Audio and latency

A looper lives or dies on timing. Loopylicious lets you choose your audio devices and then measures your setup so every take lands in the groove.

Audio device settings

Open Settings and go to the Audio tab. From there you can choose:

• the audio driver (the audio system for your platform),
• the buffer size (smaller is lower latency but works the CPU harder),
• the output device, and
• the input device.

A different input per track

You are not stuck with one input. Each track can take its audio from the default stereo pair or from an individual input channel, so you can, for example, record a mic onto one track and a line input onto another. Pick a track's input source on the track itself.

Recorded latency compensation

Every device adds some delay between what it plays and what it records, and cheap drivers or Bluetooth headphones add a lot. Loopylicious measures it so your loops stay in sync regardless.

In the Audio settings, use Calibrate Latency. The app makes a short chirp and listens for it: "Calibrate latency by playing the output into the mic." It then works out the real round-trip delay and offsets every recording by that amount. The result is saved per device and sample rate, so you only need to do it once for each setup.

Do this the first time you use a new audio device or pair of headphones. It is the difference between layers that drift and layers that lock together.