Mobius Looper - FAQ

Started by admin, November 01, 2016, 12:12:14 PM

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Hurricane

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I'm researching this thanks.

HR

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Syph

Thanks for posting that, I can't check it out until Sunday or Monday, but I'm always super interested to see what approach different folks take to hacking möbius scripts together!

jimmyj

 I would love to use Mobius but it doesn't seem to work with Ableton Live 10 on a Windows computer even using Jbridge.

mooncaine

Maybe if you're using Ableton Live, you can get the same functionality without Mobius.
Search the Ableton Live forums for "mobrain" or "motherbrain setup".... it's been a few years, but I set that up to work with my FCB1010.

Syph

You can get "similar" functionality out of ableton true, but ableton clip slots can't overdub, and the ableton looper is horrifically lacking in features making it unsuitable for live use as an audio based lived looper beyond the mosic basic or abstract of tasks.
While this may* be rectified via creative use of max4live, I found Mobius significantly more powerful out of the box, and the pseudo python like scripting engine is frankly unparalleled in regards to both it's ease of use and flexibility.
I love Ableton, but I have never found a comfortable and effiecent perfomance oriented live looping workflow there....

*my attempts learning max4live have bern rather lacking so far, so I am by no means an expert on the possibilities it offers.

mooncaine

Fair enough. Yep, it's still pretty kludgy. It was fine for me to mess around with, but I never took it out.

Syph

Alright, just reading through through those script notes aaaand DANG!
That is a VERY different approach to how I've hacked mine together, and I think I am a little curious....
I also suspect you are more programming literate that I am, which only makes me a little jealous.

It's also possible I have unrealistic expectations and an unhealthy amount of stubbornness.
My script folder is over 50 items long, and many of those scripts are multiple pages.

Quick note that at this point I have finished my beta build, and have a bit of R&D to do before rebuilding everything into an alpha build that will hopefully become my live rig.

In a nut shell I have built my scripts to emulate and expand upon my RC300 style user interface. This includes full looper state feedback which includes cued states. So when I hit record on a new loop, my midi controllers will indicate a recording cued state (flashy red lights) until the recording starts, at which it indicates it's currently recording (solid red lights). Same for triggering overdub. It will flash orange until the recording pass finishes and then flip to a solid orange. My goal in this context is to avoid interacting directly with my laptop at any point post connecting devices and booting, just turning it into the brain for my midi devices.

To summarise my build, I've hacked together the following:
A 5 track looper, where each looper has:
Rec/Dub/Play button
Fade/Stop/Delete (first press fades, second stops or mutes, and a long press with delete, very boss RC style)
Group assign button, allows me to assign a loop to either group A/B/or NONE, where only one loop in a group can play at a time. It's kind of a serial looper mode that is capable of being engaged per loop, with multiple groups. So I could have a verse loop and a chorus loop in group A, and a heavy beat and a quiet beat in group B, where each group is independent of the other.
Basic pseudo frippertronic loop ageing, but I haven't got a degradation effect in there, just variable looper FB
Master reset button, for when everything needs fixing.

Instead of using a midi controller to query mobius, I have set up mobius scripts that await trigger events with global variables and "while" and/or "wait" commands. So when a looper state is change via a script the script will indicate cued state through my controllers, and will the disable repeats triggers of the script until the looper state changes, when it will update my midi controller statuses then re-engage the script triggers.

I'd really like to (if it's possible) rebuild this as a max4live looper device as despite my excessive efforts I still find even mobius to be a limited looper, but I can't max4live to save my life...


But to answer the question at hand!
I love the RC300 user interface in regards to;
its big bare foot super friendly buttons,
its clear LED status indication,
its clear and functional REC/DUB/PLAY and STOP/FADE/DELETE buttons,
I really like it's button/looper state quantise behaviour, it doesn't just quantise to the next quantise event, it can quantise retroactively allowing you to press the button just after the bar and it will round the loop back to the bar. Amazing.

The RC is super limited in other ways.
Only 3 loops
VERY limited assigns (only 8, though you can do a lot with it if you are creative)
Limited drum machine
No click track
No functional time stretching (at least not the way I use the RC)
No post looper FX
No loop desynchronisation functionality

Mobius has its own ups and downs. Pros:
super dooper flexible (if you can figure out how)
Many loops (I currently use 5 due to midi controller limits)

cons:
loop quantise behaviour is quantised to the next quantise point, meaning you ALWAYS have to press a button BEFORE the bar line (feels less intuitive)
no time stretching functionality that I have been able to make use of....
No loop desynchronisation functionality
Its super dooper complex due to it's flexibility, so there are probably ways to do things that I haven't figured out, but you can lose a lot of time to trying. Or at least I can/have/do....

Both loopers are incredible.
But I'm bored with my RC300 and I'm frustrated with Mobius.
And I'm too stubborn to give up.

The RC300 is great for various casual things like short videos or casual street performance.
Mobius is great for more complex set ups, but it requires a lot of investment and I wouldn't take my laptop on the streets...

Syph

This is probably a short reply, at least relative to the conversations I'd like to have with you when I have more time.

I forgot a few pros/cons, namely mobius can follow midi sync where as the RC300 (and I think the 505 as well) can't. They have custom hand shake msg's when they master/slave each other that someone recently reverse engineered, but that's a punk to set up when you just want to jam with *insert digital artist here*.

The 505 would be WAY more appealing if there was a decent foot pedal option for it. I know it has the many assigns thing going on, but at least from what I understand it doesn't have bi direction midi support for looper states and all that cool jazz to be displayed on foot controller LEDs. My current mobius set up has full looper state feedback on both my softstep and launchpad mini, and I have been meaning to get a lemur template up with this stuff as well. Visual feedback for me on controllers is a must! If I have to look somewhere other than where my foot is going, my foot isn't going there. I guess I just need things to act like an instrument, as in the midst of a largely improvised performance I am doing WAY too many things to have to think or cross reference ANYTHING. Like, economy of motion, but mentally AND physically.

Anwyho, gotta run as things to do and stuff, but I'll probably be back to looking at my mobius project in a few weeks if you'd be keen to run through some stuff with me and share some mobius hacks, that'd be super neat.

Oh, and one week turn arounds for builds is BRUTAL! Even more so with how unstable mobius can be in regards to subtle scripting mechanisms.....

jimmyj

To philjynx:  I tried to use the vst version of Mobius. It partially loads in Ableton but you can't do anything with it. I am going to try Mobius with Cubase 5 which is also 32 bit but seems to run 64 bit vst's just fine. I use a lot of vst synths and effects with my guitar so that's why I was trying to get Mobius to work with Ableton. I guess I need to try the standalone again. Maybe if I could figure out some way to route Albeton into Mobius that would solve all the problems.

admin

#10
Ableton is a DAW, it can host VST effects

So Ableton could act as VST Host app for Mobius VST plugin

jimmyj

To philjynx: I haven't seen the window you posted so I don't believe it's something on my computer. From what I understand from other people having the same problem is that Mobius is a 32 bit vst and Ableton 10 doesn't seem to like 32 bit vst's which is where Jbridge comes in but even Jbridge can't make it work. I think there an audio app that lets you do some routing from one app to another but I can't remember what its' called maybe Jack Audio or something similar.

jimmyj

I checked and I have Mobius 2.5. I just tried Mobius in Cubase 5 and it opens perfectly now I just have to figure out how use it correctly and get my midi controller to work with it.

jimmyj

QuoteWhile Cubase was launching I could see Mobius show as something Cubase was aware of but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get it to show up anywhere in the Cubase UI
Mobius shows up as an insert like my other vst's. Cubase 5 is a 32 bit program so maybe if someone has a newer 64 bit Cubase they may have the same problems that Ableton has. I'm hoping to have my vst synths and effects tracks routed to the Mobius track so it will be basically the same as Ableton.


Yug

Help Please..... I've successfully been using Mobius for a few weeks, written some scripts to control it from FCB1010. It works a treat. However, I ran it yesterday and the UI didn't come up although the shell window is there along with the menus to access Files, Track Setups, Presets and Configuration, but the rest of the GUI is blank/missing. It would appear Mobius is still working as I have control via my FCB1010. I have tried reinstalling, uninstalling and installing several times, as well as deleting it from the registry prior to reinstalling, but without success. This version of Mobius is running on a Windows 10 PC.
Does anyone have any idea what can be done to fix this ?

Yug

Yug

A very big thank you for all your help. There was indeed a rogue copy of ui.xml but the cause of the corruption is still not clear.
"I have found to my cost that you can break the UI by locating items beyond the boundaries of the display area - perhaps you did that? "  I usually have a large high definition monitor hooked up. However, when I experienced the corruption problem, I had a much smaller monitor connected and am now wondering weather this may have been the cause !
Once again, thanks for helping me out.