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I would say it’s probably not out of the realm of possibility that there will eventually be “light” versions of some of the pitch shifting effects. But I think with this sort of development, it probably makes more sense to start with your gold standard and then try to optimize or streamline it. Otherwise, I imagine you’d end up repeating work you’ve already done.

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4 minutes ago, zappazapper said:

But as I said in my comment above, I think having a similar quality shifter would be an acceptable alternative to having NOTHING until Line6 finally puts out "the world's greatest shifter".

 

The thing is, for all these "oh, let me quickly tune down to Eb" riffing situations, the solution is already there and it's nothing too special to add a Digitech Drop to your pedalboard. Sure, it'd be nice to have it all in the box, I give you that, but it's not exactly crucial. Complexed pitch shifting however is a whole different story. You may want to alter intervals in realtime and/or per snapshot. Or you may just want to slap it into a delay path. Or you may want to go for slide guitar alike realtime pedal control, etc. So, not only are these the kind of things requiring top notch pitch shifting, they also profit a whole lot more from perfect integration.

In a nutshell: If I really needed quick'n'dirty downtunings, I'd just get a Drop. But personally, I'd like that thing to be a lot more than just that - even if I need to say byebye to 40-50% of my precious CPU power (which won't be an issue anymore anyway, once L6 slaps in global blocks in FW 3.1, SCNR...). And because of that, I hope they're going for quality rather than "just something".

 

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9 minutes ago, datacommando said:

 

If you check through this thread and others on TGP, Facebook etc. you will find that  information has been provided by a Line 6 Beta Tester.

Fair enough. I mean, this is a discussion forum, not a university research paper.  Why would I do all that research when I can just ask and get an answer?

 

10 minutes ago, datacommando said:

You know - the company who's Digitech RP2000 pitch shifting you are so impressed with.

Impressed isn't the word I would use. It worked. It worked better than no polyphonic pitch shifter.

 

12 minutes ago, datacommando said:

In fact when asked about this and if he could confirm that v3.0 firmware would include a model of the DT Drop, Digital Igloo(Eric Klein) said:-

 

"No it hasn't. All we've said is poly. Besides, you can't really model pitch effects;  you need to build a library of DSP algorithms from scratch. This is important, as we didn't acquire any DigiTech IP when we hired their Victoria team after they left. They've had to find a completely different method of poly, which is actually harder than if another company did it, because they could "accidentally" do things the same way DigiTech did it. We've had to purposely go in other directions, which is why it's taken so long."

 

There ya go a little more insight! This is a new thing and maybe that's why it takes more processing power that older type shifters. 

OK, intellectual property concerns aside, they could have certainly developed a lower quality stop-gap shifter from the ground up while they work on the "world's greatest shifter".  But ya, all this stuff is exciting news. I'm happy to be on the cusp of having a shifter rather than where I was 10+ years ago, wondering why people are saying the X3 couldn't handle an algorithm that had been around for years.

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6 minutes ago, SaschaFranck said:

 

The thing is, for all these "oh, let me quickly tune down to Eb" riffing situations, the solution is already there and it's nothing too special to add a Digitech Drop to your pedalboard. Sure, it'd be nice to have it all in the box, I give you that, but it's not exactly crucial. Complexed pitch shifting however is a whole different story. You may want to alter intervals in realtime and/or per snapshot. Or you may just want to slap it into a delay path. Or you may want to go for slide guitar alike realtime pedal control, etc. So, not only are these the kind of things requiring top notch pitch shifting, they also profit a whole lot more from perfect integration.

In a nutshell: If I really needed quick'n'dirty downtunings, I'd just get a Drop. But personally, I'd like that thing to be a lot more than just that - even if I need to say byebye to 40-50% of my precious CPU power (which won't be an issue anymore anyway, once L6 slaps in global blocks in FW 3.1, SCNR...). And because of that, I hope they're going for quality rather than "just something".

 

Oh ok, by polyphonic you mean shift different notes within a chord different amounts. Is that even possible from a mono signal? It's routine stuff from a hexaphonic system like a Variax or a GK, right?

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5 minutes ago, zappazapper said:

Oh ok, by polyphonic you mean shift different notes within a chord different amounts. Is that even possible from a mono signal? It's routine stuff from a hexaphonic system like a Variax or a GK, right?

 

Nah - I know it's only possible with hex pickups (or Melodyne DNA - which however is useless for realtime tasks). But once you really deal with, say, complexed chords and/or slide alike seamless shifts, the quality needs to be way better than what might be sufficient for lower tuned powerchords. Especially complexed chords use(d) to split the boys from the men instantly, apparently it's not necessarily like that anymore with the Fractal algorithm, so here's hope something similar would be the bar Line 6 set for themselves.

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4 minutes ago, zappazapper said:

Well... that's a horse of a different color. I was just trying to play Smashing Pumpkins songs in the right key, not trying to dominate the earth :D


If you’re just talking about power chords, some simpler algorithms can handle them. I’ve heard some people get ok result with the Simple Pitch on the Helix with djent-y type stuff. The new poly stuff will handle more complex chords.

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 I just love passive- aggressiveness... the OP drops by to vomit uninformed vitriol, whining about the lack of a feature that's been acknowledged to be in the pipeline for some time. And after being so informed, he vanishes like a fart in the wind. Never gets old...;)

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4 hours ago, zappazapper said:

Well... that's a horse of a different color.


Well... that’s been predicted to be a “dark horse” in v.3.0

 

I know that you couldn’t be bothered to look that up, because it’s not a research paper.

 

As FZ said “Shut up and play yer guitar”, but no, you can’t because you have a problem with you amp and a Helix LT, so you must have thought - I’ll just go and annoy other users.

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13 minutes ago, datacommando said:


Well... that’s been predicted to be a “dark horse” in v.3.0

 

I know that you couldn’t be bothered to look that up, because it’s not a research paper.

 

As FZ said “Shut up and play yer guitar”

 

Talk about passive aggressive...

The idea that in order to be permitted to participate in this forum, one has to be fully informed on everything that's ever been mentioned on every thread here, on Facebook and on TGP is ridiculous. If you don't want to be the one to do the work of educating everybody else on the forum that's fine, but I'm allowed to ask questions, mmkay?

At any rate, thank you for bringing me up to date on this whole matter and in case you're interested, I did end up stumbling upon that 3.0 thread and I'm very excited. At the risk of getting in trouble again, I'd be interested to know if there's any more info on the status of that update since the last post on that thread, which if memory serves me correctly was the beginning of September. 

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30 minutes ago, zappazapper said:

I'd be interested to know if there's any more info on the status of that update

 

Personally, I almost completely stopped bothering about update release estimates (or speculating about what might be in there too much). It's just not exactly satisfying to know there's something mouth-watering to come and they keep delaying it. Doesn't mean I'm not asking for things which I'd like to see in future updates anymore, but that's a different story. Basically, I bought the Helix for what it is, no more, no less (unfortunately, I discovered one or the other thing that wasn't working as I expected and there's also been no information about those things available prior to my purchase - but that's yet another story). In the meantime, I just keep playing - and I gotta say that outside of the (currently cancelled) live business, the Helix is a damn great companion, leaving little things to be desired (most of my feature requests are targeted at live usage).

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4 minutes ago, SaschaFranck said:

Basically, I bought the Helix for what it is, no more, no less.

It's a purpose-built computer with the ability to have its software modified/updated. You paid for that hardware, I don't think you're out of line for expecting them to make use of it for you.

 

I just had a funny thought. Like if you consider what Line6's motivation would be to spend resources improving a product that we've already paid for... I'm sure a small part of it is keeping its previous customers happy and hopefully having them be new customers. But I think the main reason would be to attract new customers. And I don't have a problem with that, I'm a capitalist through and through and they're a business. Get that paper. But the way things are going, I wonder if they ever considered a pay-to-play model with the updates. Like if you want a polyphonic pitch shifter you gotta convince the user-base to pony up for it. Like it's one thing to upvote something on IdeaScale but let's see who'll put their money where they're mouth is :D

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6 hours ago, zappazapper said:

Well, I agree in theory, except that I remember the same gripe (mine included) about the X3 not having a polyphonic pitch shifter 10+ years ago and the reason given was the same: processing power.  I'm all for Line6 developing the "world's greatest shifter" but in the meantime can't we just have one that works reasonably well?  The Helix comes with all kinds of legacy effects from the XT, X3 and HD era that are perfectly usable, so they're not above including algorithms that are less than cutting edge, and there's nothing that says a useable stop gap shifter means they can't make the "world's greatest shifter" also...

 

So, you griped about a half-a$$sed shifter 10 years ago, now you want another, why? So 10 years from now you can gripe about this one?

No, we don't need another one that works "reasonably well".

We want the BEST that today's tech can give us!

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1 minute ago, rd2rk said:

 

So, you griped about a half-a$$sed shifter 10 years ago, now you want another, why? So 10 years from now you can gripe about this one?

No, we don't need another one that works "reasonably well".

We want the BEST that today's tech can give us!

I griped that there wasn't a pretty standard effect in the gold standard of multi-fx units at the time, yes. Same gripe today, except what's different now is that there's concrete evidence that there's one in the chamber, and it's possibly fantastic, so I'm happy to wait, but if there wasn't, yes, I'd be griping that there isn't just one that works reasonable well as opposed to none at all. Yes. 

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1 hour ago, zappazapper said:

Like if you want a polyphonic pitch shifter you gotta convince the user-base to pony up for it. Like it's one thing to upvote something on IdeaScale but let's see who'll put their money where they're mouth is :D

 

Most major guitar companies these days have a "Custom Shop". I'd bet that if L6 hired a couple of programmers to work on "special projects" for individuals and charged them real world programming rates, those programmers would have LOTS of time to help out on the regular (FREE) updates for the rest of us! :-)

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57 minutes ago, rd2rk said:

 

Most major guitar companies these days have a "Custom Shop". I'd bet that if L6 hired a couple of programmers to work on "special projects" for individuals and charged them real world programming rates, those programmers would have LOTS of time to help out on the regular (FREE) updates for the rest of us! 

Well, there might not be "free" updates. Maybe the updates would be purely based on the wants and desires of those who had extra money to throw around. The dreaded "blues lawyers"!! 15 different vintage Bassmans!! 

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2 hours ago, zappazapper said:

Well, there might not be "free" updates. Maybe the updates would be purely based on the wants and desires of those who had extra money to throw around. The dreaded "blues lawyers"!! 15 different vintage Bassmans!! 

 

Part of what we bought was free updates. Not updates for those who can afford them. Free updates. Until Helix EOL.

Go over to TGP and set up a poll.

Paid updates will lose every time.

Blues Lawyers can have a Helix or two, a couple of Fractals and the whole Kemper eco-system.

Not to mention a room full of Boutique tube amps and every pedal known to man.

They don't need special treatment at everyone else's expense.

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14 hours ago, phil_m said:


If you’re just talking about power chords, some simpler algorithms can handle them. I’ve heard some people get ok result with the Simple Pitch on the Helix with djent-y type stuff. The new poly stuff will handle more complex chords.

I think you can still run into trouble with basic power chords unless you are perfectly in tune when using monophonic pitch.

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13 hours ago, zappazapper said:

It's a purpose-built computer with the ability to have its software modified/updated. You paid for that hardware, I don't think you're out of line for expecting them to make use of it for you.

 

You buy the Helix based on what it can do with the firmware available the day you bought it, and the anticipation that future updates MIGHT be things you will enjoy and/or use. 

You do not buy the Helix to gain the right to insist it should have a feature you want. You can request it, but that doesn't mean they owe it to you.

 

 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, codamedia said:

You do not buy the Helix to gain the right to insist it should have a feature you want. You can request it, but that doesn't mean they owe it to you.

Where did I say they did? I responding to someone's comment (I'm paraphrasing) that they bought the unit for what it does now, and I was saying that one thing it does now is allow its software to be updated, so the expectation that there will be updates is not out of line. I certainly didn't suggest that specific effects should be included in that expectation. When I say "it should have a polyphonic pitch shifter", I'm just expressing my opinion. If it doesn't have one, I'll deal with it, but it's still my opinion. And this is a discussion forum, right? We're all just expressing our opinions. 

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9 minutes ago, zappazapper said:

Where did I say they did?

 

I quoted the appropriate part of your statement.... and bolded the line that bugged me. 

If I took that line out of context, then I'm sorry... it's not worded very clearly. But every time I re-read it, it still rubs me the wrong way. 

 

 

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3 hours ago, codamedia said:

 

I quoted the appropriate part of your statement.... and bolded the line that bugged me. 

If I took that line out of context, then I'm sorry... it's not worded very clearly. But every time I re-read it, it still rubs me the wrong way. 

 

 

Don't read it then

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11 hours ago, rd2rk said:

 

Part of what we bought was free updates. Not updates for those who can afford them. Free updates. Until Helix EOL.

 

Well, I think he's got a point though. Not that I'd support paid updates, a subscription model or anything like that - but for instance, I might like the idea of a modular system which you could expand whenever you'd feel like. But this would likely also include hardware. Need lots of I/Os? Purchase an I/O module. Need additional switches? Purchase a switch module. Need perfect polyphonic pitching? Purchase the extra "wicked sounds and extra CPU juice" (so the previous functionality isn't sacrificed) module. All of these modules should obviously integrate seamlessly. Similar things exist in the synth world for quite a while already, plenty of synths allow you to purchase expansion boards. I like that idea.

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45 minutes ago, SaschaFranck said:

 

Well, I think he's got a point though. Not that I'd support paid updates, a subscription model or anything like that - but for instance, I might like the idea of a modular system which you could expand whenever you'd feel like. But this would likely also include hardware. Need lots of I/Os? Purchase an I/O module. Need additional switches? Purchase a switch module. Need perfect polyphonic pitching? Purchase the extra "wicked sounds and extra CPU juice" (so the previous functionality isn't sacrificed) module. All of these modules should obviously integrate seamlessly. Similar things exist in the synth world for quite a while already, plenty of synths allow you to purchase expansion boards. I like that idea.

 

The question is, would you be willing to pay real world development costs, or expect L6 either to eat the real costs or spread it around to the rest of us?

My bet is that, while the idea is wonderful, very few would be willing to pay the real world cost of custom programming, and the market for the custom modules would be too unpredictable to guarantee ROI for L6.

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9 minutes ago, rd2rk said:

The question is, would you be willing to pay real world development costs, or expect L6 either to eat the real costs or spread it around to the rest of us?

My bet is that, while the idea is wonderful, very few would be willing to pay the real world cost of custom programming, and the market for the custom modules would be too unpredictable to guarantee ROI for L6.

 

As said, plenty of synth makers already went that route. They certainly wouldn't do so in case it wouldn't be at least somewhat reasonable.

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12 minutes ago, SaschaFranck said:

 

As said, plenty of synth makers already went that route. They certainly wouldn't do so in case it wouldn't be at least somewhat reasonable.

 

I'm thinking apples and oranges.

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32 minutes ago, zappazapper said:

I was thinking more along the lines of like "crowdfunding", where you'd say "we need this much to do polyphonic pitch shifting", and if they get that amount by the deadline they do it, and if they don't, everybody gets their money back. 

 

That's reasonable, though the odds of raising enough funds aren't good even if L6 could (would) come up with an accurate cost estimate.

Post it up on Ideascale, see how many votes it gets!

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12 minutes ago, rd2rk said:

 

That's reasonable, though the odds of raising enough funds aren't good even if L6 could (would) come up with an accurate cost estimate.

Post it up on Ideascale, see how many votes it gets!

I'm sure coming up with reasonably accurate cost estimates is already part of the job...

 

Anyway, I'm not saying that's how I want it to work, just that I'd be surprised if they haven't at least looked into it.

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1 hour ago, SaschaFranck said:

 

I described what I mean already. No idea how to make it any more clear.

 

Pretty pointless to pursue anyway, since this is all just pie-in-the-sky ain't gonna happen anyway verbal (textual?) noodling.

Not to mention unrelated to the thread topic!

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donkelley - What I meant by that is, HW is circuit boards and components. Beyond simple analog effects, it needs to have FW to tell it what to do, and FW is just SW that lives in HW.

Helix is a combination of clever HW and clever FW.  Native is pure SW. Of course, it requires a computer to run. That computer replaces the purpose built Helix HW, which is a computer.

 

Make sense?

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On 10/18/2020 at 11:52 AM, rd2rk said:

 

Wrong.

If they're going to do it at all, it should be BETTER than the 20 year old shifter.

Better to ignore the "Half-a$$ed is good enough" crowd.

BETTER should be the minimum requirement.

 

I'm also in the "if you're going to do it at all do it well" camp. Last thing we want is to spend the next three years and several firmware revisions waiting for it to work properly and well.  Glitchy, poorly tracking polyphonic is no fun at all! Also, I love the virtual capo and pitch shifting stuff but where it really gets exciting for me is the potential for this to be used with synth patches.

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