Arthur brought up an interesting issue that I haven't though about in a long time, and I suspect happens often.
It starts by wanting to record multiple loops in the same track, and have them all be of a predictable length.
Setting Empty Loop Action to Record is a relatively well known EDPism that starts recording immediately after you switch to the next empty loop. This is often combined with Switch Quantize set to Cycle so the first loop plays to the end, then it switches to the next loop, and recording begins.
What happens next isn't obvious. Several people in this recent generation have expected that if you press Record a second time to end the recording, that this loop will be rounded off so that it matches the cycle length of the previous loop.
I think if's a common and valid expectation that once you record a loop in a track, you usually want all the other loops to be the same length, or a multiple of that first loop length. I know there are reasons some might not want that, but I'm willing to bet that the majority do, especially if they didn't come with an EDP background.
Let's start with an example where there is no record synchronization, and the first loop is recorded freely. You're not trying to play along with a host track or a drum machine, just a solo performer trying to create a few alternate loops to swap between. Switch Quantize is set to Cycle and Empty Loop Action is set to Record. You press NextLoop*, wait for the switch and recording starts. After a few beats press Record a second time. The recording ends immediately and you now have two loops that have completely unrelated sizes.
Sorry shoegazers, but no one interested in creating loops with a consistent rhythm wants this.
Since you're not synchronizing with anything, the EDP Way of accomplishing this is to use Time Copy. There were two ways to do this, you could set Empty Loop Action to Copy Time (I forget what names the EDP used, but it wasn't that). Or you could use Switch Quantize and while you were waiting during the quantization period you could press Insert. This was commonly referred to as "NextLoop+Insert". What that would do is instead of leaving you in an unconstrained Record mode, it would magically copy an empty cycle from the previous loop into the next one, and leave you in Insert mode. From there you could record a new loop that would share the same cycle length with the previous one.
The problem with this is that you are not in Record mode, you are in Insert mode. If you had Empty Loop Action set to Copy Time you never pressed an Insert button, it just magically started recording, so the first inclination is to end that by pressing Record. But that doesn't work. You must end this by pressing Insert instead.
Quick show of hands: how many of you remembered this?
Another show of hands: how many of you have the Insert function on your footswitch?
If you were a former EDP user, probably a few but I doubt all. If you weren't I'm going with zero.
In the olden days this was something I didn't like, so I added two parameters the EDP didn't have: Sound Copy Mode and Time Copy Mode. I'm not sure if this improved the situation or made it worse, but what that allowed you to do is pick which mode you wanted to be in after a Time Copy. If you just wanted to copy an empty cycle and decide what to do with it later you could pick Play. If you wanted to record something but only wanted that one copied cycle you could pick Overdub. You still had to remember that you were in Overdub mode and press Overdub to get out of it, but at least most people have Overdub on their footswitch.
One reason I think this is becoming lost lore, is that almost everyone uses Host Sync or Track Sync these days. You're not required to use Time Copy to accomplish this.
When you're using synchronization the problem is a little simpler, but still exists. You set Empty Loop Action to Record and end the recording with the Record button as usual. But you're not copying a cycle from one loop to the next, you're just using the same Sync Unit. So if you're using Sync Unit set to Bar and the first loop is 4 bars long, you can create a second loop that is exactly the same size as the first one by letting 3 bars elapse before you press Record. The recording will be rounded off to a bar, and you'll have another 4 bar loop.
If you wanted the second loop to be twice as long as the first one, you have to pay attention. You can't press Record until you're in bar 8, or you'll end up with a loop with an odd number of bars and the two won't be an exact multiple of each other.
I've thought about ways to say "When you're in the first loop of a track you sync with the host, but when you're in the secondary loops you sync with the first one". I think many people have expected this over the years, but it isn't how this has ever worked, and sometimes adding more parameters to choose this way of thinking makes the situation worse.
The problem I'm faced with going forward, and it has been building for some time, is that the number of people that care about what the EDP was is small, and growing smaller. People that discover Mobius today, have typically only heard the words "free" or "Sheeran", and frankly I'm growing tired of trying to explain things like this to them. I have no particular interest in making things for the masses, the audience I care about are the power users. Still, it would be nice if some things were a little more obvious, and rigid adherence to a device with no UI, a 7 button footswitch, and a quirky workflow few have ever experienced is not helping.
Thoughts?