The audio loop is both shaped by, and shaping of, the medium resources, mode conventions, and genre practices associated with sound design and music production. Digital technologies have made it much easier to create and manipulate loops. The conventions surrounding their use have broadened in scope such that loops can form the basic unit of sound design or musical composition on their own. And loops and looping have found their way into almost every genre of music and sound design. Loops have very specific structural and functional properties, built as they are for continuous, uninterrupted, serial repetition. The affordances of these structural and functional properties can be applied to designing and understanding other meaning-making resources in different media, modes, and genres.