H8000FW comments/questions

Been using my H8000FW for a solid 8 months now. I've been studying the manual but still have a lot left to learn. The unit sees daily use however, it's become an integral part of my setup. 

 

• The pitch shifting sounds amazing, indeed faster and much more realistic than my EHX pitch shifters. It doesn't do polyphonic shifting like EHX does but I'm feeding individual strings to the H8K and side by side with my Pitch Fork, the Eventide sounds stunningly natural and preserves the subtle nuances of my tone, while the EHX sounds more like a synth that follows my playing than an actual transposed version of my instrument.

Sounds good !

• I've not yet dived into VSig as I've found that the presets have been an excellent foundation for creating most of the sounds I need. I've been having lots of fun tweaking the "8 Pitchshifters" preset and have used it to create dozens of my own custom presets, including 12 string emulations, complex arpeggiation effects with different shift delay times and feedback settings for each string, and a variety of alternate tunings, including Fripp's New Standard Tuning (all 5ths). Shifting the strings down a full octave to emulate a bass works marvelously, far better than I had anticipated. The second DSP block I frequently use for 8 channel detune, 8 channel delays, or a second layer of pitch shifting. I also often use it, sometimes simultaneously, to process the stereo summed outputs of all my individual strings, effects and pickups. Lots of incredible looping algorithms for Frippertronics.

 

One thing I'd like to do that I can't with the 8 Pitchshifters preset is sync the delay time of the pitch shifts to MIDI tempo. Is VSig the answer for enabling this functionality? And for similar small tweaks to presets?

You would need Vsig for things like this. Be aware that there is a learning curve …

• Unfortunately, I've noticed a fair number of bugs and quirks with the unit. The response to expression pedals and midi controller ccs is painfully slow. I tried using an expression pedal assigned to the output volume of all the channels to use as a master volume pedal and I found it totally unusable. Any kind of quick movement would cause the parameter value displayed on the LCD to freeze, and then jump to a few mid points before catching up to whatever position i left the pedal in. The sound outputted reflected the displayed values. Achieving a smooth unstepped swell was impossible. Controlling other parameters from my BCR2000 exhibits similar behavior. I find I have to turn the knobs slowly and look away from the H8000s LCD or the lag in the displayed value throws me off and I turn the knob too far. The H8K responds better but still slow to the built-in scroll wheel.

 

As a consequence of this slow reponse time, controlling the H8K in realtime with external controllers, whether through the MIDI inputs or the H8Ks pedal input jacks, for any modestly high speed parameter manipulation seems impractical, and indeed impossible. Using an external CV LFO to modulate the H8000FW, while possible on paper and according to the manual, seems out of the question. Is this really the way the H8000FW is expected to perform? Perhaps my unit needs repair? Or maybe I need to free up resources somehow? Is there some workaround to this issue?

The MIDI interface was designed a while ago, and really intended for remote parameter changes rather than modulation. It will be faster on smaller presets.

• Frequently I encounter a high frequency noise being emitted from one of the DSP blocks. It is also not uncommon for one of the channels to mysteriously stop processing the signal, letting the dry signal through instead, often unexpectedly leaving me with one or two unpitchshifted strings. Bypass the block and then unbypass it again, or reloading the program seem to be the only way remedy this issue when it occurs. This problem disappointingly makes my H8K unusable for live performance. Is this something I could get fixed by sending it in to Eventide? Or perhaps this is expected behavior when pushing the CPU near max?

Not sure what causes this. Are there any associated error messages, or is it more likely with certain presets ?

• I've noticed every single 8 channel preset has the same CPU usage rating: 88%. Similarly, all the quad presets use 44% CPU and so on. This seems odd to me, why are not some presets more CPU heavy than others? What is the CPU rating really saying about how much more processing I could add to a particular algorithm in VSig?

I would guess that if you have 8 pitch shifters they use most of the resource of the preset, so it follows that 8 voice shifters have similar resource requirements. Ditto for 4. There are probably also rounding issues in the measurement, so that anything between (say) 41% and 47% might be shown as 44%.