Loop Sampler

A tempo-synced beat-looper that records the audio passing through it and replays a short, clock-locked slice in a loop — re-capturing fresh audio every few passes so the loop keeps evolving. Drop it inline on a drum bus or any rhythmic part to turn a steady groove into a stuttering, self-mutating echo of itself.

How it works

Loop Sampler is a serial effect: it records whatever flows in, then reads a clock-synced slice back out over the top. After a set number of replays it grabs a new slice from the live input, crossfading old into new so the swap stays click-free. Each recapture lands on whatever the source is playing, so the loop drifts and reshapes as the music underneath it moves — locked to your tempo, but never quite the same twice.

Controls

  • Len — loop length as a tempo division, from 1/16 up to 3bar with triplet and dotted steps between. Short values stutter the groove into texture; long values capture whole phrases.
  • Rpts — how many times the loop replays before recapturing fresh audio: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, or FRZ. Low counts mutate constantly; high counts hold a phrase longer; FRZ stops recording and holds the current loop indefinitely.
  • Mix — dry/wet blend. At 100% you hear only the looped replay; lower it to bleed the live input back in underneath.
  • Clock — where the tempo comes from. Ext measures the pulses arriving at the clock input, which is how this module has always worked. Song follows the timeline's tempo directly, with no cable at all. Int runs at its own speed, set by the BPM field beside it. One thing worth knowing: in Ext the divisions are relative to whatever you clock it with, so feeding it sixteenths makes every label four times faster than it reads. In Int and Song the module knows what a quarter note is, so the labels mean exactly what they say.
  • BPM — the tempo for Int. In Song it greys out and shows you the timeline's tempo instead; in Ext it greys out too, because the cable is in charge.

Inputs & outputs

  • In L / In R — the stereo signal to record and loop.
  • Clock — patch a quarter-note clock to set the loop tempo while the Clock control is on Ext; unpatched, it sits at 120 BPM.
  • Reset — a trigger forces an immediate recapture, re-syncing the loop to the current moment.
  • Len / Rpts / Mix CV — voltage control over each knob; patch an LFO or envelope to evolve loop length, replay count, or dry/wet hands-free.
  • Out L / Out R — the stereo replay, blended with the dry input per Mix.

Tips

  • Patch your master clock into Clock so loops lock to the song, then sweep Len live to ratchet between feels.
  • Short Len with low Rpts gives a granular, ever-shifting texture; long Len with high Rpts behaves more like a tempo-delay that occasionally refreshes.
  • Set Rpts to FRZ to freeze the current loop — a glitchy stutter to hang an arrangement on; pulse Reset on the downbeat first to grab it exactly where you want.