Just received today!
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DUDE! The blue and grey combo is crisssssssp!
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Really excited to dive into this. Probably going to put all other tunes on hold and figure this thing out. Is there an updated manual for this online?
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Latest manual should always be here:
https://www.nanoloop.com/fm/manual.html
The blue buttons look great!
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hell yeah run that shit into a Digi !
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I’m already making little cheesy patterns on this thing, it’s actually pretty intuitive. Had a crash already but not tripping on it. How do you start and stop the sequencer? Blank pattern?
on the left of the first bank in nanoloop 2 there is a blank bank you activate to stop your current loop or you can set it to receive sync or you can load an empty bank, in song mode there you play and stop the song sequence with the start button on the GBA.
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Got mine a couple of days ago- here are my thoughts for the first few days:
There are a couple of issues: it has crashed maybe 3-4 times, Andrew there are a couple of features still missing. There are also some features in the manual which I’m not sure whether they’re missing or I don’t get how it works: the click and reverb tail things don’t make any difference as far as I can tell, or if they do they are too subtle.
Overall it’s trally cool though. Tiny, fine build, and fun. The led brightness can be changed which is cool. And the double mini led is actually ok when you get used to it. The pitch entering works well with the mini keyboard graphic.
The sound is really good. It can clip/distort as others have mentioned, but this is because there is no compression or limiting, so you just have to manage the gain per channel as ou would on a mixer.
The pattern management caused me some issues at first as it’s really easy to overwrite your patterns. After awhile though, it’s really good. You can really quickly switch out individual parts or the whole row mid pattern, load one, change it, print it somewhere else etc. You just have to be a bit careful with it!
And the sound itself- you can get s nice range out of it, just enough control to keep it interesting.
I’ll tecord a few clips to upload when I can. Enjoy guys!
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definitely not as intuitive for me, i need to put the time in.
Same here. Need to dig in and spend some time.
Have it going through a Monotron Delay as effects/speaker.
Joined the forum after finding this thread! Haha, yeah finally got mine a couple of days ago. As far as design goes the bare arse LEDs, kooky battery slots, toy buttons, seriously it all makes me very happy. You’ll never please everyone but it works for me personally.
The sounds you can get out of it are pretty satisfying, I’m very happy with that.
Gain structure, I think the full bar is too much as a default. A step in isolation will be OK but definitely will clip in the mix if up against something similar. I’m dialling back everything to a six (out of eight) as a default and that’s working much better.
Running through an external amp reveals the attenuation on output is quite dirty, which could be a tool in the arsenal for some nasty grit. I’m leaving that fully open for a cleaner sound.
On closer analysis the sound quality isn’t that great, there’s definitely some artefacts going on. Playing a single note dry with a long decay is a little too revealing, strangely affects some pitches more than others. I wasn’t under any illusion this was going to be high fidelity hardware, it’s not. Probably best not to look too closely, it’s too much fun to spoil it by getting all analytical. I don’t know if Oliver can make improvements here, I don’t mind general noise but the unintended inharmonics are my biggest concern overall.
The few bugs will I’m sure get fixed. The crash happens when the mono channel is in arp mode and you try to modulate FM depth, easy enough to step round that for the time being.
I’m really excited by this as you can probably tell, sorry for the essay, just had to get that off my chest.
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IMO the artifacts and clipping are an essential part of what makes Nanoloop interesting, because otherwise it’d be a pretty plain FM synth. The GBA version is the same (actually clips much more easily and has a higher noise floor) and I love it.
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That’s interesting, I don’t have any other Nanoloop hardware to compare to, only the app. I appreciate we’re in Lo-Fi territory. Yeah it’s not as if there isn’t a ton of other stuff for super clean tones.
first little jam I put together. Just manually switching a few patterns here. I’m enjoying it so far, but 16 step sequencer can be hard to make long phrases. The meta portion comes in handy there.
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Yeah I’m coming round to feeling the digital imperfections are part of its signature sound. Artifacts and all. The sound quality might not technically be that great but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sound great. It’s definitely got character.
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@geecen Hey, you’ve got really good taste for colors! Exactly the same buttons color combo like I do 
Sprite colours 
There are a couple of issues: it has crashed maybe 3-4 times, Andrew there are a couple of features still missing. There are also some features in the manual which I’m not sure whether they’re missing or I don’t get how it works: the click and reverb tail things don’t make any difference as far as I can tell, or if they do they are too subtle.
Same experience here - couple crashes. Save often folks!
The reverb is subtle but you can hear it best on short noise bursts. The ‘click’ on channel 1 is indeed subtle.
I actually end up using channel 2 for kicks because the arp seems broken on channel 2.
I also get this weird glitch sometimes where the channel 2 plays the init tone out the left channel only when other sounds are triggered - I have not dug too deep into this to figure out exactly what is happening. You have reboot the device to fix this (you can still save normally though).
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0.2 update!
https://www.nanoloop.com/fm/update.html
- bugs fixed that caused crashes
- new sound types: high pass and half sine FM
- improved pulse width effect
- stronger click (R channel)
- second voice added to L channel
- illuminated sequencer grid
- slowly increasing range for randomization
- swing
- pingpong / random playback modes
sound differences:
The square wave sound is generated with a new modulation scheme that has a slightly different “filter” characteristic: While the wave formerly had a more triangular shape, it’s now a fully symmectric square which appears louder with increasing modulation / “cutoff”. The pulse width effect works much better this way.
There are some other UI changes / improvements in the file screen, which bring it closer to NL2 in terms of functionality. Getting there!
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