{"id":327,"date":"2021-08-14T02:33:36","date_gmt":"2021-08-14T02:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=327"},"modified":"2023-07-05T04:28:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T04:28:00","slug":"loom-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/loom-2\/","title":{"rendered":"AIR Loom 2 \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Loom 2<\/em> \u2013 A Legend (Not Especially) Evolved<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Update June 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AIR is that foster kid that never got a break. When they were young their parents Mr & Mrs Wizoo divorced, and they moved in with cousin Digidesign. There they picked up a stylin\u2019 new name Advanced Instruments Research. Wicked! Cousin D was pretty cool for a while as every Pro Tools<\/em> included a load of AIR effects. But when Digi got married to AVID, she made it obvious that there was no room in the house for all her brood plus AIR. AIR hit the highway where, like Pinocchio, there were some bad influences hanging out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And next thing they knew they were in the inMusic puppet show along with AKAI, Alesis, Denon, M-Audio, Marrantz, Sonivox and Mr Tiddles the Wonder Cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s been some good and bad in that. The main bad was AIR went from being aspirational (\u2018wish I could get this cool effect without buying Pro Tools<\/em>\u2019) to sad (\u2018You Get The Steak Knives PLUS All AIR\u2019s effects for the LOW PRICE of Fuck All!\u2019) AIR’s VSTs are still often stocking stuffers. inMusic seemed keen on bundling AIR effects into the MPC series \u2013 cool for me, but signalling a bit of a dead end. But recently the MPC instruments have started to appear as VSTs<\/a> – although often restricted to the MPC interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loom 2<\/em> has so far not had an upgrade. The first Loom<\/em> was a clever thing, and Loom 2<\/em> a cleverer thing, but not well received being underwhelming \u2013 only 8 voices, a tiny interface, few improvements. I still think Loom 2<\/em> is worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To skim \u2013 by adding sine waves at exact harmonics in sufficient quantity you can make any sound you like, but it requires thousands of sines to get results. How do you manage this labour? A few companies have made it feel like subtractive synthesis<\/a> by starting with a simple sound (e.g. a saw wave) and providing modifiers that seem like filters or effects. Once you get near to the sound you want, you tweak these modifiers to rearrange the sines into places subtractive synthesis can\u2019t reach. Most tools (such as Harmor<\/em>) force you to apply modifications in a fixed order (a la a subtractive synthesiser). Loom 2<\/em> lets you place 34 modifiers as you like into a chain of 10 slots, promising an enormous range of pathways. Unfortunately, only some pathways make sense \u2013 some are redundant, some are self-defeating, and for some fool reason you can\u2019t rearrange these modules once placed, only delete them and start again. But still \u2013 many more pathways than comparable additive instruments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The modules are tiny, intricate. They need you to wear glasses. That\u2019s not helpful. Speaking of help \u2013 there\u2019s no manual. I\u2019m impressed by the gall of it \u2013 so easy you don\u2019t need a manual! There are pop ups that describe the thing you are doing at any moment (some of which aren\u2019t fully legible), but never do you get an overview or a procedure, unless you count YouTube videos which I don\u2019t. I am sufficiently good with synthesis that I can fumble my way through and get some really lovely sounds out of it, but if the idea was to make additive synthesis easier why give up halfway?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no re-synthesis as in Alchemy<\/em> or Padshop<\/em>, but there is vocoding. Actually, you should never use Loom<\/em> to emulate real instruments, you use it to make things that veer off into the metal ghost world. There is also morphing between sounds \u2013 an X-Y pad that moves between 4 tweaks \u2013 but the changes are \u2018meta-functions\u2019 like be brighter, less wobbly, with very few user specific settings. I don\u2019t use it much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loom 2<\/em> is something that you really should have. It\u2019s on some kind of permanent discount. It doesn\u2019t sound like any of your other keyboards or plug ins. It will be its own thing off to the left of the rest of your stuff. Why have yet another virtual analogue thing and just feel like you had more hamburger? Get this sparkle unicorn cupcake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loom 2 \u2013 A Legend (Not Especially) Evolved Update June 2023 AIR is that foster kid that never got a break. When they were young their parents Mr & Mrs Wizoo divorced, and they moved in with cousin Digidesign. There they picked up a stylin\u2019 new name Advanced Instruments Research. Wicked! Cousin D was pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-327","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-spectral"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}