I would like to setup a funny machine for a fancy fair .
The idea is to have anyone speak in a mike and have the sound recorded
and repeat in loop. The next person that come and record the sound will
create a new loop and the old one will still play with an attenuation
(6Db ? to be determined). Then the next one to record will also create
a new loop and the two old loops will having an other attenuation and
so on. I hope that it will create something interesting.
I wonder if I should start the recording with a switch that the user
will push or with a trigger on the sound volume at the mike
This is the basic concept but I have no idea how to start the
development of this.
Any advices on software to use will be welcome

Regards

Philippe

A (hardware) Lexincon FX device has a setting which does something very
similar to that. They do it by setting up a delay-line with a
usually-100% feedback setting, but the feedback gets reduced by the
amplitude of the incomming signal. So if the incomming signal is soft,
then it partially replaces the loop, and if the incomming signal is
100% then it would completely replace the loop. The results are really
nice to play with . . . great for ambient type stuff . . . it basically
just repeats whatever you do until you play something new into it, and
then replaces the loop to some degree depending on the incomming
amplitude.

I don't remember the name of the exact device, but I know it's one of
their cheap devices that have a few delays and other FX but no actual
reverb. You could almost certainly set-up the same program in an MPX1
with some programming.

How to do that in software? Well, assuming you can program well enough
to take audio input in real-time and do things with it and output it,
then the rest is very simple . . . just do as I have described above.
Or you could almost certainly implement what you want using hgher-level
modules in something like C-Sound, Max, Reactor, or something like that
.. . . those would be fairly cheap to buy. I know Reactor has real-time
FX, so could certainly do that kind of thing, and is fairly easy to
program yourself.

Hope this helps.

Chris
(REAL strings for realistic prices
http://www.chris-melchior.com/strings.htm)