instrument not found

[HaraAsh]

Hej Mr Reason,

I'd love to use your tidal-looper but I get this message in SC after following all your steps:

no synth or sample named 'looper' could be found.
instrument not found: nil

Did I miss something?
Thanks a lot!

[konvasil]

I have the same issue

[thgrund]

Sorry for the really late reply - I bet there is an issue with passing the correct SuperDirt instance. When you create a looper instance with ~looper = TidalLooper.new(~dirt), did you passed the one that is in use?

[Xon77]

I have also the same issue, although I created a looper instance with ~looper = TidalLooper.new(~dirt).
I also use it with your great SuperDirtMixer.
The recording seems ok. But I cannot play the record.

Thanks for your work.

[thgrund]

Hey @Xon77 , I released version 1.0.0 of the TidalLooper: https://github.com/thgrund/tidal-looper/releases/tag/v1.0.0
There I added a debug mode that you can activate with ~looper.debugMode = true;. This helps to see some debug messages in the SuperCollider post window.

Anyway the issue that everybody describes here sounds familiar. I faced it during a previous workshop I gave during the ICLC 2025. What is your OS? Could you please share your startup file? Does it work, when you execute ~looper = TidalLooper.new(~dirt) outside of the startup file? Did you updated the TidalLooper to the latest version?

And thanks for the kind words! :-)

[ersrse]

Hey @thgrund, I have the same problem. The Looper doesn't save a sample in the folder (the one in Looper.scd).
I'm on Mac M2.
I tried ~looper.debugMode = true; – no new messages. ~looper = TidalLooper.new(~dirt) – did not help.
I had an idea that it might be a MacOS security setting, so I gave full disk access to SuperCollider – that did not help either.

Recording Started. [Looper type: looper , buffer name: mybuffer,  position: 0.0]
Recording Stopped. [Looper type: looper , buffer name: mybuffer,  position: 0.0]
no synth or sample named 'loop' could be found.

Startupfile:

(
s.reboot { // server options are only updated on reboot
	// configure the sound server: here you could add hardware specific options
	// see http://doc.sccode.org/Classes/ServerOptions.html
    s.options.inDevice_("Scarlett Solo USB");
    s.options.outDevice_("BlackHole 64ch");
	s.options.numBuffers = 1024 * 256; // increase this if you need to load more samples
	s.options.memSize = 8192 * 32; // increase this if you get "alloc failed" messages
	s.options.numWireBufs = 2048; // increase this if you get "exceeded number of interconnect buffers" messages
	s.options.maxNodes = 1024 * 32; // increase this if you are getting drop outs and the message "too many nodes"
    s.options.numOutputBusChannels = 32; // = 2; // set this to your hardware output channel size, if necessary
	s.options.numInputBusChannels = 2; // = 2; // set this to your hardware output channel size, if necessary
    s.options.hardwareBufferSize = s.options.blockSize*2; //for soundcard

	s.waitForBoot {// boot the server and start SuperDirt
		~dirt.stop; // stop any old ones, avoid duplicate dirt (if it is nil, this won't do anything)

        // TO REAL DEVICE
		// ~dirt = SuperDirt(2, s); // two output channels,
        // ~dirt.start(57120, 0 ! 12);   // start listening on port 57120, create two busses each sending audio to channel 0

        // TO VIRTUAL DEVICE: BLACKHOLE
        ~dirt = SuperDirt(2, s); // two output channels,
        ~dirt.start(57120, [0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30]);


		~dirt.loadSoundFiles;   // load samples (path containing a wildcard can be passed in)
		// for example: ~dirt.loadSoundFiles("/Users/myUserName/Dirt/samples/*");
		// s.sync; // optionally: wait for samples to be read


		SuperDirt.default = ~dirt; // make this instance available in sclang (optional)
		// optional, needed for convenient access from sclang:
		(
			~d1 = ~dirt.orbits[0]; ~d2 = ~dirt.orbits[1]; ~d3 = ~dirt.orbits[2];
			~d4 = ~dirt.orbits[3]; ~d5 = ~dirt.orbits[4]; ~d6 = ~dirt.orbits[5];
			~d7 = ~dirt.orbits[6]; ~d8 = ~dirt.orbits[7]; ~d9 = ~dirt.orbits[8];
			~d10 = ~dirt.orbits[9]; ~d11 = ~dirt.orbits[10]; ~d12 = ~dirt.orbits[11];
            ~d13 = ~dirt.orbits[12]; ~d14 = ~dirt.orbits[13]; ~d15 = ~dirt.orbits[14]; ~d15 = ~dirt.orbits[15];
		);

		// directly below here, in your own copy of this file, you could add further code that you want to call on startup
		// this makes sure the server and ~dirt are running
		// you can keep this separate and make it easier to switch between setups
		// by using "path/to/my/file.scd".load and if necessary commenting out different load statements
		// ...
        (
            // Initialize the TidalLooper
            ~looper = TidalLooper(~dirt);
            // You can adjust these parameter even in runtime
            ~looper.rLevel = 2.5;
            ~looper.pLevel = 0.8;
            ~looper.linput = 1; // Set this to your main input port.
            ~looper.lname = "mybuffer";
            ~looper.debugMode = true;
        )

	};

	s.latency = 0.3; // increase this if you get "late" messages

};
);

[thgrund]

@ersrse for me it looks like, that you write to the buffer mybuffer, but you try to access it under the name loop. The looper itself works, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see the debug messages. This means you just need to access the sample via s "mybuffer" instead of s "loop". This should do the trick :-)

[ersrse]

@thgrund

Oh, right! I copied it from the README and didn't notice the difference. Sorry for my inattention!
Thank you for your work, great plugin!