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Pedal prices and other random pedal chat!


Al Krow
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1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

Tell me more about this. I have the looper on the HX (not that I use it live) and I have a jamman solo, but just for sample playback.

What is so good about this? They seem cheap and small, which is a good thing as I don't have much room

Yup, excellent value and compact. 

Helix / Zoom have 30s to 60s recording time and one loop. The Lekato Pro has:

9 loops, 40 mins recording time in total, upto 10 mins on any single loop. 

Unlimited overdubs. 

Micro USB connectivity to PC to both back up and load loops. But I think it only saves in wav and not mp3 format. 

Really useful LED display showing: which loop, how much recording time you have left, and where in the loop you are on playback - very useful for overdub. 

Volume control. 

Oh and it has a tuner thrown in! 

Some decent reviews on YouTube which are understandably glowing. 

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58 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

ok, well at £35 worth a test I guess, even for someone that doesn't do much looping.

It's perfect for someone who doesn't do much looping. For me it's primarily just a handy little idea jot pad, plus useful little sample recorder for sharing A/B comparisons. 

I think it will be nearer £45 (eg if importing via eBay). 

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19 minutes ago, Skybone said:

The Helix LT, pre COVID, was selling for around £750, now it's around £850-900.

Definitely won't be buying one anytime soon then...

That's a big hike!

This for £650?

 

Edited by Al Krow
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Again, a few months ago, someone was selling one on here for £550. It took ages to sell. Must admit, I was tempted, but I was waiting on the wad of walnut wonderfulness in my avatar. 😉😀

Edited by Skybone
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On 18/07/2020 at 23:45, Woodinblack said:

dunno, just one of the first ones I saw on eBay. 

Thats what I thought, it sounded like a good deal if it was any good.

Did you get one in the end? I've managed to get my head around mine in the last week and am actually finding it, if anything, easier to use than my old (and vastly bigger) Boss RC 30; things like overdubbing and then deleting / redoing the last take until you're happy with it is surprisingly straightforward. The one niggle is that its output and input have to be in .wav files rather than the more compact / widely used mp3 format.

For the money, though, I've not come across anything better. And certainly there's not space for anything bigger on my mini-board! And tying this vaguely into the thread subject matter, this is a pedal where prices seem to have gone down rather than up! 

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1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Did you get one in the end? I've managed to get my head around mine in the last week and am actually finding it, if anything, easier to use than my old (and vastly bigger) Boss RC 30; things like overdubbing and then deleting / redoing the last take until you're happy with it is surprisingly straightforward. The one niggle is that its output and input have to be in .wav files rather than the more compact / widely used mp3 format.

I ordered it, it is coming probably at the end of the week, start of next week. Also picked up a page turner at the same time. 

I am not bothered about it being wav format, anything that can write an mp3 can write a wav and frankly the last thing you want a looper recording in is MP3, although if it is playing it back not an issue.

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1 minute ago, Woodinblack said:

I ordered it, it is coming probably at the end of the week, start of next week. Also picked up a page turner at the same time. 

I am not bothered about it being wav format, anything that can write an mp3 can write a wav and frankly the last thing you want a looper recording in is MP3, although if it is playing it back not an issue.

Good stuff.

Be interested to get your thoughts on why recording in MP3 is less good? 

Guess I'm going to need to load up a wav <--> MP3 converter - 'cos a bunch of fellow BC'ers have said they can't open .wav files and need stuff in MP3 format.

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9 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Be interested to get your thoughts on why recording in MP3 is less good? 

An MP3 is a way of saving space, that is all. It is a way of throwing away some data based on psycho-acoustic models of what we hear and what we don't hear, so for instance, we don't hear detail in a frequency that has lower power than a frequency that has higher power, eg - if we have a really loud section at 1khz, and there is a detailed sound at 4khz, we don't hear it, so it can throw it away.

That is all cool and good because most people don't hear it. However, if you are looping, you can have a load of tracks that are added together with some of the data missing because in the individual track you couldn't hear it. But maybe there are other tracks with data at that frequency that was removed that would have added and increased the power of that level beyond the original large value, but as we have already got rid of that detail it can't happen so it won't add properly, like in an orchestra where you have a quiet instrument, you hear it because they add lots of them.

Mp3 only works well for a single playing track, not a composite.

OK, so it isn't terrible, it will work, it will just never be as good and as its sole point is to save space, unless you have a shortage of space  it will always be better if you don't use compression.

 

Quote

Guess I'm going to need to load up a wav <--> MP3 converter - 'cos a bunch of fellow BC'ers have said they can't open .wav files and need stuff in MP3 format.

Are these people without computers? Or people with computers from the 80s or something? 

They haven't made a computer in the last 3 decades that cant covert a wav file to an mp3!

 

Edited by Woodinblack
because I appear to have written this like a 3 year old
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22 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

I wonder if it's folk looking to play the files on their phones rather than PCs? Definitely not an isolated case of "I can't open the wav file"! 

ok, I will update. They haven't made a computer in the last 3 decades, or a smartphone ever as long as it had the space that cant covert a wav file to an mp3!

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2 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

ok, I will update. They haven't made a computer in the last 3 decades, or a smartphone ever as long as it had the space that cant covert a wav file to an mp3!

Haha, in which they are without excuses! 

But is it the case that if would need to do something to first convert the wav file to MP3 - if so that's extra effort on their part, that they could be forgiven for not wanting to bother with, or will their phones do the conversion for them automatically so that it can play the wav files?

Edited by Al Krow
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2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

ok, I will update. They haven't made a computer in the last 3 decades, or a smartphone ever as long as it had the space that cant directly play a wav file!

Corrected! :)

 

Edited by dannybuoy
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2 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Haha, in which they are without excuses! 

But is it the case that if would need to do something to first convert the wav file to MP3 - if so that's extra effort on their part, that they could be forgiven for not wanting to bother with, or will their phones do the conversion for them automatically so that it can play the wav files?

Well, that is kind of backwards. a wav file is the data you want to send to the A/D converter put in a file. An MP3 file is that same data that has been compressed and encoded to use less space. If something wants to play that track, it has to open the MP3 file, decode and expand it to an approximation of what was in the original wave so that it can play it.

I can't imagine there is a media player than couldn't directly play a wav file, or the equivalent - there are several formats that are uncompressed or loslessly compressed files, AIFF etc. Pretty well the same, the wav format was just microsofts version of an AIFF.

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On 22/07/2020 at 18:01, Al Krow said:

I've just used vlc media player to convert a file from wav to mp3. It was definitely noisier.

Right I'm a convert to wav files!

If you have VLC media player, and have just been converted to WAV - then you might also like FLAC files? They are a lossless format, which take up less space than WAV.

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28 minutes ago, SimonEdward said:

If you have VLC media player, and have just been converted to WAV - then you might also like FLAC files? They are a lossless format, which take up less space than WAV.

But not much good in the context of a looper that only plays wav files :)

 

 

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