I’ve been thinking about picking up some sort of rack mount, dedicated APU/DSP unit. Something I can put my own algorithms on. One option is the whole Kyma ecosystem, but it’s not as stand-alone as I’d like.
Another option I’ve come across is the Eventide Harmonizers from the Orville on. With VSig it looks like you can get real detailed with the DSP. And they’re stand alone and have all the ADC/DAC channels wired and ready to go.
But they’re not cheap. The H8000 still commands ~$2800 (and its VSig only supports windows, so I’d have to buy a cheap computer, too). The H9000 VSig supports Mac (and RNBO!) but starts $5000 for the R version and goes up from there. That’s huge money for a class of hardware I just don’t have much experience with.
So I’m hoping to lean on y’all’s experience. Who’s using these boxes? How are they worth it to you? Are you doing much with VSig with them, or is that a pointless party trick?
ive never used one of their modern range (h3000+) i just know theyre incredibly powerful. and expensive.
i have used some of their stuff that runs their algorithms which are fantastic. they’ve been at the forefront of music tech for ages, the original harmonizer is over 50 years old.
autechre → maxmsp
squarepusher → eventide harmonizer
aphex → a soviet tank
µ-Ziq → mario paint
I’ve never used them, but I guess the question would be do you really need to get down to the low level like that, and will you actually be able to invent something nobody has ever done before? Or would you be better off with something like the Poly Beebo? At the end of the day you can filter sound, change amplitude, distort it, pitch shift, delay it, do granular stuff, etc. The basic building blocks seem pretty well established so being able to combine and mix and route those different building blocks in a modular environment seems more productive than trying to rebuild those things from scratch.
Had an H8000 for a while years ago. Wish I’d kept it but
Vsig is no picnic on those machines. You’ll have to commit to long hours. You also have to build all the interface connections into your patch. Which buttons things connect to, what the screen will say for parameters for every page etc. and of course design in all the DSP that makes it sound right.
I got as far as making some of the tutorial patches. Basic delay etc but nothing particularly interesting or anything that sounded good.
But if it’s an environment you can get comfortable with and you have some time or Dsp chops then maybe you’ll be a duck to water and be swimming in no time.
There’s no plug in interface for the older machines. The h9000 is the only one that has that. So unless you buy that you’ll be using the older hardware (obviously still very powerful) and moving things around through standard I/o.
You might as well try out PD and plugdata to make plugins if that’s the kind of thing you want to achieve. Max and PD and reaktor core all let you get very low level and any modern computer can run all that easily.
Kyma works very differently than the eventide stuff or any computer modular dsp solution but I haven’t peaked in on that in forever.
Yeah. I’m quite experienced with Max, PD, Reaktor, etc. This is partially why I’m excited about the H9000 supporting RNBO, for example.
But I don’t want to be tied to a computer. I want to be able to run my DSP stand alone. Hence the desire for some external box.
How’s this part work? You make a .sig file in windows, then copy it over via memory card? Sysex? Serial connection? Once on-device, how are they managed? Is it the same as saving/renaming/moving standard H8000 programs?
the H8000 had a serial connector. i’m trying to remember how i had it connected to a windows laptop… i think it was serial connector, 9 pins that had an adaptor to USB so… USB 2 i guess. if you want a nightmare experience it’s possible to access VSIg on the screen of the H8000. you can zoom around and stuff it’s hilarious.
but, yeah… i had Vsig on a windows machine connected to the H8000. once connected it was fine. I don’t recall it being slow to move patches around but large patches would take a bit to load. once in the H8000 then yes it’s just like any preset in the system.
that guy Italo, who ran the eventide yahoo group and i think even made some algorithms for them at some point was a great help for a lot of people but yahoo groups are long gone. i thin khe shows up on some forums… gearspace maybe?
a friend of mine has an H9000 and has been down the rabbit hole with it for a few years now. but for the last year or so he’s been lost in work and graphics stuff and a plotter. so, i haven’t checked it out at all. it seems like they’ve made it more accessible for slapping algorithms together but also all the low level stuff is possible.
so, the H8000 i mostly used via the analogue and digital i/o. i avoided the firewire for some reason.
you can midi everything up in the H8000. it’s quite controllable. that’s basically what squarepusher did. peavy midi controller and his custom patches in the orville.
I’ve seen orvilles for pretty decent prices. they’re like half an H8000. eventide keeps all the documentation for the older devices up on their site… worth a look if you’re contemplating an orville or h8000. i think the 7600 will also run vsig?? i can’t remember though.
there’s a guy who posts H9000 videos and i think he makes some of his own algos… he gets verbose at times.
if you search for eventide vsig on youtube there’s a bunch of videos and i think the basic delay tutorial is up there. if you are cozy with pd/max etc you’ll probably do fine in vsig once you cut yoru teeth on it some.
oh, edit: this guy has a lot o vsig stuff for the h9000 which maybe you’ve seen already. https://www.youtube.com/@WackyMadly
btw a while ago i bought a lenovo thinkpad for $150 off ebay to run CDP. it’s an i7 quad, 512gb HD, 32GB ram and is perfect. has a stripped down version of windows 11 on it. so, the cost for getting something to run Vsig shouldn’t be bad. no idea what OS is required for windows version on the older eventide hardware. i think my windows laptop at the time had winXP.
btw i don’t know if kyma can run headless… unattached from the computer. you also need to buy an audio interface for it as well i think. it has no i/o of it’s own. unless they’ve updated them?
Using 9 pin din via a USB → RS232 / serial cable on Windows is the fastest way to use VSig on the H8000 / Orville etc.
It does work over DIN MIDI on Win / Mac but my god it’s unbelievably painfully slow in my experience.
Using the on device editor is how the OG H3000 presets were developed - I’m sure it’s fast once you get in to it but it’s not for the faint of heart. Actually it would be horrible by todays standards.
It’s a difficult choice between earlier models and the H9000. I haven’t experience with the H9000. The reps at Superbooth a few years back were sure the H9000 recreates the famous H8000 algos perfectly well enough. It’s super tempting despite the price. Also pretty cool that cycling '74 allow export of RNBO patches to the H9000 (and maybe H90 in the future), so that’s another avenue for implementing algorithms.
The OG H3000 with the upgrades is probably still “the one” though, if you’re chasing a particular sound not quite attained with the newer models, probably due to some noise / grit in the conversion process for such old gear.
You must have a computer for the Kyma software. An audio interface is ideal, but if you’re using the latest hardware iteration (i.e Pacamara), you can plug a mic and/or headphones directly into it via the 3.5 mm jacks around back. The Pacamara is really small compared to older Kyma hardware, so it’s quite portable, even with a small audio/MIDI interface and MacBook Air. That said, I never go anywhere, so mine never leaves its desktop resting place and I’ve never once tried those built-in mic and headphone jacks.
I’ve also always owned some version of the Eventide boxes along the way. I currently have an original H910 and a 4000. The latter can be used with VSig, but I don’t use VSig for the same reason I’ve never moved up to a later Eventide model: Kyma. It’s so easy for me to build things I need in the Kyma environment that it’s my first call for such things.
