Pretty, Open Source Audio Looping with Livid Looper (Win, Mac)
A big surprise announcement from Livid, the VJ software / boutique A/V controller maker: Livid Looper is a new, free audio looping tool, built in Max 5.
Click through for the full image; it’s quite lovely with … um, butterflies and such. (Strap that solar panel to your MacBook and take it camping!)
Built around the Ohm hardware controller from Livid, but certainly adaptable to the interface of your choice, the Max 5-based software has some very nifty features for live performance:
- Audio looping, slicing, dicing, and scrambling
- Built-in audio effects, plus VST support – and a built-in Granulator for time-shift / scrambling effects
- Instant audio recording
- Interactive waveform display for selecting loops (or chop them up automatically)
- Beat-synced, sequenced gesture recording – meaning effects can be added in performance and locked to the loop
- MIDI learn (in case you don’t have an Ohm)
- OpenSoundControl support, for easy networking of data to other laptops, or multiple apps / VJ apps on one laptop
As you can see below, it is Ohm centric – making that already very sweet controller this much sweeter – but is likewise generic enough that you own preferred controller should work just fine. Livid also promises that this could work well with a cheap laptop like the Eee (though for now you will need Windows or, at the very least, Linux + WINE).
You’ll need the full version of Max 5 to edit it, but once you do the patch is fully open source, so you can hack it do your own thing. (Max 5 is great, but I wonder if anyone will port to Pd for an end-to-end open source experience? Or perhaps there are some similar Pd patches to consider, dear Pd community? Pd would also give you instant Linux compatibility – at least until Max is available on Linux, ahem, Cycling ‘74.)
It’s too bad Ableton Live doesn’t support OSC, as these two would go together quite nicely linked via OSC (though you should be able to sync them via MIDI, I’d imagine).
Available now for Mac and Windows, fully free as in beer and freedom and beer freedom:
Let us know how you like it when you give it a try!
32 Comments
Leave a Commentnq
wow.
that’s a generous move.
decent piece of software and quite a bit of fun
August 7, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
Barry Threw
Nice work!
Props to Peter Nyboer for another beautiful user interface.
Shit be elegant.
August 7, 2008 @ 3:29 pm
Mike
hellooooooooooooooooo monome
August 7, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
jim warrier
App won’t load for me on leopard g4. tries to load the give me a error message
August 7, 2008 @ 3:55 pm
Chris
jim it’s mac INTEL only
August 7, 2008 @ 4:35 pm
Chris
oops nevermind my last comment, it’s universal. I tried to many free apps today ;)
August 7, 2008 @ 4:37 pm
Peter Kirn
@Jim: *which* error message?
August 7, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
Vanceg
Looks like a new, updated and expanded version app that Peter Nyboer developed some years ago. I love his work.
Supah!
August 7, 2008 @ 5:16 pm
PLP
Excellent - always looking for a better looper. Will put it through its paces and see how I like it - Nocturn should work just fine for control!
August 7, 2008 @ 8:08 pm
BassTooth
@Chris
same here. doesn’t work on G4 PowerPC;OS X 10.4.11.
August 7, 2008 @ 9:04 pm
BassTooth
*er,
@ jim warrier
August 7, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
k1Ru
hmm…
stupid question….will it work with….pluggo runtime??
August 7, 2008 @ 9:59 pm
4lefts
not really the place to ask, but hey, i’m waiting for my registration to the livid forums to come through. how do you execute the source? what’s the “top level” maxpat?
in other news - the executable won’t run on G4 on 0SX 10.4.11 here, either.
August 8, 2008 @ 3:00 am
Livid Instruments releases Livid Looper
[...] Visit Livid Instruments for more information. (via CDM) [...]
August 8, 2008 @ 4:18 am
Markus
Don’t understand. Is it an DAW? Or can it be used as a VST?
August 8, 2008 @ 5:07 am
cebec
4lefts: I believe the top level .maxpat is ‘MAIN.maxpat’.
Markus: it’s a stand-alone looper/instrument.
August 8, 2008 @ 7:29 am
beatfix
Just had a play - great stuff. Depth and simplicity in one package.
August 8, 2008 @ 11:06 am
bliss
DOA on PPC.
August 8, 2008 @ 6:55 pm
bloink
… and now it’s not even downloadable for Mac.
Da*n.
August 9, 2008 @ 6:05 am
Peter Nyboer
Hi
Sorry for the opening night jitters :) The CORRECT mac download can be had here:
http://lividinstruments.com/support_downloads.php#looper
This should solve yer PPC issues :)
All mac users should re-download, as this is a different UB altogether than what was released yesterday.
Hope some of you dive into the source - it’s decently doc’ed in the manual and in the patches.
Enjoy,
Peter Nyboer
Livid Developer.
August 9, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
spuff
im a winxp user and this opens like 6 different windows at a time so its kinda annoying. I try and its works fine but it would be so much easier to use if it had just one window.
August 10, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
Roland Reinke
Thanks for this piece of news; will try it out as soon as I can.
R.
August 11, 2008 @ 8:40 am
dirk
i like it…
although I have not yet found out how to load vst plugins and the manual doesn’t help either…
Does anyone know?
Dirk
August 15, 2008 @ 4:19 am
whomper
just close the windows.
August 15, 2008 @ 8:35 am
Create Digital Music » Learning Reaktor: 10-Step Path to Building New Sequencers, Beatboxes, and Effects
[...] by the stuff people are building not only in Reaktor, but Pd, Max/MSP, and the like, as well – butterflies and all.) So, we asked Reaktor users to show us their UIs, and got a full range, from the primitive to the [...]
August 15, 2008 @ 11:23 am
V3rn
Pete Nyboer is one of my heroes, from back in the bad old days of Girl & Cosmetic, pre OS X, but y’all wouldn’t know nuthin’ about that…. Rock On
August 15, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
Jul
I love this software, but I can’t get it running on my eeepc, I’ve got this message (during the installation process with wine):
“unable to find a volume for file extraction please verify you have proper permissions”
August 16, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
Ovo
Perfect for Eee, therefore I deduce it should work well with my vye S18P. I’ve been finding that if I want to use certain software on this computer, I have to settle for lower than the latest version. Its nice to find something that I don’t have to compromise with.
August 17, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Tom Swirly
Fantastic piece of kit, it’s playing in the background!
What I can’t seem to do is to bring its output into Live 7 on the Mac…. any ideas?
August 17, 2008 @ 11:09 pm
Tom Swirly
Well, that wasn’t a very clear trouble report. :-D I start LividLooper first and then Live. I can see the LividLooper instruments in Live - they just never seem to have any signal!
August 17, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
Livid Looper Open Source (win,mac) at animatek.net
[...] en | CDM Mas info y descarga | Livid Topicos: Ableton, Software, Software Libre, Video [...]
August 26, 2008 @ 7:16 am
Nate O.
Sooperlooper is better! Seriously, I’ve tried Livid Looper on Apple G4 and a new HP laptop, and I have to say that Sooperlooper (avail. for Mac/Linux) is faster, sleeker, easier to use, and…well, that’s about all a program has to be to be awesome! I’m not usually a fanboy when it comes to software, but Sooperlooper is great donationware (read: completely functional–donations [ethic/option]al. So…yeah! Download Sooperlooper and donate if you can!
Nate
P.S. Pd is amazing too, but that’s another story (I just love open-source software that rocks)
September 29, 2008 @ 11:13 pm
Leave a comment
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI