Using BeatBurner or LoopDrive VST for locking tempo of loops to host

[Diamond]

Hello everyone,
I would have posted this in the VSTi thread, but it requires enough explanation that I thought posting it in it's own thread probably made more sense.  For some time now I have been trying to find a VST which could load a loop, automatically calculate it's length in beats, and then keep it synchronized with the host's tempo.  Yes, I know that OpenMPT has a tempo lock feature, but unfortunately it only works well with loops which already have a very precise BPM.  It would not work well with a loop which has a tempo of 120.73 for example.  Short of using other tools to calculate and then shift the tempo of such loops, there is usually no convenient way around this issue.  These alternatives are usually tedious and until now I had yet to find a method which was satisfactory.  I am also aware that there exist a few other VSTs which can sort of accomplish the same thing, but most of them are beat slicers/manglers and use time stretching to keep the loop synchronized.  I didn't need beat slicing capabilities and few time stretching algorithms sound very good in my opinion.  There are some commercial plugins that also have this capability, but since I am visually impaired I don't want to spend money on a plugin which will most likely not be accessible.  So this is where BeatBurner comes into play.
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=BeatBurner&id=644
It is accessible enough from my point of view and does exactly what I want.  You can use BeatBurner to load a loop and if you change MPT's master tempo, it will stay synchronized.  Just like the built-in tempo lock feature, but it doesn't care about the original tempo of the loop.  At that point, you could also add the loop into a pattern of appropriate length (I.E. 16 rows for a 4 beat loop, 32 for 8 beats, and so on) and then export the pattern so you can have the loop available at the new tempo.  The exported loop should have a fairly precise tempo which you could then import back into MPT and use the built-in tempo lock feature for more flexibility.  There are a few issues to be aware of.  The plugin is quite old.  I believe the last version was released in 2003.  It was originally commercial, but it is now freeware.  There are a couple of things which are buggy and I'm not sure if they're caused by MPT, the plugin itself, or something specific to my setup.  There is an option which allows you to preview samples in the open file dialog at the host's tempo, but it causes MPT to freeze up and stop responding.  The feature can be disabled in the plugin's options, but the next time the plugin is loaded it is always reenabled.  I suspect this particular bug is caused by the plugin not loading or setting it's options correctly at runtime.  Slightly annoying, but as long as you remember to go into options and disable "Preview before loading" prior to using the open file dialog, it can be avoided.  It saves it's settings in a file called "BeatBurner VSTi.INI" in the Windows directory.  Another bug that I have discovered which is actually more annoying, is that when first reopening a song, the plugin initially produces no sound until you click into the VST editor dialog at least once.  After that everything works fine, but still...  So in conclusion, although the plugin does definitely have some buggy behavior, it works well enough for my purposes.

[Saga Musix]

It saves it's settings in a file called "BeatBurner VSTi.INI" in the Windows directory.

That calls for a lot of trouble on modern OSes >= Vista and might explain why the settings are not restored when reloading the plugin.

[Diamond]

That calls for a lot of trouble on modern OSes >= Vista and might explain why the settings are not restored when reloading the plugin.

Yep, I'm running 7 and it did occur to me that the issue might be related to insufficient permissions, but I'm running as administrator and I have UAC disabled so I'm not sure.

[Diamond]

Oh and if anyone is aware of other VSTs which are free and can do the same thing as BeatBurner, please let me know.  I.E. sync a loop to host tempo using standard pitch shifting and not time stretching.

[.^o]

perhaps could you test loopdrive
>>>
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/loopdrive_by_maik_menz

[Diamond]

perhaps could you test loopdrive

Wow thanks.  All this time looking and I was not aware of this one.  It does exactly the same thing, but without the bugs in BeatBurner.  It does have beat slicing capabilities, but the loop can be played without using them.  And even better the loop can be retriggered from the keyboard unlike with BeatBurner which simply cycles the loop in the background and any notes just turn it on or off.

[Diamond]

This might be obvious to some, but I thought it was also worth mentioning that if you want to use either of the above plugins to export loops at a new tempo, you should use the "Modern (accurate)" tempo mode available in the song properties of the MPTM format.  Otherwise the tempo of the exported loop will not be as exact as possible.