BossAreaForum

Hello,

Does anyone know the specs for the Sampling Rate and the Bit Depth of the RC2?

Bizarre question you may think, let me explain!

Quite happy making loops with the hold time of the DD7.
I use bass and guitar mainly and adjust the EQ of both instruments.
The DD7 never has any trouble in representing what I hear through my amps: When the sound is clear on the amp the Loop plays it clearly. As what one would expect eh?

The RC2 has a drawback: I play and everything clear through the amps, the loop comes back at times with distortion on the bass. This makes looping and setting levels very hard, I need to, almost presume, before I press loop how the RC 2 will behave with a certain performance.

Okay, now I have had a student who gave me a few looper pedals to try. I am mainly checking out how the pedals perform with regards to my previous explained problem.
One thing I noticed straight away: The Sound is much clearer, I can play louder, I love the bass to be high in the mix.

The pedal I borrowed is a Mooer Groove and Loop and does have a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and a bit depth of 16 Bit
Pedal is newer compared to the RC2.

Boss does not give much info about sampling rate and Bit Depth.

I can remember there was info about this relating to the PS3, and I checked and found Sampling Rate of 32 kHZ and Bit Depth of 16 bit, so a lower resolution compared to the Mooer Groove Loop Pedal.

Anyway a long post about a simple thing.

Some insight in the Sampling Rate and Bit Depth of various pedals would be appreciated. I think newer loopers may be clearer in sound.

I would love to try a RC1, since this is a newer pedal and may just do what I want.

The big plus of the Boss pedals is the Switch: It is wide and big and you can see the LED Status whilst you are playing. On a mini pedal like the Mooer with the different type of switch this is not the case. I really love the Boss switches, I also play and am in the zone so having to worry about technical issues goes against the mood and kills creativity.

So all in all, a bit of info about Sampling Rate and Bit Depth would be great. I can go out and check out some other loopers armed with a bit more knowledge.

I have never noticed this behaviour of the RC2, maybe it is due to component drift or some slight issue, but it is enough for me to decide to get another looper and the RC1 may just be the ticket.

Any technical insight is appreciated. Cheers, Eddie

The compact rc pedals have very low headroom and it is very noticeable on the playback, I dont think its the sampling quality so much as cramming that much tech into a compact pedal and getting it to run off 9v. I used to use the RC-3 for a set closer knowing that it turns to noise after the 4th overdub and wed end the song just as the loop becomes indiscernable

Not sure about the RC-2 but this demo video (@3:50) from Andertons says that the RC-5 is 32bit/96kHz, which was apparently an upgrade over the RC-3 and RC-1.

The manual for the RC-3 states it is 16bit/44.1kHz but the RC-2 manual doesn't quote the specs.

chromandre wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 23, 2025 1:12 am

The compact rc pedals have very low headroom and it is very noticeable on the playback

For me that is surprising. I don't do overdubs, I only use my RC-3 as a recording machine. And the Wave-files have very low volume, so I had thought that many overdubs were possible without the noise that you mention.

Thank you all for your detective work.

The low headroom thing makes sense, but that would mean getting distortion at some point. Nothing to do with overdubs I would have thought.
The amount of overdubs in not my complaint. Overdubs and clarity also depends on what is being played.

I can see the point of a lot of components being crammed in a relatively small space. The bigger Loop Stations may give better results.
I tried one for a while as well.

I will try a RC1, thanks BearBoy for those details about the RC5. It will be either RC1 or 5 Anything which gives a clear sound will do, preferably something with the silent switching system.

Does anyone of you know of other brands who use the silent switching?
The size of the Boss switches is also a real bonus. I never thought I was going to be nitpicking about something trivial as that. I guess a switch is more important in the case of a looper, since you are all the time with your foot on the switch.

With the Mooer I need to be careful to remain balanced because of that switch. Not great, especially when most of your playing is done at night time in a dimlit space.

In my search for other loopers and various reviews I came across a site with this article:

https://looperpedalreviews.com/category/blog-articles/

I have now a RC3 I can borrow for a little while. No distortion when I loop the bass quite high in the mix. Great clear sound!

The Mooer Loop and Groove is certainly brighter and yes, you will notice it. Pity of those small switches.....


It seems most of the Boss loopers do have the same sound [ a little on the dark side], but the RC5 may also be a bit brighter due to its 32 bits.

We could turn this thread into more looping discussions but maybe I should not do this.

One thing I do realise: many features you will find on various loopers [ not per see Boss ], like having multiple tracks, you can overcome by thinking about your composition and various overdubs.

Your overdubs need to sit well in the mix, so overdubbing and thinking about EQ and levels may be useful to achieve a good, balanced mix.


It can all be done with a simple looper but you need to think ahead and get accustomed with the process and workflow.

Once things get easier you will find that you can do the most wonderful things in the space of just a sheer 40 seconds. No need for a lot of extra features.


I can still remember the days when the RC3 came out and people here where celebrating how much easier it was to operate compared to the RC2.

When I did get the RC2, around 2011 or 2010, I can remember I did borrow someone else his RC2 to check it against something I had noticed with mine.
His was preforming in a similar manner. The problem I had noticed may have been similar as what I described initially, not sure because my looping habits have changed and it has been too long ago.

Anyway, it seems the RC3 may have larger headroom compared to the RC2.
The RC5 may even have a slightly better overall sound quality.

Yes, those features will make your life easier, but it is a joy to realise you can actually do it with just a simple looper without all that many extras.

chromandre wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 23, 2025 1:12 am

I used to use the RC-3 for a set closer knowing that it turns to noise after the 4th overdub and wed end the song just as the loop becomes indiscernable

Yeah, I do notice that with the RC-3 as well. Was always curious about the RC-5 and if it would be better.

For the hell of it I tried today what chromandre and Gasgano mentioned in their posts: Added as many overdubs as I liked to see if it had any negative impact on the sound quality. I have to say, the sound remained crystal clear.

Whilst doing this I did get curious to see if there is a difference in sound between the various loop station pedals and the hold function of the DD series.

Because the DD7 was next to the RC3 on my pedalboard, I recorded the same idea into both pedals at the same time. Any overdubs afterwards, I played into each pedal at separate times. So in the end I ended up with a similar sounding recording on two different pedals.

The result? The DD7 sounds looser. RC3 was much tighter. I did not use any tap tempo or other features, just played the various overdubs and that is it.

The difference in sound would be heard by anyone, but it does not make one pedal worse from the other.

I will do the same thing for any of the other DD's I have and also the RC2.
I think each pedal will sound different, and the newer ones may sound a tad tighter.

So happy that the RC3 handles bass very well. It really is inspiring to play something and to get back what you put into the pedal without any unwanted distortion.

For anyone else who do get the noise after many overdubs, I am curious to hear what you actually do. Could it be that some batches of the RC3 may preform different?

Long time ago I mentioned flaws in the hold function of the DD6, how the sound deteriorates after some time. I think this may be across all batches of the DD6, but not sure.

Here we may have a similar thing going on with the RC3?

We would need to have more people checking their pedal to see what is going on. Also info about age of the pedal.

Hmm let us see if anyone of you comes forward with some more observations about the sound quality of the RC3 whilst using it for multiple overdubs.