Synth block trouble

Cooper Carter

Cooper Carter

Fractal Fanatic
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I'm playing bass through the Axe II and the synth block seems incapable of processing the low, open E string or first fretted F. The synth will play them an octave up but switch to playing the correct note (octave down) for F# and up. Anyone else run into this problem?
 
The detector is not designed to deal with notes below the G on the bass, as I think there must be a cutoff for pitch detection at right around 50 hz. When asked a similar question before, I believe Cliff had said that the latency would be too great to open the detector up to notes below that (since, at a certain point, the note is so slow that just to cycle once for the detector takes a number of milliseconds).

I, and a few others, suggested in the wish list for the Ultra/Standard a while back that a dedicated bass mode be implemented which would allow those who could deal with the added latency to get accurate pitch detection down in that range. Never got an answer back on that one, though, and no idea how difficult it might be to implement.
 
Makes sense. Though I wonder how the Akai Deep Impact and other bass synths handle it without latency.

I find it hard to believe something as powerful as the Axe isn't able to duplicate those settings somehow, but I'm sure there's a good reason it doesn't, or Cliff probably would have included it.

Any insight, here, Cliff?
 
are you running straight into the synth block, or do you have something in front? i can play an open E without any trouble, but i have an amp block and a filter in front of the synth block. set the amp block to quite gainy and then send that to a filter block with the top and bottom rolled off and then into the synth block. the pitch detection is on the global input, but the envelope detection is on the input to the synth block. i know it doesn't make any sense, but it does seem to work - here is a preset i made where the synth block is also running into an amp, but it has an amp in front as well - scroll to the end and you can hear me hit a long open E...



if you still have trouble, you can also shift the synth block down an octave (within the synth block itself) and play an octave higher

sim
 
Cliff's also said before that the straight signal goes into the pitch detector, so nothing beforehand in the (Axe) chain *should* make a difference, unless I misread him. He uses automated harmonic filtering on that input to make the fundamental as pure as possible before it hits the detector.
 
yes, it's weird, but the synth block seems very sensitive to envelope, so if you give it a nice strong signal with lots of fundamental, it behaves much better and glitches much less
 
FreaqyFrequency said:
Cliff's also said before that the straight signal goes into the pitch detector, so nothing beforehand in the (Axe) chain *should* make a difference, unless I misread him. He uses automated harmonic filtering on that input to make the fundamental as pure as possible before it hits the detector.
Click to expand...

You are correct. Pitch detection is done at input before any effects. This is true with the envelope as well.
 
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javajunkie said:
This is true with the envelope as well.
Click to expand...

this however, is not my experience, so there must be something else going on as well. it's easy to test whether it makes a difference putting an amp block in front of a synth block and it certainly does.
 
simeon said:
are you running straight into the synth block, or do you have something in front? i can play an open E without any trouble, but i have an amp block and a filter in front of the synth block. set the amp block to quite gainy and then send that to a filter block with the top and bottom rolled off and then into the synth block. the pitch detection is on the global input, but the envelope detection is on the input to the synth block. i know it doesn't make any sense, but it does seem to work - here is a preset i made where the synth block is also running into an amp, but it has an amp in front as well - scroll to the end and you can hear me hit a long open E...


if you still have trouble, you can also shift the synth block down an octave (within the synth block itself) and play an octave higher

sim
Click to expand...

Yeah, I literally have no idea how you are getting that. The pitch detector doesn't even seem to be able to accurately tune a bass's low E in the tuner for me...
 
Ah I'm slightly red faced now, because I misread the original post and didn't realise you were using a bass. The low E I played in that clip was on guitar. I guess the only solution would be to play an octave higher and bump the synth down an octave. Sorry.
 
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