gigging LP a while ago because of this issue + another issue that was just kinda part of it - I had to double-tap mute/unmute buttons every time I swapped to PLAY mode before, which was annoying as heck.
That problem is also non-existent now, the control profile thing has solved all issues.
Well done!
LOL more like well done to you for creating such a fantastic app.
It's working perfectly, whole thing is completely giggable, zero issues.
I've created duplicates of this profile in Loopy Pro, and also on the Pacer, just incase anything gets weird (I have had issues with the Pacer, only when using the third-party online editor, where it saves things wrong, and/or writes over patches.. no issues programming on the Pacer itself, but the editor is unreliable).
I'm genuinely stoked with this setup now - everything is working smoothly, I added a third preset and control profile which is for guitar FX. Now that this is all working for me, I'm free to explore other things ie guitar amps and FX for iPad more in-depth.. spent a lot of time not doing that, because of the LED + double-tap mute/unmute issues I was having.
I think the coolest thing about it is I don't need to change anything at all on LP or the Pacer now to accommodate for how I feel like playing. The same template works for everything I want to do, all instruments and methods of playing them (MPK Mini + iPad synths etc, real keyboard, elec guitar, acoustic guitar, mic'd percussion, real bass etc, whatever I want).
I also made it so the button I'm using as a NUKE (clear all) unmutes all clips, selects the first track, and swaps control profiles to REC mode - on the Pacer, this same button also swaps to REC preset as well.
It works beautifully and means when I'm finished a song, I can hit one button, and be ready to go immediately - all clips deleted, the correct track is selected to record to, there won't be issues with muted/unmuted tracks as they're all set to unmute once that button is hit and it puts me into REC mode. It's just awesome.