continuous recording program?

[Neutron]

I am looking for something perhaps one of you has heard of.

I would like to record a continuous loop of what i am doing all the time, that way when i play something i like i can just save it, instead of setting up recording, probably have to do a few takes and forget the feeling of what i was doing.

A small unobtrusive program, or even a hardware device on the main outputs. then when i just finished playing something i like, i can press a button and the last (up to 30) minutes can be saved.

everything beyond 30 minutes ago (or a presettable time) should be continuously deleted so it does not fill up the storage device with rubbish.

maybe its a common thing, but i haven't heard of it, or i don't know what its called. "continuous recording" is not a helpful search!

[Mr Arkadin]

Line 6 do a cute device:

http://line6.com/backtrack/

The Backtrack+Mic appears to give four hours of recording at 44.1kHz/24-bit before looping round again. Unfortunately it only has a guitar input (as well as the mic input) so I'm not sure how useful it would be (no stereo, not good for keyboard/line level sources).

[Neutron]

i think that thing was what gave me the idea in the first place. was disappointing it was mono and no line ins.

[jksuperstar]

You can do the opposite: setup a simple lightweight wave recording program, and record to someplace easy...like your desktop. Then just delete it if you don't want it. The extra 4 hours won't be that much space on the drive, not in stereo.

Or just use VDAT for the same thing...in fact you could define a tape as 8 tracks, then just swap between tracks for more space. that way you don't have to setup a tape every time you want to be recording.

[Neutron]

yeah but then i have to remember to start it. and edit the huge session file.

sometimes i come up with something when i wasn't thinking of recording, and then have to do something else, and come back and cant remember what i did,
also with the modular, sometimes by the time i decide to record, i have changed so many settings i cant recreate the exact combination of twiddles that created the sound in the first place.

i would just have it connected to the wave out on scope and have it start every time i start my computer. after a riff or modular doodle or whatever that i like just press a button, and it asks how long i want to save.

[Tau]

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but I use a Zoom H4N handheld recorder with a 16GB SD card. Just press REC, and it can go for hours and hours. AFAIK it won't loop, so a little housekeeping will always be necessary. You can split files onboard and set folders for easier recollection, plus it's got some nice features like 4-track recording, overdubbing and bouncing, and the sound quality is quite OK (up to 24bit/96KHz) for the price...

You will need an analogue stereo out from the mixer, though...

http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h4n/

[Immanuel]

I don't use the feature myself, but I believe Samplitude can record in loops, where it overwrites (not deletes) everytime it starts over.

Also, I find the program very friendly to work with over all.

[Immanuel]

On a lower budget, you might want to check out, if Magix Music Maker has the same feature. As I undertand it, it is a dumped down version of Samplitude.

[garyb]

that'd be Magix Music Studio.

actually, the looping/overwriting thing is something that almost any of the better sequencers will do.

[siriusbliss]

Samplitude does 'comping' looped recording.
You can then go in and edit the layered tracks / takes to build one final track.
It can also handle long sessions.

Most of the 'major' DAWs can do this.

Magix Music Maker does NOT do comping, but it is looped based, and I don't know of it's limitations for recording long sessions (I doubt it's setup for long-session recording).

Greg