Ways to synchronize something to a loop?

I really miss a way to be able to synchronize anything to a loop. I mean, if this would be possible, ER-301 would be a fantastic groovebox. Sample loops put me instantly in a hip-hop-ish mood, that remains frustrated by the lack of immediacy.
Some of these suggestions might be helpful :

  • Having a global Transport Unit and an option to set length of loops relatively to this unit.
  • Having an absolute time parameter (in ms) to force loop to a specific length.
  • A “master” looper ? Other loopers’ lengths could be set to fractions of the master length.

Alternatively i found this to work quite good (from Syncing a loop to a clock in v0.3) :

Load your loop in to a Grain Stretch unit, with How Often? = loop and How much? = all.
Set the speed bias to zero and the speed gain to 1.0
In the speed sub-chain insert a Pulse to Hertz unit.
Set the source of the speed sub-chain to your 1ppqn clock.
Set the source of the trig sub-chain to your sync signal (once per loop).

Well. No, it doesn’t, it syncs a loop to a clock, but by a factor that’s relative to the sample length. So it doesn’t allow sync two different loops.
How can we sync two loops regardless of their original lengths ?

As concluded in the thread you linked, it’s not currently possible because sample length is not exposed, nor are the required math operators available. Hence the need to manually specify a scaling factor.

I’ve been syncing loops via a trigger mapped to the “reset” control on the 301 looper or the “trig” control on a sample player if they are sharing the same buffer. I use a Doepfer A-160-2 Clock Divider slaved to the master clock in my system (Digitakt). The midi clock and START messages are converted to triggers via an Intellijel uMidi so when I hit play on the Digitakt the looper resets to the beginning and you send the appropriate clock divide amount depending on the length of your pattern on the Digitakt.

To clarify, i’m looking to synchronize to loops of pre-made sound material, with different original tempos.
Not live recordings.

We will eventually get some more automatic (stream-lined) way of syncing 2 loops but it is possible with a little bit of off-line calculation right? @miminashi describes the necessary calculations in his post in that thread on syncing.

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Well it does seem possible of course but it’s a workflow killer. And i don’t even know the length/BPM of the loops i’m using.

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