Electrix Repeater

For the features, the Repeater seems pretty easy to use. There are some features that I haven't been able to figure out how to access via MIDI, such as changing the tempo sync mode, but I haven't inquired with Electrix about these issues yet. I recommend using a Behringer FCB 1010 programmable MIDI foot controller to control the Repeater. It has ten banks of ten buttons that are completlely programmable for control and program changes, as well as two expression pedals that are programmaed independently for each patch selection. I am primarily a guitarist, and I have the MIDI floorboard setup to control all Repeater features in a configuration that operates it basically like a digital four-track. I plan to buy a Digitech FS-300 footswitch to pop on my pedalboard in order to control the basic record, play, and undo functions, freeing up some more space on the MIDI controller and having the main functions always "right there". The FS-300 plugs into a separate "footswitch" jack in Repeater, and allows control of the three basic functions without MIDI. It takes some getting used to to be able to consistently punch out loops in "user sync" mode (freestyle, no syncing of loop beginning and end to an external clock source), but I've been improving somewhat by practicing trying to loop a drum machine, and there's really no way this could be made easier that I can think of, other than practice that is.

It can be pretty noisy in front of a guitar amp, but there are specs in the manual for building an attenuation circuit to improve performance in this application. The sound quality is very clear for loop reproduction. It does a little something undesirable to your dynamics and such when playing guitar, but it seems pretty good for a digital device. Anything you run your guitar signal through will alter the sound and feel to an extent, but the features and fun of the Repeater are worth a little sacrifice. If you don't like it, build or buy a bypass box, but it might make getting consistent levels more of a headache. I don't know why a lot of geniuses digitales never build true bypasses in this kind of stuff. Guitar players love that kind of stuff. I know the Line 6 Delay Mod has one.

It seems pretty solid, but haven't tested it much other than crushing the front panel knobs pretty callously with a road case, and it help up fine. Keep it in a rack, love your children.

Jason is great, always gets back to you promptly with the info. Makes you feel good about owning their product.

I think it's great, I love dumping song ideas and such to the CFC quickly and easily, then saving them all on my computer with the $20 SanDisk USB CFC reader, and then erasing the card and filling it up again! Yea! I think I'll keep it for a long time and depend upon it. I had been waiting for a Repeater for a long time, but I didn't know what I was waiting for. The Boomerang is still cool and has it's own mojo and space on my pedalboard, but the Repeater is definitely tough stuff.

this thing is easy as sin to use. the manual is direct and to the point. i had it running in my midi setup in an hour. it also has a tap tempo button which is probably the best thing i've ever seen on a rack mounted sampler. you can avoid using a sequencer this way. i have to count off for the limited and hard to interpret digital screen though. it is easier to read than lcd in a club but hard to understand what the thing is trying to tell you cause of the limited characters. after a while you get used to it and know what its trying to tell you. for the pricerange though, you can only bitch a little. changing loops is difficult since this thing reads everything completely of a compact flash card. it has no internal ram that i can tell of to store loops so you actually have to wait a full second before the next loop and its four tracks are loaded. deal killer for me though. this thing isn't really a sampler as much as a very powerfull boomerang looper that can hold four tracks per loop which you can mute on and off or apply things like pitch shifts on each track. i need something that can have loops a phrases that i can fire off randomly. also, since it reads off of a compact flash card, i ran into a serious glich. i like to retrigger a loops beginning by hitting the play button over and over again to build something up but every now and then it would freeze up and say "Card slow!". can't have that happen live!

sound quality was great! no degragation in sound. its has the best pitch shifting and time streching capabilities i've heard in a long time. only thing that might beat it is a roland variphrase sampler. this thing can hold some seriously long loops too! i could see some trance people using this box well. plus, you can virtually paste a one measure beat to repeat over and over again while two or four bar melody plays on top. this a pretty nifty!

thing is built like a tank. so i wouldn't worry about it breaking easily. you should have it in a rack case though. that's just common sense. i would gig with it even without one if i had too (that day should never come though). i did find a couple serious bugs though. like the "slock card" error when i was retrigger the loop. guess it has to read of the card the whole time. this thing really needs some sort of internal ram!

this company has the best customer support ever. especially this one guy named jason. friggin awesome! even if you go to their site (www.electrix.pro) you'll see him and others like him on the message boards answering scads of questions all day long trying to make the customer happy. plus they have all their manuals in pdf for which you can download (roland could learn from this). i think this will actually decide this company's success.

i bought it but had to take it back. it wasn't for me :( good product though and a decent price. i could see a trance or techno dj using this but i'm more of a battler break-beat dj and i need to have samples looping with a beat on my record and then randomly kick off phrases on the side. a guitarist could use this live with a midi foot board really easily. also, with how easy you can record mulitple tracks, overdub on those tracks, merge those tracks and then adjust the bpm and pitch of all those tracks-this thing could be a great song writing aide or tool for a guitarist or somehting. but i need something thats a mix of this and a conventional sampler. this is why i'm going with the roland variphrase sampler. but i could really see this product becoming outstanding in its next iteration! i would buy one again, but not as a sampler but more of a writing aide/scratch pad for thinking of multiple guitar parts or something. right now have no need though.

I don?t own the Repeater, a friend let me borrow his for two weeks to evaluate. Based on my evaluation I plan to buy one as soon as I have the necessary liquidity. I am a guitar player and I have been looping live with a Line 6 Delay Modeler. I'm looking for a device that will allow longer loops... but enough about me... what about the Repeater?

Ease of use, generally I found the looper very easy and intuitive, 10 minutes with the manual to understand the basic architecture and your on your way.

As others have stated "once levels are set correctly" the sound quality is excelent.

I'll abstain from a rating here as I am not familiar with Electrix products. A can say though that all apearances are that this is a very roadworthy device. I really like the job they have done with the mecjanical packaging!

My email inquiries were answered within a day or two and were very helpfull,

Overall I am very impressed with the repeater, like everyone else of course I have my issues:

The one glaring oversight:

The Repeater needs an overall output gain control. The Repeaters output is fixed at Line level with a dynamic range of 94dB which is more than adequate at line level.. However with the noise floor fixed at -94dB down from line level, it is unuseable at instrument level without an additional preamp or volume pedal. A master gain control would fix this problem and facilitate fade ins and outs much easier as opposed to fading four knobs (or four MIDI controllers, one for each track).

One nit:

When punching out to establish your first loop, the Repeater begins repeating the loop but drops out of record. You must wait for the loop to return in order to start your next layer from the beginning of the loop. I would prefer to end the first loop and remain in record to seamlessly begin the next layer (remember I?m used to the Line 6). Of course once the first loop is established, you may initiate record at any time and wrap your overdubs till your memory runs dry!

On the bright side:

MIDI control is excellent with nearly every front panel control (and more!) available via MIDI (would be nice to be able to re-map the MIDI controllers... but hey...)

Three button footswitch to control stop, start, record and undo (would be nice to be able to re-map these too... BUT HEY...)

WAV file transfer in and out via removeable flash is HUGE!

Undo! takes some of the pressure off when your already 10 layers deep!

Four tracks in stereo pairs or independantly panned to your stereo placement!

Eight minute looping!

I'm there!

I (like many other users) have found MIDI synchronization with The Repeater to be problematic. I am confident that these issues are being adressed by the folks at Electrix. I hoped that the Repeater would replace my Jamman or EDP, but as of yet it does not, although it seems that it would be possible . Patience!
***A big plus is that the sharing of .wav files with my G3 is a breeze with a $39.00 card reader.

Once I set the levels correctly the sound quality was very good. I have used it with my Godin Multiac nylon string running into a tc electronic dual parametric eq, Distressor,tc 2290,tc G-Force, Pearce B2-p(600 watt Bass amp)and 2 or 4 EV coaxial monitors.

This box seems to be built like a tank! I have had no problems.

Jason, Damon, and all of the other people at Eletcrix were very cool to deal with. I have had the experience with large (and very well-funded)companies using the tact of blaming their bugs on something that I must have been doing wrong. I know that they are in the process of cleaning up the bugs and adding features, it is just a matter of time and money. The people at Electrix must love what they do as it seems that they put it all on the line to provide us with this really happening piece of gear. The big players in the MI industry have not really embraced the loop idea, and they have far-greater resources to pull it off! My Rating is 10+ for this category

My only problem is that I wanted a box like this 5 years ago. I own 2 Repeaters, and once it has been out for a while I will get a couple more(I think that a totally foot-operated random-access loop recorder would very useful and fun!)

I'd give it a 10 for ease of use via it's front panel. Very well designed and easy to use. Sweet. Oh the other hand, as a guitarist, if I need to step on more than one pedal to access a function, it's not really available. Electrix recommended using the Rolls Midiwizard as a midi controller, which I purchased before I actually got the unit, and I find it to be way lacking in what it takes to control the Repeater with your feet. So for using with your feet, I'd give it a 3. I'd rather give up the ability to directly access any loop number (over a thousand possible!) to be able to step once and get it to cue up the next loop and automatically go into it recording. This lack is a BIG deal, in my opinion. I also wish it allowed you to alter the default settings. Even if you had to load them in from the CFC every time you used it, it would be fine. The good deal is because it's a software driven design, features can be added or altered in future revisions, although at this time Electrix is being tight lipped about what to expect in the near future. Right now, a bug that make it impossible to easily synch a loops to midi (I posted a work around on the Electrix Repeater Forum) is keeping me from using it as I intended, but hopefully that will be cleared up soon.

This thing sounds GREAT. After looping with a Lexicon JamMan for the last 10 years, it's like someone came into the room and turned on a 800 watt halogen light! I can see now! Time stretch and pitch change also work well, with expected, but interesting artifacts when taken to the extreme. The effects loop seems to be line level only, so if you've got instrument level stomp boxes or in my case a Lexicon Vortex, it won't really work. I couldn't set the input low enough on the Vortex to get a good level, but putting it in front of the Repeater worked well enough for me. Remember: This baby is line level all the way. I would NOT recommend pluging the output directly into your Marshall stack set on "11" (though they go up to 20...which is 9 louder, innit?) The place for this baby is in your mixer's or amp's effect loop. The problem with this now is that there's no way to kill the input to the output, but Electrix as promised to change this in the first software revision which is coming "soon."

I've yet to use it at a gig, but it seems very solid, as do all the Electrix products (I own a Warp Factory and a MO-FX)

Well, so far Electrix has been very attentive, but no real results yet for bugs that were found. I wish they were a little more forth coming about when and what to expect in the eagerly awaited bug fix update, and what to expect in future software revisions. To me, no news is confusing news. I think it's too early in the game to really say at this point, but I was another customer that had purchased a bad CFC card and had them take it back and send me a working one. That's pretty good. It happend pretty quickly.

Although a bug is keeping me from "easily" using it as I intended, I've figured out workarounds that, until the bug is fixed, will do. This baby is really opening up new territory, and it's no doubt a pretty amazing box. Especially for the price. If you're expecting a stereo EDP or JamMan, don't get it... well, maybe get it. If you don't care about MIDI synch, this thing is amazing. Being able to take loops off the CFC and into the computer software of your choice opens up a world of music production that I've only begun to scratch the surface of. I'm giving it an 8 rating for now, but if and when they fix the MIDI/Loop Point Assist bug and give you the ability to cue up a new loop and go into it recording will bring this rating up to a ten.

forewarning:
i was kinda bugged by the immensely negative review, herein, by 'anonymous'.
'anonymous' may have been correct for criticizing repeater on some of its (current, & probably addressable) failings;

but, ignoring the immense positives that repeater brings to the small, competitive looping-fray got to me for a number of reasons:

1) i love the repeater, both for what it does *and*
2) for what it represents, ie: another *choice* in the realm of 'live'-loopers -a choice that brings new possibilities/interface to the arena-, and
3) i loop nearly every day; i'm not a hobbyist (though i harbor no odd feelings to those who are!), and i found an immediate place for the repeater in my *daily* work.
so:

i use the repeater as an interactive loop-recording/writing/playback device, along w/an EDP, a modified pcm42, various analog delays, computer, drumachines, tablamachine, etc.....

i have thus far used the repeater -effectively, i think- both at live performances, and
rather intensively on recent recording sessions:
w/david bowie, w/tim berne, w/donna lewis, on my own 'splattercell'-project and
on very highly-pressurised film-sessions such as 'skins', 'the bourne identity', 'heist', 'simone', 'a knight's tale', etc etc.

is the repeater easy to use?
well, i've only cracked the manual to absorb the repeater's terminology/interface, and to program a peavey pc1600 midi ctrl to take advantage of repeater's ctrl capabilities.
so:
easy to use..... and it does things that no other device does.

all kindsa signal feeds my repeater, incl. teuffel & klein gtrs, microcassette machines, stage and/or computer outputs:
i think the thing sounds great, and --- unlike other loopers --- is multi-track and stereo, to boot.

i've had no extraneous (unusable) noise.

the pitch-shifting obviously sounds better w/monophonic signals, but i've used it effectively otherwise, as well; what's wrong w/a coupla surprising artifacts, once in a while, anyway?

and:
i *love* the sonic potential of the time-stretching.

no breakdowns, yet, with many thousands of miles on it, already.

be aware, though, of electrix' caveats re: cfc's of certain manufacture.....

ha!
electrix is listening, and:
unlike the manufacturers of most other looping devices, electrix appear *completely* commited to the future of looping via their repeater.
i've thrown *many* ideas in their direction (as have quite a few others), and trust that some of these will be incorporated into future sw revisions, as some have already been incorporated.
i think that repeater owners can expect a wealth of sw updates, bug-fixes & new feature implementation.
and:
when i bought a 'lousy' cfc from a local company, electrix replaced it.

here's the thing (there's always a thing):
repeater is not really based on the old 'long delay'-paradigm for loopers; neither has electrix claimed it to be the uberlooper:
it's a different beast, w/capabilites other than loopers that are already available ---
it was not meant to replace your jammen, boomerangs, nor EDP's, etc, but to offer something *else*,
namely:
a multi-track stereo loop-*recorder* w/realtime editing,
w/storage & recall,
& selectively independent pitch & time-shifting & track slipping,
an assignable fx-loop, and
a 'live mixer' interface, w/all controls easily midi-able.
on thisall, electrix has delivered, and more power to 'em.
if yer interested in live-looping -from any perspective- you oughta check this thing out;
indeed, my hunch tells me that a product like this may not appear again for a *long* time, w/this level of support.....
w/more reviews like those of 'anonymous', you'd better pick up a repeater now, before they show up on ebay for $2k.....
(pardon my version of melodrama, there, pls.....)

btw, fyi:
i am not an electrix employee, nor do i have a different version of sw than anyone else.

A short learning curve (this isn't exactly a one-button guitar pedal), but after 1/2hr with the manual I was up and making some seriously cool 4-track loops. I've been using an EDP and homemade tape loopers for years, and although these earlier products have their own interesting 'kwirks', the Repeater answers my cries for a far more professional looping tool. The biggest advantage is being able to FINALLY store my freakin loops for a performance! Electrix obviously listened carefully to all the looping maniacs, like myself, when designing this box, and then added their own batch of inspiring features, such as the time stretch, pitch shifting, and slip (who knew that one would be so much fun?).

I noticed a distinct sound mixed in with the noise-floor, but after optimizing my levels (IMHO: an important step when adding any new piece of gear) I have a clean signal. I'm now running Repeater directly into my soundcard, using the digital out. I'm also planning to use it live by adding all of my effects in Repeater's fx send loop, and then run Repeater into a portable mixer.

Overall, the sound quality is a vast improvement on the loopers I've been working with until now, plus, with stereo loops I retain a full, rich sound (ala Robert Fripp live).

I already had experience gigging with the Electrix Mo-FX, so expected the same rugged, reliable chassis on the Repeater. As another reviewer mentioned, it's a far cry better than those flimsy knobs on the EDP. If/when I buy a backup, it will be to have 8 tracks all sync'd up! Crazy stuff.

I've been very impressed with the open communication Electrix has with their customers. All of my pre-purchase questions were answered by one of the designers themselves. Kind of cool to have a discussion with the people who dreamed this box up.

I've been experimenting with layered looping for around 8 years, inspired by artists like Robert Fripp and Trey Gunn, but I bring my own flavour to the sound, using a wide range of tools like homemade distortion pedals, and variable-speed tape loops. After only a week with the Repeater it has already become the primary tool in my rig. Not only does it do all of the basic looping stuff I require, but brings with it some extremely inspiring sound mangling tools, allowing me to really explore and reshape a loop, then save it to the Compact Flash card (by the way...buy a larger Compact Flash card as soon as you can...the 16MB one that shipped with Repeater is just an evil tease!).

With one (relatively affordable) purchase, I have replaced at least five pieces of gear mixed into my rig, which I can happily sell off on eBay to make some money back.

Electrix has given me a gimpse into my future...now I want a second Repeater! Oh god...when will it stop ;-)

Extremely easy to use. I was onto it and making loops in seconds flat. I love the multi track looping concept. It's light years beyond mono devices like the Echoplex. I was able to use the built in mixer, and FX loop to instantly remix my loops with my MIDI synched FilterFActory. (which worked flawlessly). I don't know about Mr. Negative bellow. My guess is he is the competition (I'm always suspicious of anonymous posts.).

Fairly quiet. I have noticed a few irritations in the noise floor that seem to be related to the display scanning but nothing to bad. The digital out is clean and I have noticed on the electrix web site forum that there are issues running line level directly into an amp can be bad. The quality of the overall audio is amazing! It's very clear and bright. It doesn't seem to flatten the sound like other loopers I've tried.

Repeater is built like a tank. Much like my FilterFactory it's all metal with solid components and good solid feeling buttons.

Mr. negative must love his flimsy Echoplex knobs. Talk about being unroadworthy!

Unprecedented. There technical support has been amazing. I can actually talk to someone. Have you ever tried to get support from Gibson over the EDP? Electrix has a forum on there web site where they let people openly wine and complain about their products. They have even promised an OS upgrade from a few problems that came up in the forum. I don't know...I'm impressed. They seem like real people who really care about the looping community. They even hang out in the loopers-delight (www.loopers-delight.com) discusion group and answer question there.

I play a mix of electronic with guitar bass etc. I run Cubs, Repeater, FilterFactory, an MC-307, pc-1600 numerous plugins virtual synths and drum machines. Repeater integrates amazingly into my system. I love the fact that I can record loops, resample effects into them and then drag and drop my loops onto my computer for integration into Cubs stuff. The most important thing I can say so far is that this box has actually made me a better player. It has put me in better touch with timing and how I play. It's an amazing writing tool.
The only thing I didn't like was the bug with MIDI sync LPA which Electrix has promised to fix in an OS upgrade anyway.

No metronome count-in available. Unlike the Echoplex Digital Pro (a unit with its own issues), the Repeater is not ?bar smart? with respect to quantizing a recording. Astounding!

Pressing Rec to end a recording immediately restarts the pattern on a connected external drum machine instead of allowing the pattern to play to the end of the bar. This makes it impossible to smoothly record loops in a live fashion with a drum machine.

There is only 1 level of undo. Once you?ve begun to record a 2nd overdub, there is no way to undo any earlier overdubs (except redoing the whole loop from scratch).

Footswitch control (Digitech FS304, in this case, identical to FS300, per Digitech) does not exactly mimic button presses. For example, you cannot stutter trigger with the ?play? foot button as you can with the actual play button on the front panel.

The metronome sound on/off is done via a ?long? front panel button push. It is not doable from the footswitch, or (apparently) via MIDI.

Standard metronome options such as ?sound during play?, ?sound during record?, ?sound always?, ?sound never? are completely unavailable.

The circular blinking tap tempo button is visually annoying ? much more so than a simple blinking LED would be. There is no way to defeat the blinking.

Also, several bar-like LED segments in the ?division? area of the display chase their tails around and around in a very visually distracting way to no apparent purpose. This is not defeatable.

The user?s setting for the metronome volume is not retained across power cycles ? it comes back on full blast each time.

The erase loop function is accessed as a ?long? push on the Undo button. Except on the first pass of a brand new loop recording, the erase loop function is not available from the footswitch.

There is no power switch (just a ?sleep mode?).

The unit always exits trigger recording mode after one pass, requiring the user to reestablish this mode for each subsequent retake. IOW: you set up trigger record, you record a loop ? badly, you erase the loop, then you must set up trigger record again ? with manual button pushes. You can?t enable/disable trigger record from the footswitch, and you can?t set the Repeater to always use trigger recording for a ?fresh? pattern.

Stopping the Repeater after recording always sends a MIDI STOP command to a connected drum machine. There are definitely times when you don?t want this behavior, but repeater gives you no choice.

To summarize: There is no way to let a drum machine free run while recording loops quantized to bar boundaries. There is also no way to use the Repeater as the timing master while providing yourself with a count-in to establish the rhythm before loop recording initiates. Catch 22, happy tap dancing sucka!

What can I say? I'm VERY disappointed with the usability.

I find the user experience of the Repeater distinctly inferior to the Echoplex Digital Pro ? the unit I was counting on the Repeater to replace!

YMMV

The pitch shifting (tested on guitar chords), sounded terrible. Even moving one semitone sounded bad, and it just gets worse the farther you shift.

Time stretching to an external MIDI clock sounded good.

The unit occassionally crackled.

IMO, because of the way it doesn't work, it is unsuitable for a gig.

The unit relies on a special external power supply, connected to the unit by a custom connector with tiny pins. This rigging is non-standard and fragile.

The case seems solid.

I feel unsupported as a customer because I don't feel that Electrix did a good job of alpha and beta -ing this unit with real users before releasing it to the public, nor did they take adequate notice of existing art as a baseline upon which to improve.

Good points, such as they are:

Time stretching to an external MIDI clock sounds good
Having 4 mono racks (or 2 stereo tracks) beats having only 1
A loop trim function is offered
It will remember loops

I was really looking forward to this unit, but the Repeater completely fails to live up to its promise, IMO. Spending several hours with it produced intense dissatisfaction rather than the (expected) seamless looping experience I was hoping to buy. Perhaps Electrix will release a software update to address the problems mentioned. Perhaps not. Caveat emptor.

I had the opportunity to play with the Repeater, at the invitation of Lisa Tyner of Electrix, last April. I have to say that although I had already read the beta manual for it, I still found it to be incredibly intuitive to move around and manipulate. I was able to plug my Chapman Stick directly into the stereo inputs (albeit without any preamplification). It was capable of doing everything that the manual promised (even though it was still over 5 months before the release date).

I assure you all that you will NOT be disappointed in this device!!!

On the beta unit, the sound quality was spot-on, even though I was pluging my Stick directly into the inputs.

Like all Electrix gear, this thing is a tank. Solid cast chassis and face plate, and very solid knobs. I don't foresee any mechanical problems coming up with the Repeater.

Dealing with the Electrix/IVL US Sales Director has been fun. IVL has long had a great reputation for customer service/support.

I truly believe that the Electrix Repeater will be the end-all/be-all of Looping equipment. With the ability to archive your loops onto a Flash RAM card and then blow it into your computer for file manipulation/mastering, I feel this device will totally change to course of live music performance (not to mention the DJ market).

Patiently awaiting my Repeater,

Paul Walters
http://paulwalters.go.to
http://mp3.com/Paul Walters