Pitchfactor: harmonies sounding out of tune or flat

[luca9583]

 Hi

 I noticed that when playing a simple lead phrase with either Harmodulator or Pitchflex set to harmonize with a chromatic parallel fifth above or below the dry signal, the harmonized notes sometimes ring flat, thus making the harmony noticeably out of tune compared to the dry signal.

With regard to Harmodulator, this tuning issue occurs with the Depth/Modulation set to 0 cents (i.e completely off)

Surely this isn't right for such a high quality stompbox?

[drooney]

Hi Luca,

Its possible that the following the could be contributing to what you are experiencing: the guitar is intonation is off and needs to be set up; not getting a hot enough signal to the PF, with this regard try getting the peak LED to light as this would be an indication the PF is receiving a hot enough signal.

We also haven't had any additional reports of any of the effects harmonzing incorrectly or flat, and we don't experience this ourselves. Firstly I would like to suggest that you intitialize the PF to clear out the memory; see manual for this. Afterwards reference the Harmodulator and PitchFlex again and confirm if you experience the same issues.

If you do please follow up with support@eventide.com so that we can look further into what you are experiencing. Additionally I would like to ask all PitchFactor owners to test these effects with the settings Luca mentions to confirm if any other unit experiences this. If this is an issue we would like to know about this asap and have it resolved for our customers as quickly as possible.

[luca9583]

 Hi guys

 I have taken all the above steps and am still getting the problem. This is such a great pedal so it would be great if other users could check the Pitchflex and Harmodulator effects and put on any harmony (eg fifth up, octave up etc) and check the tuning of the harmony.

I find that if i play fast legato lines, the harmonies track flat and with a strange "portamento" effect.

Anyone else experience this?

[badmelonfarmer]

 I had a quick go and I could not replicate this.

 I will have another go, but I could not hear the issues.

Cheers

BMF

[wedelich]

luca9583

I looked into this a little and I think I understand/hear what you are hearing. The actual quality of the pitch shifting is fine, that is, the harmony is correct. What you are hearing is an effect of the polyphonic/tracking-speed tradeoff decisions we had to make in porting our algoritms from the rack units (H8000, Eclipse, etc) to a stompbox. For a guitar stompbox application we erred on the side of it being more "polyphonic." However, there are some options we left open for the user to sway this tradeoff one way or the other. To get right to the point, there are two things you should try:
1. Put the unit in Synth-lead mode (this will track faster at the expense of some polyphony), what this does is raise minimum pitch that the pitch shifter will operator on.

2. With Harmodulator (or Diatonic/Quadvox, etc), add a psychoacoustically near-imperceptible amount of delay (~15-30 ms). This will give the "brains" of the pitchshifter more time to process.

I hope this helps, and if you want, I can go into more detail about this algorithm from the point of view of an H8000 or something, where a user would have more access to all the little tweakable parameters, which is something most studio engineers like. Of course, a stompbox with 10 knobs, an encoder, 3 footswitches, and a bizillion modes is still pretty dang tweakable!

Regards,
Russ

[luca9583]

Thanks very much for that Russ..that makes sense. I will try the Synth Lead mode and will compare results.

[luca9583]

Hi Russ

I tried the Synth Lead mode as you suggested..and the tracking improved tuning-wise for the fast legato stuff. The trade-off now is that chords don't track as well in Synth Lead mode.

I was wondering, would it be possible, in a future update perhaps, to make the "Source" selection a non global feature, so that each preset could be either in Guitar, Bass, Synth Lead or Synth Bass mode?

[Author]

Posts