Oh I see. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. So it can capture multiple midi channels simultaneously?
Yes, and a single ‘part’ can pretty much contain an entire song in it up to something like 16 channels and 600+ beats in length. Not sure if there are any limits other than it just becoming hard to manage.
There are some videos on their youtube of them doing backups of songs on other devices, especially the MT8 that it’s based on by just playing them into the RK008.
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So I’ve come across an undocumented limitation of the RK008, annoyingly right at the start of a live set on Saturday night.
I’ve been using it as a live midi looper with a combination of a nord drum 3 into itself and a linnstrument into digitone. Which was working a treat, but upon recording a new loop I got a message saying ‘Bummer Dude’ and it refused to save anything. Luckily I had a couple of practise runs saved on the device and I was able to get by for the set.
After contacting the developer, they mentioned the following: “The rk008 has the same memory structure as the MMT8 which is 64K. This also defines the way of recording. The MMT8 has 1 block of 64K, the rk008 has 16 blocks 64K each (the songs) but they can’t be used as one so if a song is full you need to select a new one to record in another section of 64K.”
I didn’t really have that much saved in it yet, I was up to part 5, but had only really fully used 2 parts. Just something to keep in mind if anyone like me was hoping it would be a perfect compact MPE sequencer. Not to say it’s not still useful, but will definitely be a lot more restrictive than the website indicates, which states “Each track can contain a complete multichannel song if you want.”
Obviously the linnstrument is going to have way more data than a standard midi song, but still it’s a bit of a letdown. Checking some of my midi collection, I have quite a large number >64K and very few <30K so you would probably need to be pretty conservative with your song composition as it is without factoring in MPE level data.
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FWIW, before it came out, I asked him about using it with the Linnstrument and he said it probably wouldn’t work because of the memory limitation.
While I’m sure it was annoying to run into, this is a funny nod to the MMT-8 which has the exact same message when hitting the memory limit
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I’m trying to see if we can get an mpe looper added to the Mod Dwarf pedal environment. Midi tape recorder can’t be ported because it’s built to rely on AUv3 features, but other options are looking possible.
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How is AUv3 an obstacle?
MTR is heavily tied to OSX/iOS features, and relies on sample-accurate midi timing which is built into AU3 and doesn’t exist elsewhere as a native function. The MOD pedals run Linux under the hood and only support LV2. Thus, it wouldn’t be a more-or-less easy plugin, it would be a complete rewrite with a different architecture under the hood, and more work than the original.
That said, there are other midi loopers that might be an easier option, although they’d need MPE support. At least for me, the platform is attractive because I already have the hardware and it’s got plenty of ram/is rugged enough for stage use, etc. We’ll see how it goes.
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Using the AUM or Loopy Pro AUv3 host apps you can easily integrate MTR into a hardware setup either by bluetooth or cable-based MIDI.
Yes? Like, I’m aware how the app works. If I wanted to buy and use an ipad, that would be an obvious solution — it’s just one I’m not interested in. This conversation was predicated on working on hardware, hence talking about the possibilities of doing it in hardware.
Anyway, we’re well off topic, so I’ll leave this here.
ok, I see, sure, having an iPad is a key requirement for this 
Just ordered mine from Perfect Circuit. I have all those little 1010 Nanoboxes so kind of excited to use this with those and see what I can do with it. I love midi sequencers and the only one i have not tried is the Cirklon…so this will be fun.
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I don’t have one. I’m reading through the manual… it seems like length is assigned to a whole part?
Can different tracks in a part have different lengths? As in, can I have a 16 step kick/snare on track 1 and a 256 step pad on track 2 for example?
There is a max length for each part…but you can distribute the lengths how you want on each track.
Say, you want a long drum or base part for the beginning of your song, you can do 10 bars on track 1, 30 bars on track 2. Then on part 2, you can do 8 bars on 6 different tracks.
So, yes, you can pick how long you want each track up to the full part limit. 16 step on one, 256 on the other, no problem.
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And the clock is rock solid…it’s a very good midi recorder…hard to edit but super focused on what it does.
That’s great! thanks so much for the reply. I’ve been debating between the midi looper from Bastl, or this RK008… the simplicity of the Bastl is appealing, but the saving of parts and sequences on the RK008 seems more appealing.
I’m also currently debating if I should get the Bastl midilooper or the RK-008. Wondering as well if an iPad setup using AUM + the free Midi Tape Recorder App (MIDI Tape Recorder - Perfectly and effortlessly record and play MIDI) + the Retrokits RK-006 (which I already own) could get me close enough to the functionality that these two devices provide? Anyone out there using the Midi Tape Recorder App for this type of thing?
Me three.
