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Re: Pitch Shifter

2004-12-27 by paulhaneberg

There is no such thing as an analog Pitch Shifter.  At least as far 
as I know.  I suppose one could be built if you could find a charge 
coupled bucket brigade type device capable of high enough quality, 
but that's unlikely.  All pitch shifters are digital and break the 
incoming signal into samples just like digital delays.  There are 
always trade offs involved in making a pitch shifter as well, as 
improved pitch accuracy and improved timing accuracy are somewhat 
mutually exclusive.  

I think what you are really looking for is a pitch shifter which can 
accept a control voltage to control the amount that the signal is 
shifted in pitch.  This is also difficult to accomplish.  Most 
Digital Delay devices which are capable of analog voltage control 
actually step between delay values rather than continuously changing 
value.  This tends to cause zipper noise.  In order to vary the 
delay (or the pitch) continuously the sample rate clock must be 
voltage controlled.  While not impossible, this is quite difficult.  
If you are sampling at 48 kHz which would give you a maximum input 
frequency of around 20 kHz, and then you wanted to either decrease 
the delay time or raise the pitch by two octaves, your sample rate 
clock would now be running at 192 kHz.  If you slow down below 48 
kHz you will lose high end response or generate some truly nasty 
artifacts, so the effective range is only about 2 octaves using 
modern converters if you want to be continuously variable without 
stepping.

It may be possible to get more range with a delta/sigma scheme or by 
using a flash converter with a compander.  This is something I'm 
personally interested in exploring, as I'm interested in the musical 
applications of delay lines, but I haven't had time to play around 
with any kind of circuit design yet.

The frequency shifter is another animal entirely.  The Encore 
Electronics module is quite wonderful, but as someone else pointed 
out a frequency shifter does not maintain the integer spacing of 
harmonics present in the input signal, so it really does not shift 
pitch.

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