"feedback" loop using soundout-soundin

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Uncle GroOve
Uncle GroOve's picture
Joined: May 23, 2013

Hi peeps - pls bear with me while I ponder this idea.

I'd like to generate a quasi-feedback loop by connecting the audio output to the input.

obviously I would be connecting a number of contraptions between the two, otherwise I'd just get some form of digital howl.

Is this an "appropriate" way of using AM, or would I cause issues/problms (e.g. runaway cpu use, crashes, etc)?

Peace & grooves

Paul

Babaluma
Babaluma's picture
Joined: June 24, 2009

The latency will interact with things so it will be "delayed" feedback, and therefoire might ot feedback exactly how you want or expect it to. nothing wrong with it in principle. I'd stick a brick wall limiter just before the soundout to avoid digital overs/horrible distortion, and I'd add Gain contraptions at various places in the chain for fine control. I've done similar things before with great results, so good luck!

Uncle GroOve
Uncle GroOve's picture
Joined: May 23, 2013

:-)

That's the kind of answer I was hoping for - thank you for sharing!  Will set up the structure later tonight & will see what I manage to get it to coax out of itself....

Paul

Babaluma
Babaluma's picture
Joined: June 24, 2009

no worries, hope you get some crazy sounds!

 

i've actually had better success with internal feedback loops, rather than feeding physical audio outputs back to into inputs. e.g. create a massive circle of ten contraptions/vst plugins, then tap from various conraptions into a mixer, so you can hear, and/or blend the feedback from different parts of the chain. i once built a cabalistic tree of life in mulch this way, with ten contraptions and the 22 paths connecting them. sounded amazing!

Uncle GroOve
Uncle GroOve's picture
Joined: May 23, 2013

@babaluma:

yep that is where my experimentstion is taking me. Basically looping around a mono gain contraption into a phaser /flanger/chorus and then into a delay and back.

My only gripe is that I'm unabe to pipe in anything via soundin... Soundflower doesn't appear to be working in Mac OSX 10.8.2 

:-/

Cheers

Paul

 

 

jet jaguar
jet jaguar's picture
Joined: June 23, 2009

Internal feedback stuff is great... I've got quite an interest in old school dub, so have toyed with trying to make echoes that change character over time.  Never really hoping to sound like a tape echo, but inspired by that kind of thing.  

 

Take an SDelay, set its internal feedback at zero, then route it through other effects (and always a gain contraption!) then back into itself, so successive delays change character each time they go around the loop. Send an extra line out somewhere in the chain to a mixer or sound out.
 

Parameter mod and/or automation also good fun. :)

Babaluma
Babaluma's picture
Joined: June 24, 2009

Great idea! I've found the regular Mulch SDelay contraption, with something like a saturator VST in the feedback loop (try Voxengo Tube, or Klanghelm IVGI, both free), to be a great way of getting evolving dub style delays. Another good technique for being able to have WAY more feedback before distortion/clipping occurs, is to put a FrequencyShifter in the feedback loop too, sounds amazing!

jet jaguar
jet jaguar's picture
Joined: June 23, 2009

Whoa, got to try a FrequencyShifter right now. :)

Babaluma
Babaluma's picture
Joined: June 24, 2009

Yeah, I think Frequency Shifters and Pitch Shifters have often been used to get way more feedback than you'd normally be able to get away with. If you use a very small frequency or pitch shift in the feedback loop, the feedback builds up much more slowly, so you can get really dense and deep delays before it really starts to clip/distort/runaway/oscillate etc. Think this sort of stuff has been done on Eventides for ages, such as on Steve Hillage's "Rainbow Dome Musick" etc. Add a little grit from some kind of saturator, to take off the clean/perfect digital edge of the SDelay, and make each recursion slightly different, and you're in delay heaven! I used to do it in hardware too when I had a Frac Rack modular system. Put quite a few of these tricks in place on my E93 track here:

https://soundcloud.com/babaluma/babaluma-e93

(Has reached the download limit, so let me know via PM if you'd like a downloadable lossless version).

paradiddle
paradiddle's picture
Joined: June 24, 2009

I've done some fantastic feedbacks with a microphone close to the speakers. You have to be careful though. A limiter does but  tends to crush the

character of the feedback. Some filter or eqs in the chain to cut a bit of excess worked for me.

Winslow17
Winslow17's picture
Joined: December 29, 2010

This discussion reminds me of an AM patch I posted here - BodeEchoWerk - which involves delay and freq. shifting.