Hardly. Once you try literally ANY other pitch shifter, you’ll appreciate the QC’s. I’ve had them ALL and still have Helix and Axe Fx III.
Now, can it be improved? Sure.
And I had a Fractal FM9, which is why I say that they are all bad, and the quad cortex is bad too, and I want the quad cortex to be good, professional-level, on which you can actually play at a concert.
The QC pitch shifting isn’t great. Neural can definitely improve it. They’re capable of adding better pitch effects with all their other developments in modeling
Yeah, I think it all depends on use-case and personal tolerance. Fractal’s is horrible (although the latest FW, 29.01 supposedly improves the pitch shifting, confirmed by my guitarist who’s borrowing it ATM, although he disagrees with Cliff’s claim that it’s “best in class”; still, I’ll reserve judgment until I try it).
I was gigging my FM3 years ago BEFORE they improved the pitch shifting even to where it is now (still REALLY bad). But I found that with overdriven guitar it was usable. I could still feel the latency, but the artifacts are hidden by the overdrive.
It’s bass guitar and cleans where pitch shifters really show their warts. Fractal’s pitch shifting might’ve been fine for overdriven guitar, but it was absolutely unusable for bass guitar or cleans. I haven’t really given the QC much trial on cleans, but it works absolutely flawlessly for bass - even down to -5 semitones (to approximate a 5-string bass on a 4-string).
Probably easier for bass since it’s a monophonic pitch shifter.
I do feel transpose ruins the tone of the guitar by darkening the signal in a weird way. It’s somewhat strange (probably less noticeable on bass again since it’s more noticeable on a guitar which is typically brighter). I understand why Line 6 added an EQ feature to their Poly Capo to reduce that tone shift that most pitch shifters will add when dropping the tuning lower
Yes, fractal also works poorly, quad cortex is a little better, but not enough. I mean, you can’t go out and play a drop A at a concert so that the audience hears a normal sound, not a mess. A multi-voicer also adds artifacts. And a pitch shifter too. Maybe on a bass with overdrive it’s not noticeable and the bass plays mostly one note, not even fifths or fourths.
Yes, the whole problem is obviously that all pitch changers are monophonic.
Yeah, because it transposes the WHOLE signal, including the transients and string/pick noise; it effectively changes the timbre to a different instrument while unnaturally recreating those sounds. There used to be a trick where you’d split the signal and only shift everything below like 10kHz or something; this maintained the transients and masked the latency, supposedly, but I was never able to get it to sound right. I’ve tried this on the QC, too, but haven’t been successful. There’s enough phasing with the splits/merge blocks that it’s not very usable.
I think the fact that bass guitar is monophonic (as a rule, though I do play lots of double-stops and multiple notes ringing out while playing others) does help; however, it’s odd that Fractal can’t get it right. Hell, even Line 6’s “Simple Pitch” block does better, and that was one of the first pitch effects on Helix. I used to use it regularly to shift my whole guitar, long before the Poly Capo came into existence lol.
But I’ll be curious to see how this new algorithm plays out; both on the Axe III now and eventually when it comes to the FM3.
So I’m late to the party here. Is there a pitch shifter that collectively we call the “gold standard”. What pitch shifter is “professional”?
I have an Eventide H90 and thought that might be the one but honestly I prefer the QC transpose to the Eventide even though the Eventide is polyphonic pitch shifting. It just sounds weird to my ears. The QC isn’t perfect but more natural sounding???
So far, Digitech is doing the best.
Not all pitch shifters are monophonic lol
Poly Capo from Line 6 (pedal and plugin), or Polychrome Hypertune (plugin). These are the clearest polyphonic ones I’ve found. Line 6 has a few polyphonic pitch shifters.
Honestly Transpose makes chords sound strange and out of tune since it’s monophonic and glitches a lot. A few people on here swear they don’t hear it, but it just comes from inexperience or no knowledge of what to look for. It’s fine if they want to use it for just practicing at home over backing tracks, but I find it really unusable live even with distortion
I completely agree. That’s why I created this topic so that you can use the pitch shifter, transposer, and multivoicer in Quad Cortex. Because VSTs are third-party and require DAW to work. By the way, I have Helix Native, I wouldn’t say that Poly Capo works well there, full of artifacts, the same thing.
This is only for you, no one else, including Ola Englund, watch his video.
I can guarantee you Transpose has artifacts for any guitar or player. It has more artifacts than other options for polyphonic style pitch shifting. Neural has a polyphonic octaver, they can develop a polyphonic pitch shifter (especially since it was a promised effect at launch and we’re still waiting after 4+ years)
I don’t think you’re lying haha. I’m just stating what I’ve found with comparing Transpose to other pitch shifters with various guitars, amp sounds, etc. It’s a useful tool, and I think they can improve the algorithm. Neural is very capable and has done great stuff in the past
From what I’ve read in the comments, many people don’t seem to understand the difference between a pitch shifter and a smart harmonizer/Minivoicer. The Minivoicer adds notes within scales, creating harmonized lines, and it is commonly used in heavy metal solos, especially in Iron Maiden. The issue is that the QC is very limited in terms of scales, offering only major and minor (or chromatic, which is practically useless). I truly hope they implement this and add more scales in the future.
Unfortunately, they have a bad pitch shifter and multi-voicer, which is why I created this topic and ask for support.
Boss XS 1 poly shifter anyone?
I hope Neural DSP will listen to users and make high-quality, polyphonic transposer, pitch shifter and multi-voicer.