Multiple Looping playback device

[Bryson]

Hello all,

 

Can anyone suggest a device capable of playing back four tracks of audio, and looping them, for an art installation piece. I know I could use two stereo machines, but I thought a single device might be cheaper.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

Bryson

[paulears]

cubase, logic, and others of that ilk. they can't loop a different times, but copy and past 4 hours woth on as many tracks as youneed, then trim the end and do a single loop back

[london sound]

Tascam used to make such (four track cassette) some four track MD machines might.

 

 

 

 

Ian

[David]

SFX software would work really well

[Stutwo]

Record each track into a laptop using a music editing program (an Apple Mac running Logic or even Garageband would be my choice, then as the previous poster said, cut and paste or tell it to loop. Then take audio out into the sound system from the minijack socket. Should all work.

[Peter Russell]

You may want to have a look at This by Alcorn Mcbride.

I have looked at them in the past when I have had a needed to do similar types of installation but have usually ended up using our stock of Mackie SDR2496 24 track recorders because they have been sat on the shelf.

 

There are quite a lot of compact flash (Or similar storage) type players like this one and these are coming onto the market, having no moving parts they have a low failure rate and have a low fiddle factor, which make them ideally suited to your application.

 

HTH Peter

[James]

Can I add another vote for SFX or an Audiobox.

 

James

[london sound]

Just remembered I used an ADAT (8 tracks) for such a project.

 

 

 

Ian

[TomLyall]

Do all four tracks have to be syncronised?

 

Would it be worth having the audio put onto DVD so it loops and use the front and rear channels to achieve the four you need. You can get some quite cheap DVD players, just make sure it's got seperate audio outputs.

[dbuckley]

PCStage. Just needs a PC, any old 233+ will do, software is free.

 

PCStage download page

 

PCStage has an advantage over the vastly more expensive SFX for multichannel playback as it supports ASIO devices, and some multichannel sound cards only do WDM stereo support on the first pair of outputs.

 

Alternatively, use a Gilderfluke playback brick or two. MP3-25 is $249 and includes 2x11w amps, so may be all you need. Advantage over a PC is 100% reliability.

 

The AudioBox is also a great solution, but a bit OTT for simple looping udio playback, and is hard disk based, so if reliability is the concern, then the Gilderfluke bricks are the answer.

 

[edited for more detail and speeling]

[MrPete]

Depending on the actual specs you're after, could you not use a cheapo mp3 player - make sure it's capable of looping ALL tracks - then you can just upload the 4 tracks onto it and leave it playing all day. Mains & battery powered, depending on what the installation is :huh:

But yeah, depends if the 4 tracks are one after the other, or playing back at the same time.

 

Perhaps I've gotten the wrong end of the stick tho, sorry if I have!