H9 smooth volume control

The expression pedal mapping being bypassed when the patch is made globally. I also deleted all expression pedal mappings on a few various effect algorithm presets with no apparent improvement in the zipper noise.

So is the issue of zipper noise when using an expression pedal to control overall volume one that can't be improved because there are simply not enough computational cycles left after the wonderful Eventide effects are crunched?

If you turn on expression control global input, it will ignore all expression mappings. If you set it on a preset by preset basis, it won't ignore the mappings. That's why I suggested you unmap the expression controls.

I just tried my H9 with an expression pedal controlling global input volume. It worked fine and I didn't experience any zipper noise or latency. Do you have this issue on all algorithms? Can you shoot a short video to demonstrate this noise?

Some algorithm is computationally heavy.

True, but a simple volume control is absolutely not computationally heavy, especially when you have the kind of DSP hardware that the H9 does.

I think there’s something wrong with the way the H9 calibrates expression pedals. I have an Ernie Ball VP Jnr 25k pedal, even with zero effects on and the pedal set to control global volume out, it’s very uneven, and the stepping in the lower ranges is terrible. Fading up from silent kicks in quite suddenly, and there is little change after about 80% up. With distorted (Sculpt) sounds it’s even more noticable, to the point of being completely unusable.

This is purely a calibration problem (or it’s a hardware problem with the A/D converter in the expression input). The same pedal used with a Line6 M13 is totally smooth, fading in gently, and the whole range of the pedal is usable, it feels like an inline analog volume pedal. So it’s not the pedal.

The only help I’ve found on re-calibrating is to turn calibration off and then on again, but this hasn’t made any difference.

I think there’s something wrong with the way the H9 calibrates expression pedals. I have an Ernie Ball VP Jnr 25k pedal, even with zero effects on and the pedal set to control global volume out, it’s very uneven, and the stepping in the lower ranges is terrible.

Awesome customer support, Eventide. Do you even pay attention to your own customer forums? Are you looking in to why this incredibly powerful DSP box can’t even do a simple volume control or wah-wah effect? I am so close to selling it, there is very little that it does that other pedals don’t do as good or better.

Are you looking into why this incredibly powerful DSP box can't even do a simple volume control or wah-wah effect? I am so close to selling it, there is very little that it does that other pedals don't do as good or better.

If you want to calibrate your expression pedal for your H9, you can use H9 Control to do that. You need go to Pedal Settings -> General Settings -> Pedal Calibration Disabled, and click from Yes to No, then move your pedal from heel to toe for a couple of times. You can check if it's perfectly calibrated in the Presets screen, see if the heel and toe move the ribbon from the left end to the right end. After it's calibrated, please go back to the Pedal Calibration Disabled page to lock the expression by clicking Yes.

If you need to use your expression pedal as a wah-wah pedal, you can use the Q-Wah algorithm. Factory preset F6 Vintage Wah is a good example. If you set TYPE parameter to WAHWAH and SHAPE parameter to EXP PDL, you can use your expression to do wah-wah effects.

Thanks for replying, Bohan, but I don’t think you’ve read this thread. It’s not about calibration, and I have already purchased Q-wah. The problem isn’t about the range. For example with volume control, whether global or per preset, full heel is off (0%) and full toe is 100%, that part is fine.

The problem is that as the pedal moves from 0-100% it’s not smooth, it “zippers”, in that you can hear it jump between values. The same with wah, or in fact anything you control from the expression pedal. One explanation would be that the pedal’s value isn’t sampled often enough, so that between two samples the value has jumped. I installed software version 5.6.0 recently but it’s still there. The problem is particularly noticable in the lower ranges.

Again, there is nothing wrong with my expression pedal, it’s an Ernie Ball VP Jr 25k, and it works perfectly (i.e. it’s perfectly smooth) with other equipment, like a Line6 M13. Your earlier response of “I just tried it with mine and it works fine” is not how customer support works! The Ernie Ball VP Jr 25k is the pedal recommended by Eventide for the H9 (on this page). Is that what you are using?

Someone said in another post that it used to be smooth, but with a software update a year or two ago it started to have the zipper problem. 

Yeah, that probably wasn't the best way to describe the problem.  The reason for the zipper noise is that the changes in level are handled by the control rate thread.  For smooth level changes we'd have to add smooth ramping between levels on the DSP thread.  When we first added this feature, we were adverse to implement it in this second way, because it was going to be a deeper change that would require more work and might push a few algorithms over the resource limit.  So, we implemented this in the first way, reasoning that even if it wasn't ideal to do it in the first way there were still a fair number of users who would find the feature helpful and make use of it.  

So, we implemented this in the first way, reasoning that even if it wasn’t ideal to do it in the first way there were still a fair number of users who would find the feature helpful and make use of it.  

Thanks for the clarification. In what scenarios do you think having an expression pedal respond in a non-linear, discrete way would be useful? Which H9 algorithms?

Because it’s unusable for volume, any filter effects, distortion, pitch etc.

I use an expression pedal precisely so that I don’t need to have separate analog volume and wah pedals on my pedal board, as well as being able to control other parameters to do cool things.

If you’re saying you have no plans to fix it then that’s fine, I’ll just have to sell the H9 and get something else.