Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

On 4/28/03 5:48 AM, "Nick Rothwell"
<nick@...> wrote:

>> E-mu doesn't hype the quality of their pitch shifting very much these
>> days, but they're probably the best in the business.
> 
> What do you mean by pitch-shifting? I presume you mean (conceptually)
> variable-rate playback (which any sample player has to do), rather
> than the FFT process (like a Lexicon, an Oasys, etc. etc.).

Sample-players haven't used variable-rate playback for well over a decade at
this point. E-mu, among others, uses a fixed clock with sample interpolation
in order to shift the pitch of the sample in question.

That said, E-mu truly does it better than anyone else in the business, bar
none! :)

Also, Lexicon uses a splice-based interpolated pitch-shift method with
crossfades, not any FFT technique. The Korg OASYS PCI also uses a fixed
clock with sample interpolation in order to pitch-shift its samples, with
the majority of the PCM-based instruments using linear interpolation and a
few using something more sweet-sounding. In fact, I am glad the OASYS uses
linear interpolation for many of its PCM modules...that isn't something you
get the option to use on most modern sample-based instruments, and sometimes
I love the admittedly artifact-laden sound it can produce.

Offhand, the only hardware-based device I know of that does FFT-based
pitch-shifting in realtime is the Symbolic Sound Kyma5/Capybara320 system.
Eventide may do something similar in their formant-aware UltraShifter
module, but they don¹t discuss the method by which they achieve many of
their effects. ;)


cheers,
aeon