Roland Aira Scooper

The Roland Aira Scooper is a digital effects box that takes the Scatter effect found on Roland's TR-8 drum machine as its starting point and combines it with an audio looper. It arrived as one of four new Aira effects boxes Roland put out alongside the Bitrazer, Demora and Torcido¹. For a player, it is a tool for slicing up a performance in real time: record a loop, then chop, re-pitch and filter it as it plays.

What it does

The Scooper records your playing into a loop, then lets you manipulate that loop while it runs. MusicRadar's review describes the core of the design this way¹:

Once a loop is captured, the controls give you several ways to reshape it¹:

• Adjust the Scatter type and depth, which changes how the loop is chopped up
• Re-pitch the loop
• Apply low-pass or high-pass filtering to the loop¹

Scatter, as implemented on the TR-8, is a real-time slicing effect, so on the Scooper it works on your own audio rather than a drum machine's patterns. Pairing it with a looper means the effect always has material to work on, which is what sets it apart from a straight Scatter-style stompbox¹.

How it connects

The Scooper runs entirely in the digital domain at a fixed 96kHz sample rate¹. Around the core effect, the panel is rounded off with a global Volume control, two mono inputs and outputs, and a Remote In jack¹. There are also mini-jack inputs for Gate control and a Sync Trig input, which allow external signals to gate and trigger the effect¹.

What reviewers said

MusicRadar's verdict was positive on the unit's scope: the review team called it "a small and flexible processor that goes beyond what some simpler units can do"¹. The same review noted that the Scooper is "a decidedly digital effect", which is worth knowing if you are comparing it against analog loopers or filter pedals¹.

If you are weighing it against other looping tools, see the site's overview of Looping Pedals and Multi-effects Pedals.

Videos

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