In Praise of the Virtual Capo ***FW 5.02b1***

[Simon Godden]

I used the virtual capo at practise last night to play Run to You by Bryan Adam, tuned up 2 semitones. Absolutely perfect. I tried it about 6 months ago and didn't find it usable. I had no problem with it last night at all. I was even soloing at the end with no issues at all. So nice not to have to bother with the physical capo.

 

[Ugly Bunny]

I used the virtual capo at practise last night to play Run to You by Bryan Adam, tuned up 2 semitones. Absolutely perfect. I tried it about 6 months ago and didn't find it usable. I had no problem with it last night at all. I was even soloing at the end with no issues at all. So nice not to have to bother with the physical capo.

Yeah; it’s so good now that I don’t even think about it, let alone worry about how I’m gonna have to compensate for the latency. Well done, FAS.

 

[utkanos]

the Virtual Capo is life changing for me on tunes that are in Eb and not having to tune down or switch guitars. I adore it for that reason.

I also went absurd and made a patch that's like -14 semitones just for fun

 

[Ugly Bunny]

the Virtual Capo is life changing for me on tunes that are in Eb and not having to tune down or switch guitars. I adore it for that reason.

I also went absurd and made a patch that's like -14 semitones just for fun

My most extreme one was a -5 semitones so I could play a Dream Theater 7-string song. I was quite impressed that I could play a very fast riff with such accuracy due to the low latency

 

[Ugly Bunny]

The VC is still great! My worries that fixing the tuner would break the VC were unfounded. It still sounds wonky with cleans, with no way to adjust the doubling/chorus/tremolo-like effect out of the sound, but for anything slightly overdriven to high gain, it’s wonderful. Still very low latency even up to 5 half steps down (maybe more, I didn’t test further).

I tried playing with the settings to get the clean sound not sounding so wonky, and anything but “fast” made it less warbly, but added other artifacts. So it still should only be used on clean tones in a full-band context. Not recommended for crystal clean arpeggiated chords.

As far as latency, it doesn’t feel any different so I didn’t run further tests. I may at some point.

 

[WillieD]

The VC is still great! My worries that fixing the tuner would break the VC were unfounded. It still sounds wonky with cleans, with no way to adjust the doubling/chorus/tremolo-like effect out of the sound, but for anything slightly overdriven to high gain, it’s wonderful. Still very low latency even up to 5 half steps down (maybe more, I didn’t test further).

I tried playing with the settings to get the clean sound not sounding so wonky, and anything but “fast” made it less warbly, but added other artifacts. So it still should only be used on clean tones in a full-band context. Not recommended for crystal clean arpeggiated chords.

As far as latency, it doesn’t feel any different so I didn’t run further tests. I may at some point.

I haven't downloaded the beta yet, but do you have a recommended a starting point for the VC? I've read that the smooth setting with tracking at 5 is a good start.

 

[Ugly Bunny]

I haven't downloaded the beta yet, but do you have a recommended a starting point for the VC? I've read that the smooth setting with tracking at 5 is a good start.

I didn’t find any setting for cleans that was any more satisfying as any other; if one thing got better, something else sounded worse. But for my uses, pitch tracking is set to fast and tracking is set to about 3. As a rhythm guitarist, I don’t need to worry about the occasional artifact that will be covered by overdrive anyway, most likely. I keep tracking at center for the one song I do have to play a clean intro to (Undone by Weezer).