I'm back! Did you miss me? LOL Also, question about Audio Record Bars

zerocrossing

Hi loopers! I've been up to a lot of music shenanigans the last few years, but not too much looping. Mostly composing music for games.

I was part of the Meta layoffs, so now I'm getting back into looping and I installed Mobius 3 on my WIndows 11 machine and one thing that seems to be missing is "Auto Record Bars." Is there a plan to put that back in, or a work around? It's just a simple way to initiate a fixed length loop at the start of a bar. Meaning, I can hit the command at any time, and at the beginning of the bar, it starts recording for X bars and then automatically stops recording when X bars have passed. If there's a work-a-round, that would be great too. Anyway, hope everyone is good.

Mark

jeff

Hi Mark! Good to hear from you again.

Auto Record works a bit differently in Mobius 3. To set the number of bars, or "units" it records, go to Session->Edit Session, click the Globals tab, expand the Sync category, and click on AutoRecord. In the form, Auto Record Unit is usually set to Bar and Auto Record Units to however many bars you want.

Exactly how long a unit is depends on the track's Sync Source. If the Sync Source is Host for example, the length of a bar is determined by the host tempo. If you're not using external sync sources yet, then the AutoRecord tempo is defined by a new thing called the Transport.

The Transport is sort of like the plugin host transport but resides inside Mobius. This is where MIDI clock generation and the notion of pre-defined tempo now live. To use the transport you'll want to make it visible in the UI. From the Display menu select Edit Layouts and click the Main Elements tab. This is where you control what things are displayed in the main center section of the UI. The things on the left is what is currently displayed, and the things on the right are what are available but not displayed, and you can click-drag them between the two sides to add/remove them. Add the item named "Transport" to the left side.

It will show up at a random location, you can left-click-drag over it to move it somewhere where it isn't overlapping something else. You can also corner drag the border to resize it if it is too small/large or some of the words are cut off.

The easiest way to set the tempo is by clicking the Tap button twice. If you want to set a tempo and have it be there on startup, that along with other Transport parameters is set in the session. From the Sessions menu, select Edit Session, and click the Globals tab. In the tree open the Sync category and click on Transport. There is a Tempo field in the form where you can type in a number.

Here's a summary of how AutoRecord works with each of the Sync Source options:

None - tempo comes from the Transport, but the Transport does not need to be running
Transport - tempo comes from the Transport, and the Transport needs to be running as recording starts/stops with the transport units
Track - AR length comes from the Sync Master Track's unit length where Beat=Subcycle, Bar=Cycle, and Loop=Loop. If there is no Sync Master Track, then it is the same as None
Host - tempo comes from the host
MIDI - tempo comes from received MIDI clocks
Master - tempo comes from the Transport

SyncSource=Master is the new way of saying what Mobius 2.x called SyncMode=Out, the length of the track you record will be used to determine what the Transport tempo is, which then may be configured to send MIDI clocks or not.

Hope that helps...

zerocrossing

jeff Yes! This is exactly what I was after, and it seems to be working perfectly. Thank you so much for the help. I'm glad you managed to make it back to earth after the nuclear waste dump on the moon blew it away and sent you on a dangerous trip though the galaxy.

jeff

Note on SyncSource=Master. What this usually means is that you can freely record a track and the final loop length will be converted to a tempo that is given to the transport. The other tracks can either use SyncSource=Track to synchronize with subcycle/cycle/loop locations in that first master track or they can use SyncSource=Transport to sync with beat/bar/loop locations in the Transport. Old Mobius users should think of the Transport like a short empty track that was created just for the purpose of syncing other tracks, it's similar to Track Sync, except you don't have to burn a track just to serve as the time basis. And unlike Track Sync, you can change the Transport tempo at any time. without having to Reset/Rerecord a track.

But with AutoRecord combined with SyncSource=Master, we've git a chicken/egg problem. A track wants to be the Transport Master and give a tempo to the Transport, but AutoRecord needs to have a starting tempo in order to record the track. What happens is that you give the transport an initial tempo, what Mobius 2.x called the Auto Record Tempo parameter. Then once the master track has been recorded, any you change you make to it that changes the cycle length will also cause the Transport tempo to change along with it.

steveg

Just want to say thanks for the documentation here about autorecord! I just wanted to have recording auto start, then stop the recording manually.