Reply To: Can I please Hear H8000 Demo Recordings of Outlandish Effects

[Doug Wellington]

Zap:

I just sold my eclipse and I will either buy an 7600 or 8000FW.

Cool.  I think you'll be very happy with the upgrade!

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But there seems to be a severe shortage of samples of what the H8000 can do.

My guess is that most of us are busy producing or running studios, earning the money back that we  spent on our Harmonizers, instead of making free videos and samples for the web.  It's interesting – once people hear that I have an H8000FW, they want to come over and rent my studio!  It's sort of like Alsihad a few years ago – once people heard you had ProTools, they were instantly interested in your studio…

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Here is the issue – for Effects in the studio I currently use Kore 2 with the Deep Reconstructions, Deep Transformations, and Deep Freq effects packs because they are extremely twisted and far out there.

NI makes some very cool products.  I've been a Kore user since the first version, and I still use Kontakt, Absynth and Reaktor all the time.  Reaktor in particular is similar to, but definitely not the same as, the Harmonizer.  I don't think I'd want to give up either package.  Reaktor has a huge community and a lot of downloadable ensembles.  In a way, it is like the Clavia Nord Modular with the programming capabilities and the online community.  Both of those products are part of the inspiration for me working on the Harmonizer remote control and patch librarian – I'm hoping we can create a better user community here as well.

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And guess how much these pack cost?  59 – 89 each plus the 400 for Kore 2.   If I am paying $5-6 G for an H8000 of 7600, then somebody please tell me it can at least do the insane sounding effects that I have shared in those NI links.  One would think at the very least this would be a minimum expectation out of the unit.

The H7600 and H8000 have phenomenal capabilities!  The thing I'd ask is, do you want to turn the box on and instantly have the crazy effects, or are you willing to put the effort in to program them yourself?  Don't get me wrong, there are over 1000 patches in the Harmonizer and some of them are the crazy good ones, but maybe not exactly like the NI packs.  It's personal opinion of course, but I think the Harmonizer is better.  If you're willing to do the programming, you can end up with everything from those NI packs and more.  If you're expecting those exact effects to be there already and don't want to learn the programming, I think you'll be disappointed with the Harmonizer, and maybe you should consider getting a Receptor with Komplete instead.

By the way, since you like odd effects, are you familiar with Spirit Canyon Audio impulse responses?  Are you familiar with impulse responses?  You use some kind of convolution product and load in your IR and it processes the sound.  I have used this kind of thing when doing live recording – I take an IR of the place, then if I have to overdub something later in the studio, I run it through the convolution engine and it sounds like it was recorded in the original place.  (Or at least close enough that nobody will notice.)  Hmmm, I wonder if I could load IRs into the Harmonizer…