Digi tech Drop -who has this type of accuracy in the Axe?

cragginshred

Fractal Fanatic
Past inquiries and my own experience is that the de tuner effect in the Axe has latency with some not too believable tones like the Drop by Digitech has the rep for. Is there any advances I am not aware of bringing the Axe up to speed or do I need buy a Drop to put next to my FX8?
 
Yea, I was pining on The Drop as well, but I spent some time with the pitch block recently and was able to pull some totally great sounds out of it. Very excellent, lag was nothing. And by using the poly vs. monophonic modes I could flip between modern and classic Whammy type tracking. Been using it as an octave up and octave down, mixed about 50%, in front of a cocked wah -- digging it.
 
I’m using the pitch block for down tuning a lot, Eb, D, C and low B.
When playing heavy distortion, it’s ok and if it’s a live situation nobody will noticed any difference.
As low as you go, the darker the sounds gets (distortion).
When playing clean chords, the sound tend to “break” or “miss” partial notes…
I can’t really explain, it’s like the sounds stutterers a little, it doesn’t sound smooth, like a one piece of chord / sound, you hear and fill something is not as should be, even in live situation.
I sometimes find myself strum harder to get all the notes out properly.
Another thing I’ve noticed is, the less you load the CPU, the better the tracking / no lag is.
If you are using a heavy preset, many blocks / CPU is in a higher %, there will be some delay and you will notice it.
Bottom line, it’s a very good and quick solution for live if you don’t want to carry too many guitars and swap too much but it’s not the best.
 
Concerning CPU: setting Pitch to Local increases its priority, makes it perform better when CPU usage is high.

Regarding latency: Simeon has a neat trick to increase the 'feel'. Check the droptuned preset among his Pitch preset collection.
 
Yek, hat do you mean by "setting Pitch to Local" ?

It's a parameter in the Pitch block.

Cliff: "Once the CPU usage crosses a certain threshold (which could happen if you are streaming audio) the pitch detection will slow down as the global pitch detector necessarily has a lower priority than the primary audio processing. If you change the Pitch Source to Local then the local pitch detector runs at the same priority as the audio."
 
I use a Digitech drop with the axe, for the price and ease of using pedal its perfect for me, 1 knob and 1 footswitch set and forget and easy to change on the fly.
 
I use a Digitech drop with the axe, for the price and ease of using pedal its perfect for me

Actually thought to buy a pitch fork, but I'm afraid it will open the door for more pedals which I don’t want to use. :lol

I did some more tweaking last few hours, I worked on 2 presets, an ultra-clean and an ultra-mean, each is running 2 pitch blocks tuned to Eb/D and C/B using X/Y and 4 scenes.
Also all dialed SOURCE = LOCAL
I deleted everything I could, leaving the preset as light as I can, but still on the clean preset when going to C/B , it sounds dark and weird, losing clarity / part of the notes as mentioned above.
 
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I think it depends on the type of music and how far off you drift from standard tuning. I own/use a drop tune in my real amp rig and when direct/modelling I use the pitch block in the Axe-FX both for a traditional/country rock band. I set tracking around 1.86 and it works great. I mostly go down a 1/2 step in pitch but on occasion will drop a full step.

I also use an eventide H9 with the pitch-flex algorithm on my Amplifire board/rig. IMO the Axe FX pitch block is better than the H9...

My only gripe about the drop tune is the power requirements. Other than that it is a great but pricey pedal. I could never justify replacing the axe fx pitch block with a drop tune...they are very comparable for my needs

But when using a real amp with physical pedals, the drop tune is the obvious choice. I have never tried a pitch fork...
 
I use the Digitech Drop function on the Whammy DT, and it just feels and sounds better to me. I do classic rock to death metal, so I need a lot of flexibility with my down-tuning. It also frees up CPU because I always have a pitch block in my presets for detune and harmonies.
 
Same here Whammy DT when needed to drop my guitar tuning down that tiny -5 semitones ,over a year tweaking Axe FX II pitch block for drop my tuning down for few songs was enough IMO.

I use the Digitech Drop function on the Whammy DT, and it just feels and sounds better to me. I do classic rock to death metal, so I need a lot of flexibility with my down-tuning. It also frees up CPU because I always have a pitch block in my presets for detune and harmonies.
 
Ok, I've managed to improve a little the down tune pitch block, but again in very low tuning (C, B) on clean, you here and fill the latency.
If anyone care to try them, I will be happy to see what you can come up with.

View attachment 27401

View attachment 27402


BTW Moke, what's the ADSR1 part in the pitch block over your preset?

Presets look and sound good. Some latency but that's to be expected.
The ADSR-trick can "conceal" that latency.

Track Adjust in the clean preset is low. That improves latency but can introduce some artifacts.
 
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