Question for mastering bods

Have you tried the colour, feedback and mix controls on the Ableton phaser? it may give you the control your after on balancing the effect out.

The frequency shifter fx could help here

@psyfi: yes i did, thanks. On bass, i like 0 feedback and colour to 100%, but on kick, those two parameters can have great effect, especially a bit of feedback.

@Nabla: thanks, i will try that, although in theory, i don't know exactly how a freq. shifter could be of any help here

Put one before the phaser, increment 100hz, another after the phaser -100hz. Voila, you can work around the 70hz lower limit.

Are itch shifter up to the job? I thought they were based on granular delay algorithms and there for would smear your sound to much to be a transparent process. Not tried so may well be completely wrong.

a freq shifter and pitch shifter are not the same thing.

A freq shifter will shift phase and with it configured as Nabla suggested would (I think) work.

Also big up to freq shifters ( and pitch shifters ) used in roughly this way (small shifts) as an alternative to chorus - especially on string ensemble type sounds, where it helps simulate bow phasing more effectively.

(AFAIK a hardware freq shiter would be right up your street too Alan, as if memory serves it is derived from the ring in ring modulation - you have to put more taps in your ring!)

Gave it a shot and it seems to work - not sure which artifacts get introduced though as I'm not in the studio but I'd say don't push the freq shifter too much. Phase cancelling the experiment does not seem to end up with total cancellation but seems close enough.

The shifter is a nifty fx for other thing such as risers, particularly when using white noise. Or as a an alternative way to program say a squelchy noise, instead of pitch bending.

Pitch shifters are most commonly based on analysis of FFT data, therefore they are dealing with windowing. And windowing is the part, where the thing or sound have some resemblance with granular (re)synthesis. So the transients are unavoidable smeared, because in FFT, windows are basically snapshots of sound analysis data. Also it is good to know, that time and freq. resolution in FFT world are in reverse relationship - if you want good time reslolution, you need small windows and if you want good freq. resolution, you need big windows. This is the equivalent of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (quantum mechanics) in signal processing.

On the other hand, freq. shifters can be implemented in time domain, but they introduce some sidebands to the partials...

The main difference between pitch and freq. shifter is, that if you look at the spectrum, freq. shifter would linearly move spectrum left or right, while pitch shifters take into the account the exponential nature of relationships between harmonics when transposing a spectrum. In other words, when you transpose with freq. shifters, relationships between harmonics or partials stays the same, while in other case (pitchshift) the relationships change just like they change if you look different notes of a pitched instrument.

PS: Thanks Nabla, I will try that to see what happens

Anyone wanna translate the last three pages in English for me?

I have a feeling it could be important....

Pretty much sticking a phaser that isn't affected by an lfo, and has no feedback going on and is 100% wet can make shit sound better.

Awesome.
Thought so.
Cheers


#Winning.
#SavedABucketLoadOfTime

any other quirky fx tips?

Hang on dude - I've just implemented a pitch shifter that doesn't go anywhere near the FFT.

In fact, I'm pretty much dead certain that granular resynthesis doesn't have to go near the FFT.

It does use windowing functions like the FFT, but these are just the shape of the envelope - and the windowing function is chosen according to the method has the tidiest skirt - but that is where the similarity ends.

Of course, one could implement granular resynthesis on FFT data (and that is a very interesting idea!) but that isn't neccesary, and classic all hardware pitch shifters ( like guitar pedals ) don't go near the fft.

in that case you would run two delay lines. To pitch up an octave make them get faster at twice the audio rate. fade them in so they overlap each other, and reset the delay line when their envelope is at 0 amplitude.

Think of it this way - as performing the fft on a signal gives you phase and amplitude of it's constituent sine waves, you already have all the data required to perform a pitch shift - just sum those same sine waves but double all their freqs!

If you were to take a sample and log those phase and magnitudes over time then you end up slap bang in additive resynthesis - not granular resynthesis.

I'd also say granular can do transients - you just have to make sure at least one envelope is fully open at the point of the transient - which is exactly what beat mode in Live is.

When I think of a pitch shifter I always have in mind something, that is able to tell you the current pitch of sound and on that basis, it gives you a chance to transpose it for desired amount of semitones. Without that option, I am aware of the fact, that pitch shifting can be done in time domain - in most simple case, by changing the reading speed of a sample.

The idea you are talking about is actually decades old and is called phase vocoder (if I understand you correctly). Phase vocoder is very simiar to granular (re)synthesis - the only difference is, that it takes into the account the "phase of the windows" (or grains in granular word) when doing add and overlap after the iFFT, which in theory is a benefit, but in practice very commonly a problem, known as a phasy sound. Therefore PV is based on running phase or in other words, phase differences between the same freq. bins in successive FFT frames (that is what I meant with "phase of the windows"). And successive is very reative in this case - since different reading speeds skip certain frames. Running phase can be also seen as an upgrade to FFT, since with running phase, one can identify the exact freq. of the bin - or freq. deviation from the center FFT freq. All this under the assumption, that the energy in one bin is presented by only one partial.

And since PV is much more obscure topic than GS, people usually think that whenever time stretching is taking place, we are dealing with GS, which is not the case. But since I didn't want to go into details, I mentioned only FFT when replying to psyfi. And to be very precise, all the FFT words shout be changed with STFT And pith shifting is very commonly performed with phase vocoders or tools that are very simillar to PV and hence GS - or to be again technically correct SGS (synchronous granular synthesis).

I agree.

If you take the PV data, calculate the phase differences back into frequencies, and route the freq. and magnitudes to oscillators, then you get additive synthesis. I tried that already and got some really cool sounds - especially when you take only a snapshot of freq. content to set the freq. of oscillators, and then continue only with amp. modulations. That way I got some very beautiful pads from vocals.

But when you do add and overlap to resynthesis the sound, that to me has more resemblance to GS.

I've just finished a track with Live's phasor on KB. You can check it in feedback thread...