Eventide's H90 and how it dramatically transforms sounds (+audio/video download)

Short answer is no. The longer answer...: microfreak is mono and synclavier doesn't even have a delay; Iridium has delay, chorus, reverb and distortion, but nowhere near the craziness or variety of reverbs/delay/choruses/etc you can get with the H90. None of these synths have an audio pitch-shifting feature. Now, you can of course play polyphonically will all of them (even MicroFreak in paraphonic mode), but that's a totally different thing from the way pitch shifting is embedded in delay looper, reverb feedback (shimmers), multi-tap delays and other effects.

Yeah I try not to geek out with my quad obsession on these videos because most people don't care (unfortunately)! Technically you could actually use this to create very interesting quad effects - not exactly perfect swirls but in dual mode you can place the same effect on two different stereo outputs and align parameters differently to create quite interesting quad effects! If they open this up for users to program their own effects, that would be truly wild!

new to this, I am trying to grok which sounds (as opposed to controls) the H90 adds to the microfreak used in the video - could the microfreak do all of these sounds itself? could a waldorf or the new synclavier? [i ask this separately from the addition of controls]

Bryan Willman

You had my full attention at “two stereo ins and outs”. I was remembering your conversation with Suzanne Ciani, regarding her two H9s, in her quadraphonic surround setup. She had her H9 boxes modified for control voltage input. But, they were still “just” 2 by 2 channels. The ability to locate two or more sounds in a discrete quadraphonic grid is very nice (as currently used in Roger Waters’ “This is Not A Drill” concert tour). There are a very few devices that let you smoothly move the sound on the perimeter of a circle via control voltage (Buchla 227) and fewer yet (Atmos?) that will position from the center-out of a Quadraphonic field. You almost suggested a quadraphonic algorithm for the H90 in your “Wish List”. Eventide could make “Swirl” available again; with their Pitch/Tone Shifting, Modulated Echo, Diagonal and Arpeggiated Motion Controls for seasoning.

Timothy-Douglas Alvey