H9000 Questions

[Ed Driscoll]

Hi all,

Longtime listener, first-time caller.

My H9000 arrived on Saturday, and I’ve been enjoying the initial rifling through of the presets and getting a sense of how these beast works. I started by hooking it up to my analog patchbay before attaching the SPDIF cables, and I wasn’t able to get a few patches working in analog out, such as #1127 Guitar Synth. (But I can hear it via the digital out.) Was I doing something wrong, or is this a known issue?

Also, I found that when going into setup, I could make the unit do a hard crash fairly easily pressing one of the buttons to the right and left of the GUI, instead of the arrow buttons or the jog wheel. And finally, I noticed that some of the patches, particularly the Crushstation stuff, could be REALLY LOUD on headphones. I’m glad I started without my studio monitors on. Just a heads up, for those who have H9000s on order.

But overall, I’m definitely enjoying the new unit very much — particularly in digital.

Regards,

Ed

[gkellum]

Ed Driscoll wrote:

My H9000 arrived on Saturday, and I've been enjoying the initial rifling through of the presets and getting a sense of how these beast works. I started by hooking it up to my analog patchbay before attaching the SPDIF cables, and I wasn't able to get a few patches working in analog out, such as #1127 Guitar Synth. (But I can hear it via the digital out.) Was I doing something wrong, or is this a known issue?

It's a bit hard to say, but there aren't any problems that we know about with routing audio out analog.  One thing to keep in mind though is the XLR jacks are for analog channels 1 – 2, and the dsub connector is for channels 1 – 8.  So, the XLR jacks and the the dsub connector are sharing channels 1 – 2. So, you can only use 1 – 2 on one of those.

Are you working with Emote or on the front panel?  I'm asking myself how we can best help you with this issue.  If you're working with Emote, we could do screen sharing for example on Skype and I could double check your set-up.  

Ed Driscoll wrote:

Also, I found that when going into setup, I could make the unit do a hard crash fairly easily pressing one of the buttons to the right and left of the GUI, instead of the arrow buttons or the jog wheel.

Ok, we heard about that problem from one of our testers a few months ago, and we thought we had fixed it.  We'll have to take another look at that.

Ed Driscoll wrote:

And finally, I noticed that some of the patches, particularly the Crushstation stuff, could be REALLY LOUD on headphones. I'm glad I started without my studio monitors on. Just a heads up, for those who have H9000s on order.

Right, CrushStation and a few of the other H9 algorithms were designed with a low level guitar signal in mind.  They're adding too much gain to the incoming line level signal on the H9000.  We should be able to get this problem fixed in the next release.

[tmoravan]

Random comment – there’s a card in the H9000 box suggesting we register the product, but it’s not available from the drop-down list yet on your website…

[gkellum]

tmoravan wrote:

Random comment – there's a card in the H9000 box suggesting we register the product, but it's not available from the drop-down list yet on your website…

Ok, you should be able to register your H9000 on our website now.

It's been set-up in our system for some time, but we forgot to make it public as we began shipping out units…

[tmoravan]

gkellum wrote:

tmoravan wrote:

Random comment – there’s a card in the H9000 box suggesting we register the product, but it’s not available from the drop-down list yet on your website…

Ok, you should be able to register your H9000 on our website now.

It’s been set-up in our system for some time, but we forgot to make it public as we began shipping out units…

 

 

[Ed Driscoll]

gkellum wrote:

It’s been set-up in our system for some time, but we forgot to make it public as we began shipping out units…

Thanks — just registered.

[Miklo]

Ed Driscoll wrote:

Hi all,

Longtime listener, first-time caller.

My H9000 arrived on Saturday, and I’ve been enjoying the initial rifling through of the presets and getting a sense of how these beast works. I started by hooking it up to my analog patchbay before attaching the SPDIF cables, and I wasn’t able to get a few patches working in analog out, such as #1127 Guitar Synth. (But I can hear it via the digital out.) Was I doing something wrong, or is this a known issue?

Also, I found that when going into setup, I could make the unit do a hard crash fairly easily pressing one of the buttons to the right and left of the GUI, instead of the arrow buttons or the jog wheel. And finally, I noticed that some of the patches, particularly the Crushstation stuff, could be REALLY LOUD on headphones. I’m glad I started without my studio monitors on. Just a heads up, for those who have H9000s on order.

But overall, I’m definitely enjoying the new unit very much — particularly in digital.

Regards,

Ed

Is there any top 40 vocal algorithms? Would be cool to run a dry vocal to it and out comes that modern pop processed sound.

[tmoravan]

Question about MIDI Mapping.  I was messing around with using MIDI CCs to bypass/engage various algorithms in an FX chain.  One thing I noticed was that if I set up a mapping for the 3rd algorithm in an FX chain, the MIDI mapping stayed around even when I replaced the algorithm.

Is that intended?  I could see the usefulness of it since I can try out different algorithms while not having to continously set up the various mappings.

As an aside – someone was asking about instant patch changes.  Using a MIDI controller, you can bypass/engage algorithms and FX chains instantly.  Quick example – 

I have a chain with 3 algorithms.  I always want to always hear #2, but selectively bypass/engage 1 and 3.  So I setup a MIDI CC (Mod Wheel in this case) with a range of 0-15 for Algo #1 Bypass and set the parameter range low=0, high=1.  Then for Alg #3 Bypass I set the same MIDI CC with the same range, but set parameter range low=1, high=0.  Now by moving the mod wheel a bit I can toggle back and forth instantly between the chain #1 -> #2 and #2 -> #3.  You can certainly extend this process across all 16 possible slots and the 4 FX chains.

[gkellum]

tmoravan wrote:

Is that intended?  I could see the usefulness of it since I can try out different algorithms while not having to continously set up the various mappings.

Yes, that's intentional. Conceptually, we make a distinction between the container for the algorithm and the algorithm itself, and that particular parameter belongs to the algorithm container.  So, it will persist even if you load a different algorithm.

[tmoravan]

How do I set the date and time?  My sessions are showing up with a date of February 5, 2007.  I didn’t see anything in preferences about it.

I am not connected to a network at present, so hopefully there is a way to set non-networked machines to the current date/time.

thanks

[jbamberg]

tmoravan wrote:

How do I set the date and time?  My sessions are showing up with a date of February 5, 2007.  I didn't see anything in preferences about it.

I am not connected to a network at present, so hopefully there is a way to set non-networked machines to the current date/time.

thanks

 

Hi tmoravan,

We had intended to remove the date and time from the sessions list because we didn't think it was worth the added complexity of handling the user settings and timezones, etc., but we did not get around to doing so in the run up to release.  We'll plan to take it out in the next 1.0 release and consider implementing it fully in the future if there's a need.  Thanks for letting us know.

[wedelich]

Ed Driscoll wrote:

And finally, I noticed that some of the patches, particularly the Crushstation stuff, could be REALLY LOUD on headphones. I'm glad I started without my studio monitors on. Just a heads up, for those who have H9000s on order.

Hi Ed, 

Looking into this CrushStation issue. For now, does turning the Output Level down on a preset suffice? Also, curious as to what your nominal input level is coming into the CrushStation alg? You can just tell me peak or a rough estimate of the average level.  Does the behaviour change with varying amounts of input level? Does CrushStation ever make your signal quieter when it's heavily distorted (It seems like Sculpt and Pitchfuzz are doing this)? 

Thanks,

Russ 

[Ed Driscoll]

wedelich wrote:

Hi Ed, 

Looking into this CrushStation issue. For now, does turning the Output Level down on a preset suffice? Also, curious as to what your nominal input level is coming into the CrushStation alg? You can just tell me peak or a rough estimate of the average level.  Does the behaviour change with varying amounts of input level? Does CrushStation ever make your signal quieter when it’s heavily distorted (It seems like Sculpt and Pitchfuzz are doing this)? 

Thanks,

Russ 

Hi Russ, yes turning down the output level of a preset does the trick, as does simply turning down the input signal going into my Fireface UFX+. What I was doing on Saturday when the H9000 first arrived was simply plugging a Radial J48 box into the Fireface, with a gain of about 17 to 25 and a volume near unity, if I recall correctly, and then D-Iing a Telecaster. That was all with the H9000 into the analog ins and outs.

Maybe just a warning in the manual and/or on the patch descriptions would suffice, if the goal is to keep the Crushstation pretty cranked to drive an amp?

[tmoravan]

I have been playing around a lot with the Custom Map section and I find the use of white and yellow as indicators for start/end min/max to be problematic.  Given that the majority of your users are male and males tend to have more color blind/color weak issues, it would be nice if you had someone take alook over the use of colors in the UI.

For example, I often press the Min/Max button multiple times because the difference betwen a white dot and a bright pastel yellow dot is very hard to pick up.  My suggestion is to either use a more contrasting color like red or blue against the white or if you have to use yellow for consistency/programming reasons, make it a less bright, more saturated yellow to provide a higher contrast to the white.  In addition, I find the visual change in the graphic for min/max to be very subtle and not much help in determining which end of the range I’m working on.

In geenral I find the UI fast to get around on, but there are areas like the above that really slow me down due to the color/style choices made.

[jfirlik]

tmoravan wrote:

I have been playing around a lot with the Custom Map section and I find the use of white and yellow as indicators for start/end min/max to be problematic.  Given that the majority of your users are male and males tend to have more color blind/color weak issues, it would be nice if you had someone take alook over the use of colors in the UI.

For example, I often press the Min/Max button multiple times because the difference betwen a white dot and a bright pastel yellow dot is very hard to pick up.  My suggestion is to either use a more contrasting color like red or blue against the white or if you have to use yellow for consistency/programming reasons, make it a less bright, more saturated yellow to provide a higher contrast to the white.  In addition, I find the visual change in the graphic for min/max to be very subtle and not much help in determining which end of the range I'm working on.

In geenral I find the UI fast to get around on, but there are areas like the above that really slow me down due to the color/style choices made.

Thank you for this feedback, this is useful for us to know.  Our relatively small pool of beta testers apparently did not include anyone with colorblindness…

In the interim, we've made the Min/Max selector larger and more apparent so hopefully this helps in this case.  We'll continue to look into possible better color schemes to resolve these kinds of issues if they exist elsewhere in the UI.

[tmoravan]

jfirlik wrote:

tmoravan wrote:

I have been playing around a lot with the Custom Map section and I find the use of white and yellow as indicators for start/end min/max to be problematic.  Given that the majority of your users are male and males tend to have more color blind/color weak issues, it would be nice if you had someone take alook over the use of colors in the UI.

For example, I often press the Min/Max button multiple times because the difference betwen a white dot and a bright pastel yellow dot is very hard to pick up.  My suggestion is to either use a more contrasting color like red or blue against the white or if you have to use yellow for consistency/programming reasons, make it a less bright, more saturated yellow to provide a higher contrast to the white.  In addition, I find the visual change in the graphic for min/max to be very subtle and not much help in determining which end of the range I’m working on.

In geenral I find the UI fast to get around on, but there are areas like the above that really slow me down due to the color/style choices made.

Thank you for this feedback, this is useful for us to know.  Our relatively small pool of beta testers apparently did not include anyone with colorblindness…

In the interim, we’ve made the Min/Max selector larger and more apparent so hopefully this helps in this case.  We’ll continue to look into possible better color schemes to resolve these kinds of issues if they exist elsewhere in the UI.

 

Feedback on the changes so far – the larger Min/Max selectors/bar/etc makes it much easier to see what’s going on and to get an idea of the range that is set.  There’s still some slight weirdness with the range bar on the dial graphic when you toggle between Min and Max and change values a few times, but overall it’s much much easier to see what you’re doing now.

thanks

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