This looks fantastic, and Retrokits stuff is rock solid.
Additional info from the facebook post:
A â16 songs with 99 âloopsâ (parts) each which on their part can control 8 seperate tracks wich each can hold 16 midi channelsâ - looper
This is the sort of thing I wouldâve jumped on for sure a couple of years back in my more heavily OTB days. Looks great.
Hold on, it records unquantised, but you can quantise and apply swing later ? Thatâs not what I would have expected in a midi looper ? (But what do I know, my only actual midi sequencing experience so far is a model:cycles)
EDIT: you can non-destructively quantise later
I obviously didnât dive into it now, but is it not similar to Bastl Midi Looper ? Apart from the number of tracks of course, but more as far as functionality goes.
Without having taken a closer look at the feature set I find the design very appealing.
Iâm very interested in a feature comparison, even based only on what we know right now. Maybe @pyna can tell us more ? The final pricing will be interesting WRT the bastl midi looper too.
Indeed, price will be a big factor in deciding between the two I guess. On first sight, it looks like the RK-008 is Bastlâs midi looper on steroids.
Seems Alesis MMT-8 inspired. Pretty cool.
Watching Retrokits as a company has been interesting. Each new product, slight larger, slightly more complicated. It wouldnât surprise me that they eventually add the audio side of things too. Retrokits is definitely a company to keep an eye on.
Does it has midi FXâs ?
When it was first announced I misread the post and didnât see the âmidiâ part of âmulti-track midi recordedâ and was really pretty excited⌠I donât think the RK008 is quite my sort of product though it looks great for what it is.
I hope itâs a success and it inspires them to do something similar with multi-track audio to SD card in that form factor. Something like a budget alternative to the Blue Box - obviously missing a bunch of features but focusing on an easy way to capture multi-track recordings for importing into a DAW later. If you could get that sort of device for the 250 - 300 mark then I think it would sell like the proverbial hot cakes. Sorry⌠Iâm well off-topic nowâŚ
It would be cool, but Retrokits isnât exactly a budget company, their products are super high quality and packed with features, I would expect their take on a Bluebox to cost even more, not less.
quantize individual tracks, or globally?
from the video, it looks like quantize can be applied per track
Iâm general it seems like itâs a small little box that records unquantised and outputs how it likes ⌠quantised , swing etc
So general assumptions ( cos theyâre clever people ) ⌠all tracks , individual tracks , tracks can have their own quantise , tracks can have individual swing ,
Data wise it seems that it can condense things down to a single track , so I presume internally the data stores everything relevant to the note ( note, velocity , timing and midi channel )
In summary
Thereâs little info in this but presume it can do the basics and some nice extras but youâll still need to actually write the music , it wonât do everything
what would be the application of this if your setup already includes a midi sequencer?
like what would an artist like Anchorsong get out of this?
I hope there is a suite of Midi Fx wizardry in this thing
making sick tracks like this
Iâd use it as a long-form compositional notepad with the OT and the rest of my Elektrons. Develop 16-beat phrases, play them into the RK008, play back through the synths while tweaking, etc.
It needs to be $300 or less, otherwise it probably makes more sense to buy one of the more full featured sequencers. But an MMT-8 in a calculator body would be very nice to have at the right price.
I used to have an mmt-8, thatâs an intriguing thoughtâŚ