Singular Sound Aeros Loop Studio

Pre-Roll

Looping pedals and devices have ranged over the years from ultra-small and simple (represented by the likes of the one-knob/one-switch TC Electronic Ditto class of pedals), to anything-but-portable, yet super-capable behemoths – like the BOSS RC-50 and Boomerang series of floor-borne looping workstations. Additionally, there have been more complex and less purpose-built systems, such as MIDI-triggered VSTs and DAW functionality on portable and stationary PC setups. But never before have I seen the two classes essentially mated – a modestly sized looping pedal with a color touchscreen that shows your color-coded waveform in real time as you record, overdub, and edit your loops. Because of that, we believe the Singular Sound Aeros Loop Studio may be a totally novel design and found it worthy of a Bass Gear Magazine Best In Show Award at 2020’s Winter NAMM show.

The first thing that will likely flash across your synapses upon beholding one of these in the real world is that, simply put, it’s just an incredibly cool piece of hardware. Its touch-sensitive screen is large and colorful, its footswitches sturdy and inherently mushroom-shaped for easy targeting and non-shoed compatibility (please at least wear socks though, alright?), and of course its large, Boomerang-esque scrolling wheel control, being well-sized and located for pedestrian manipulation, excites the imagination. It just looks super capable.

In technical jargon, the Aeros Loop Studio can be described as a 6-track, stereo looper pedal with a 4.3” touch-enabled screen, offering hands-free mixing and simultaneous parallel and sequential looping. It provides three inputs and three outputs, configured as one stereo Aux in/out and a pair of ¼” ins/outs. It also allows for expression pedal support, as well as MIDI in/out. You get three hours of mono recording time (1.5 stereo), upgradeable to 48 hours when using a separate SD card you can insert into the side panel. Software-wise, you can run six parallel tracks and six song parts for a total of 36 distinct loops per song, but a unique feature is that the Aeros gives you the option for both simultaneous parallel and sequential looping. It uses 32-bit floating point processing, 24-bit recording, professional DACs, and boasts <1ms latency, and 20hz – 20kHz range for studio quality recordings. Its 9v (center negative), 360mA power supply is included. It’s lightweight and relatively small, at 7.8″ x 5.6″ x 2.2″ (198 x 142 x 56 mm), 2lbs 4oz (936 g). The Aeros’ casing employs aluminum construction with a chip-resistant black coating. Finally, this looper utilizes a digital dry through bypass, according to the manufacturer.

When you plug the Aeros in (with its included AC adapter) and flip the side-mounted on/off toggle, you’re greeted with a menu screen first. From here, you can connect to a WiFi network (yes, this thing has built-in WiFi, as well as Bluetooth! Although the latter doesn’t yet have any functionality associated with it), use that connection to check for any firmware updates and update over the air, eventually view a Quick Start Guide (another coming-soon feature), alter the pedal’s Settings, enter the Songs area to select and edit saved pieces, and of course select Loop Studio to get started doing what you came here for. 

Echo Test

I was able to connect to WiFi and update the firmware right out of the box very easily, using the touchscreen’s pop-up keyboard to enter the pertinent info, in a process not at all dissimilar to that of a mobile Android or iOS device. After entering the Loop Studio area for the first time and attempting to get right down to business business business (sorry), having not previously perused the manual or online documentation, it wasn’t immediately obvious to me how to get the Aeros to record loops in what I later learned Singular Sound dubs “Freeform” mode – recording between spontaneous button mashes used as starting and end points – as opposed to working within the pre-specified tempo of the preloaded (or initially created) Song I was working in. I was using the Aeros in “Quantize” mode in fact, and wasn’t sure how to exit this, or what to do about it. After consulting the documentation sometime later, I learned that tempo, or lack thereof, is intrinsic to the Song file that you load, and there must always be a loaded Song file for looping to occur. The one that came preloaded was already set to Quantize mode, so what I needed to do was to edit this Song or create a new one that was set to Freeform mode instead, providing the functionality that I think most bass players and guitarists are going to look for right out of the box.

This leads me to a core observation about the Aeros that I found to be reinforced in many little ways; the Aeros is not your typical looper and shouldn’t necessarily be compared to or thought of as one of the ones I mentioned upfront in this review. It is, in fact, very much like a little PC, and offers quite a bit of impressive functionality and a great feature set, but also requires a different mindset, free of the expectations that a previous looper user may be prejudiced by. One case in point: when you turn the Aeros on, you’ve got a solid 10-15 seconds of wait time before you can use the pedal for looping or any other function it allows. It’s got an SSD-like bootup time, rather than a typical floor effect’s quick start. Secondly, as previously mentioned, it doesn’t immediately enter looping mode; you must first select that option either manually or with the appropriate footswitch. Thirdly, in order to switch between Freeform and Quantize modes, you are required to make a few selections, rather than to simply step on a switch and toggle between them; same to switch between saved Songs stored on the unit or on the expansion SD card. You’re also not able to have 0 Songs on the unit. In other words, to start from scratch, it requires at least one Song to be loaded in the Loop Studio, and items like tempo and time signature are set at the Song level, so a little bit of pre-planning seems to me to be necessarily involved.

Play

It’s difficult to know where to begin when attempting to describe the actual functionality of the Aeros. First off, it can be used in 2 x 2 mode, or 6 x 6 mode, selectable as a predetermined attribute of a Song. 2 x 2 mode entails having the ability to use two completely independent song parts that can each have two separate tracks. Each track can be thought of like their own looper within a looper; you can overdub, undo, mute, and adjust their volumes fully independently from each other. As for the song parts, that was somewhat of a new concept for me on a looper, but is actually very self-explanatory. The easiest example being the separate recording and playback of verse and chorus sections of a song. You could play different instruments into each of the two tracks, if you liked (the tracks’ inputs are assignable to either or both ¼” inputs or Aux In), overdubbing, undoing, and redoing as you go, and then press the leftmost switch up by the screen to switch over to the 2nd song part and record and loop your B section as you see fit. Switching back and forth between song parts takes only a single tap of the toes.

6 x 6 mode offers a lot more complexity, as the name would suggest, and frankly I didn’t have a strong use case for that method of operation. The function of each of the footswitches varies slightly between the two modes, which is well covered in Singular Sound’s documentation and video content on their site. When in either mode, the foot-friendly scroll wheel can be thought of as a volume control, but it can perform a number of functions, depending on what the screen is currently showing. Aeros gives you a built-in mixer in either mode, in which the scroll wheel can modify the levels of each track relative to the other, rather than to simply affect the overall master output volume. It’s also possible to mute either track completely in the mixer, rather than needing to scroll its volume down with the wheel in a manual, slower, and less precise way.

When used in its 2 x 2 operation mode on a Freeform Song, I was very interested – but also a little scared! – to discover that the two loops truly function like two completely separate entities, almost like you have two physically separate loopers sitting next to each other, in that the looping start and end points for each are completely divorced from each other. [Editor’s note: the latest firmware will have a “track sync” feature included that will keep freeform tracks in sync to each other by forcing them to be of equal length, or a multiple of previously recorded tracks.] This is killer for ambient, free material … but potentially ship-sinking for layering parts that are supposed to stay aligned with each other, especially with the human error margin factored in when opening and closing each loop! I suppose it’s a case of great responsibility coming alongside great power. Of course, when using a Song with attributed tempo and quantization, the Aeros will cleanly start and end things at expected temporal points and keep them aligned.

Another very hip facet of using the Aeros in quantized mode is that bar and beat lines are overlaid onto the right to left side-scrolling screen, so it’s very easy to have a visual cue for where you are in a phrase, when you might want to stomp on that switch, and how things are lining up. The display is color-coded differently for new recordings, overdubs, inactive elements, and several other categorizations. Here, the Aeros really excels. When controlled by a BeatBuddy, or just being used with a pre-formatted Song, the Aeros stands head and shoulders above all competitors with its excellently implemented visual feedback. This is the method with which I’d recommend using the Aeros a majority of the time.

Much of the functionality I believe users of more traditional looping stations may look for seems to be presently provided only through the use of the tightly integrated sister product, the Singular Sound BeatBuddy. However, at an additional $300, it doesn’t seem fair to me to need to incorporate that unit, as well, to take advantage of some of the Aeros’ non-real time accessible looping settings, such as tap tempo (accessible in the Song edit menu, but not as you’re playing) and other in-stream changes, spending close to $1,000 between the company’s two offerings. My contact at Singular Sound was initially insistent that I review the two units as a combined pair, but I felt reviewing the Aeros Loop Studio on its own merit was more valuable to others shopping in the high-end looper market. Do be aware, though, that if you happen to have a BeatBuddy or are willing to purchase and mate one to your Aeros, there is quite a lot of very cool integration and synchronicity those two items enjoy, and I’ll leave you to your own devices to research the company’s information and demo content there, dear reader.

While Singular Sound pretty much knocked it out of the ballpark with the Aeros’ hardware, I am compelled to mention that after very little use, the foot scroll wheel developed a little looseness, allowing a little bit of play in its movement before the actuator it controls was moved. There does appear to be a very small hole on the infinitely rotating control that I imagined was for the purpose of accessing a set screw or similar type of adjustment, but I was not able to investigate further. The scrolling function, once engaged, was unchanged.

Post-Roll

So, the workflow may be different from what you’re used to, but then again, if you’ve never been previously exposed to a looping pedal or workstation, you wouldn’t know the difference. And the workflow certainly works! It’s always a challenge when faced with a new piece of equipment or completely new operational design not to fall into the trap of comparison with one’s prior experiences, and although I try to stay objective, I’m aware that I’m not immune to this potential pitfall, either. Simply put, Singular Sound’s Aeros Loop Studio is an impressive achievement of engineering and manufacturing. It functions well, it has no discernible audible fingerprint (and thus sounds wonderfully transparent), and it’s actually very fun to use. For me, it excels in a scenario in which you’re using a combination of composed musical concepts or songforms with integrated looping sections, premeditated as part of the final presentation – rather than as a more basic, step-on-to-start/step-on-to-stop, simplistic looper. But what it does differently, it does very well, and better than anything else I’ve seen in a package that doesn’t require a separate computer to be brought along, not to mention PC peripherals and paraphernalia. If you enjoy working with composition or song-oriented looping, the Aeros will take you higher than you’ve ever flown before.