Refrain

Live Looping Sampler

Refrain is two instruments sharing one loop buffer.

It is a live looper: audio arriving at the inputs is recorded, wrapped to a bar length you choose, and played back seamlessly. Overdub onto it, let it decay away over repeats, or reshape which part of it plays.

It is also a slice instrument: that same recording is playable from the keyboard. Map the whole loop across the keys and transpose it, or chop it into as many as sixteen slices with one slice per key. Three voices sound at once, each with its own envelope and its own pair of outputs.

Behind both sits a four-ring delay network on a fold-out panel, fed from the input, the loop, the voices, or any blend of the three.

Play the loop, not just the transport

Most loopers give you a buffer and a play button. Refrain gives you a movable window onto that buffer. SIZE sets how much of the loop plays and OFFSET moves that section through it, so you can scrub through your own recording in time, shrink a bar to a stutter, or automate the window and let the loop rearrange itself. DECAY ages the buffer a little on every pass, so overdubs bloom and then dissolve rather than piling up forever.

The window shapes loop playback. The keyboard voices read the same buffer through their own region controls, so you can scrub the loop while the slices you are playing stay exactly where they are.

A delay network, not a delay

Four independent rings, each with its own time — synced from 4/1 down to 1/32, or free in milliseconds — plus send, regeneration and cross-feed. Set the rings to share a bus and they all hear each other; chain them and each feeds only the next.

Two processors sit inside the feedback, so they act once per repeat rather than once on the output. DIFFUSE smears the repeats into a reverb tail without shortening it. SPIRAL pitch-shifts the recirculation, so each repeat climbs or falls a step, with independent control over whether the shift applies to a ring’s own feedback, to the hops between rings, or to both.

The network is meant to be pushed. Rather than limiting how far the feedback controls go, Refrain lets them run and gives you GUARD and GOVERN to shape what happens when they do.

Built for performance

Nothing waits for a mouse. Recording, playback, clear, reset, mute and speed bend are all on the panel and all under CV, alongside the window and slice parameters — an LFO on the window offset turns a static loop into a moving one with a single cable. CV outputs report record and play state, end of loop, playhead position and slice phase, so Refrain can drive the rest of your rack as easily as it is driven.

The device is quiet when it is quiet: an idle instance with nothing recorded stops processing until signal returns, rings that are switched off cost nothing, and folding the panel stops all drawing.

In the box

• 26 factory patches across six categories, from clean starting points to deliberate instability
• Separate outputs for the delay, the effects loop and each of the three voices
• Full CV in and out, grouped by function on the back panel
• Quick Start guide and Operation Manual

Refrain — Doodov Digital Design. Rack Extension for Reason.

Refrain — Technical Specification

Looper

• Loop lengths of 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1, 2, 3 or 4 bars, recorded in sync with the Reason transport
• Free record bypasses the arm phase so recording starts the instant you press REC, while still landing on the bar length you set
• Early stop ends a take before the bar count is reached, trimming the loop to the quarter note you stopped on
• Unlimited overdub passes, optionally quantised to the bar grid
• Decay attenuates the buffer on every pass, from infinite sustain to tape-style dissolve
• Reverse playback, adjustable loop-boundary crossfade and fade time
• Play, Overdub and Solo loop modes
• Reset quantised to the transport or applied instantly
• Speed bend wheel, armed by its own toggle, bending speed and pitch together
• Click-free clear: the buffer is faded before it is wiped

Playback window

• Size sets how much of the loop plays, from the whole buffer down to a short fragment
• Offset moves that section through the loop for in-time scrubbing
• Window quantise snaps window movement to musical divisions, or lets it move freely
• Applies to loop playback only; the keyboard voices have independent region controls

Slice instrument

• Three-voice polyphony, each voice an independent reader of the loop buffer
• Pitch mode maps the whole loop across the keyboard, transposed from a settable root note
• Slice mode assigns one slice per key from the root upward, up to sixteen slices
• Automatic slice detection with adjustable transient sensitivity, or even manual division
• Freeze locks the slice map so it is not recomputed while the buffer changes underneath it
• Poly, Mono, Legato and Retrigger voice allocation
• On Note and Real Time performance modes; Real Time drops a voice into the loop where it already is
• Per-voice loop with sync or free length
• Independent voice region: loop length, start point, end point, and voice reverse
• Attack, release, portamento and formant shift per voice

Pitch engine

• Three algorithms: Tape (speed and pitch coupled), Time (length held while pitch moves) and Pro (higher-quality variant)
• Grain density selectable as Sparse, Medium or Dense
• Slice playback speed independent of pitch where the algorithm allows
• Character section: drag, wow and Time/Pro blend level

Four-ring delay network

• Four independent delay rings on a fold-out panel
• Per ring: sync or free timing, delay time (4/1 to 1/32 when synced, milliseconds when free), send, regeneration and cross-feed
• Three independent feed sends — input, loop and voices — so any combination of sources can be delayed
• Cross-feed as a global bus (all rings hear each other) or a chain (1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 1)
• Network dry/wet, stereo width, and continuous rotation of the rings through the stereo field

Diffuse and Spiral

Both run inside the ring feedback, acting once per repeat rather than once on the output.

• Diffuse — allpass chain running fully wet, so repeats smear into a reverb tail with no loss of energy; size and amount controls
• Spiral — pitch shift in the recirculation, ±12 semitones per pass, with independent enables for a ring’s own feedback and for the cross-feed hops between rings
• Spiral runs first, then Diffuse; both bypass cleanly and affect the delay repeats only, never the dry loop or the voice outputs

Effects return

• Return mix with Send and Inject routing modes
• Guard — soft limiting inside the effects path, adjustable engagement point
• Govern — level governor holding the overall effects level
• Clear effects tails without touching the loop buffer

Back panel — audio

• Stereo main input and output
• Stereo effects send and return, placing an external device inside Refrain’s own effects path ahead of the guard and governor
• Stereo delay output for the ring network on its own
• Three individual stereo voice outputs plus a summed voice pair

Back panel — CV

• Gate and trigger in — note, gate, record, play, clear, reset, mute, reverse, freeze slices, bend active
• Level and modulation in — loop volume, dry mix, effects mix, play level, voice volume, clear effects, attack, release, portamento, formant
• Loop, slice and speed in — decay, window size, window offset, window quantise, slice select, slice offset, slice speed, speed bend
• CV out — record state, play state, end of loop, playhead position, slice phase, slice count

Patches and interface

• 26 factory patches in six categories: Basics, Ambient, Rhythmic, Slice and Perform, Pitch and Motion, Experimental
• No factory patch stores a held transport button, so loading one never starts recording or clears your buffer
• Patch browser on the main panel and on the folded front strip, with a note-activity lamp on both
• Circular loop display showing playhead, slice markers, voice positions, ring positions and device state
• Full automation and Remote support for every parameter

Performance

• Idle instances stop processing once the delay feed has been silent longer than the longest ring delay
• Rings that are switched off are skipped entirely, including their diffusion and pitch shifting
• Folding the device stops all panel drawing

Refrain — Doodov Digital Design. Rack Extension for Reason.