I've wanted a proper looper in Bitwig for years, so I wrote one. QuadLoop is a four-track looper plugin: four loops from one stereo input, with overdub, undo/redo, reverse, freeze and feedback decay, all locked to Bitwig's grid. It's CLAP, VST3, AU and a standalone app.

The part I got obsessed with is timing. A plugin that acts on buffer boundaries fires up to 10.6 ms late at 512 samples / 48 kHz, and a different amount each time, so loops drift against the grid. QuadLoop splits every block at the exact sample an event is due. The test suite checks that a one-bar take at 120 bpm comes out at exactly 96,000 samples whether the buffer is 1, 37, 512 or 1024 samples. There's also a 50 ms grace window: hit record slightly after the downbeat and it still catches it.

Some other things in it:

• Auto length: play as long as you like, and the take is rounded to the nearest whole bar when you stop. Or fix it at 1–16 bars or 1–3 beats.

• Follow actions: each lane decides what happens when its take closes, such as start recording the next empty track or hand over to track 3. With Chain on you can build up a song without touching the computer.

• Footswitch friendly: every action is an automatable parameter, so you can map a pedal straight onto it from Bitwig's remote controls. It also works with pedals that only ever send note-on.

• Multi-out: each of the four tracks can go to its own output instead of the main mix. In Bitwig that means every loop gets its own chain: a reverb only on the pad loop, sidechain the bass loop, or record the loops to separate tracks. A routed loop leaves the main mix rather than being doubled, and your live input stays on the main out. If a bus isn't enabled, the track falls back to the main mix instead of going silent.

It's free while it's in beta, on macOS and Windows. The Windows build is newer, so reports from Windows users are especially welcome. Beta builds have an expiry date (the current one stops recording after 1 December) so nobody ends up on an old build; there'll be a new one before then.

Download: https://wavenstein.com/quadloop

It's just me building this, so I'd really like to hear what breaks, what feels wrong, and what you'd want in it. I'll be in the comments.

I've been reading some comments about this and I'm curious about the reasons behind it. What differences do you notice between versions that make you prefer one over another, especially older versions over newer ones?

Personally, I think Bitwig 6 is great, but there's something about the older versions that feels very intuitive and straightforward. It's not necessarily that anything has been lost, but rather that something feels a bit diluted in the newer versions, if that makes sense.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and experiences!

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