There are a great deal of options, sounds and settings on the Sheeran Loopers- Gains, FX Racks, midi options, and more. With all the general settings available, sometimes crafting and perfecting your sound can get overwhelming. In this guide, we're going to talk about what may be causing odd color to your sound and ways to remove it.
First, there isn't a global echo or EQ within any of the products within the Sheeran Looper line. What you hear is what has been picked up by a microphone or your instrument's/mixer's direct connections, which is ultimately amplified by the gain set within the device. If you are using a Sheeran Looper X, you also have the option to use FX racks, which will allow you to apply EQ, Reverb, Delay, etc, as well.
Understanding this, there are a few things that can color the sound that you don't initially hear while live monitoring, for example;
1. First, ensure that the gain setting on the board is providing the cleanest possible signal for your Mic. With less amplification or gain, the microphone picks up less of the weaker signals, naturally cleaning up what the mic records.
2. If using one, your microphone is going to pick up ambient sound reflection, and it's impossible to get that out unless you use an isolation unit around the mic(for example, a Marantz Sound Shield). You may not hear this detail because the live sound of your instrument reverberating can drown it out. The gain may amplify the room noise in these scenarios. When using the Sheeran Looper X, adding a vocal FX rack can help with this, as you can use a compressor, the noise gate, and/or some EQ to help mitigate these unwanted sounds.
3. It is also possible that you may experience some double-tracking of sound, note that mics and other instruments are naturally Mono signals, and your will want to account for this within your setup.
Sheeran Looper X:
Sheeran Looper +:
On the Sheeran Looper X- Go into your Audio Routing from the Menu, and then make sure to uncouple the track outputs into Mono(your microphone is recording Mono, you won't be missing any sound) and make sure to send only one input into your speaker, mixer or whatnot, then go into your input and turn off your Dry Sends(especially if you're using them Dry anyways).
On the Sheeran Looper+- Go into the Menu and head to the Output. Select either Mono or Split. Split will isolate what's coming Left or Right and keep the divide between them; mono will combine them both to similarly to the X solution to allow you to run only one cable out from your output.
4. Finally, make sure that your output itself isn't adding a light amount of response boost- headphones, speakers, and all sorts of other equipment will have different ways of characterizing the sound and causing coloration. The way to find out if that is happening is to take your loop recording, save it to an SD card or your computer and pop it into a media player on your computer. Is the reverb/EQ gone on your computer speakers? Then you may be getting some characterization from the equipment, in which case what you really want is a Flat Response Speaker and/or Studio Monitoring Headphones.