does your DAW have a MASTER PITCH? and does it work like that on all VSTs?

[Caine123]

hey guys, i got a topic open at IL Tech Forum and it seems to be stuck atm...

for me in FL Studio, i understand the master pitch as following:
i got e.g. 10 instruments + 5 drum samples, it doesnt matter which instruments, but e.g. nexus, omnisphere, pigments.

when i turn the master pitch to -400 Cents, EVERYTHING gets EXACTLY pitched down -400 Cents.

does your DAW (Ableton, Bitwig, Cubase etc.) have this feature and does it behave like that?
cause a staff member in support asked me if e.g. Nexus2 has an internal pitch set, cause when i turn it down on master pitch to -400 Cents it isnt -4 semitones but e.g. -1 semitone which totally f*cks up the process/idea of the usage of the master pitch.

hope you can help out and check it out/test it out. THX

[Caine123]

no one?

[Tj Shredder]

What should a master pitch do? Transpose all Midi and for the fine tune add pitch bend? Which would fail as each instrument has set the PB range differently?
There is that MTS-ESP tuning system, which would allow for tuning synths across a project to odd scales. It works only with synths that support it…
It seems its not a feature anybody is even interested to look for, if their DAW supports it. (I can‘t imagine how such a system savely prevents its drum tracks from transposing for example)
And how should it deal with audio tracks? For me it sounds like asking for support hell. I hope my DAW dev does not consider implementing something like that…
If sound quality is irrelevant, you can always place a pitch shift in the master track…

[ReleaseCandidate]

Actually a MIDI-Standard that sends the frequencies to play instead of note indices (0-127) would be a good idea. Nowadays we have the bandwidth to process more than one byte of note information

[AdvancedFollower]

Yeah it sounds like asking for headaches when transposing non-pitched instruments like drum samplers or instruments that use key switches...

[Tj Shredder]

Actually a MIDI-Standard that sends the frequencies to play instead of note indices (0-127) would be a good idea. Nowadays we have the bandwidth to process more than one byte of note information

I think with Midi 2.0 it exists already, but close to zero products support it yet…
On the other hand transposing needs musical pitch. You don‘t take a frequency shifter to change the pitch of a signal unless you want to destroy the musical information and love inharmonic sounds…

[ReleaseCandidate]

Actually a MIDI-Standard that sends the frequencies to play instead of note indices (0-127) would be a good idea. Nowadays we have the bandwidth to process more than one byte of note information

I think with Midi 2.0 it exists already, but close to zero products support it yet…

Yes and no. Notes are still 7 bit (0-127) but you can add the frequency as an attribute.
https://www.midi.org/midi-articles/deta ... y-exchange

On the other hand transposing needs musical pitch.

No. Instead of adding a fixed number of semitones you multiply the frequency by a factor (depending on the used temperament or scale). So instead of adding 1 to the note index to get the note a semitone higher, you multiply the note's frequency by (using 12 tone equal temperament) 2^(1/12) - the 12th root of 2.
The note index must be converted to its frequency anyway when generating the actual tone.

You don‘t take a frequency shifter to change the pitch of a signal unless you want to destroy the musical information and love inharmonic sounds…

Except when you're not using the usual temperament or some sort of microtonality, when the 'normal' - 12 tone equal temperament - semitones don't work any more.

[Tj Shredder]

You don‘t take a frequency shifter to change the pitch of a signal unless you want to destroy the musical information and love inharmonic sounds…

Except when you're not using the usual temperament or some sort of microtonality, when the 'normal' - 12 tone equal temperament - semitones don't work any more.

I use microtonality all the time… MTS is in place and actually even better is using your ears with a MPE controller. Still you need pitch not frequency to deal with it. One cent difference in pitch is always the same, in frequencies its different for any different note pitch… Usually I don‘t do music with a calculator… What you request exists already, just not as complicated as you imagine…

[ReleaseCandidate]

You don‘t take a frequency shifter to change the pitch of a signal unless you want to destroy the musical information and love inharmonic sounds…

Except when you're not using the usual temperament or some sort of microtonality, when the 'normal' - 12 tone equal temperament - semitones don't work any more.

I use microtonality all the time… MTS is in place and actually even better is using your ears with a MPE controller.

MTS is hardly used, TUN and Scala (scl/kbm) scale definitions are way more widespread.

But we were talking about transposition. You can't just add 7 to the index of a microtonal note and expect to get the note a fifth above it, but that is the way most MIDI transposition plugins (or build-ins or ...) work.

Still you need pitch not frequency to deal with it. One cent difference in pitch is always the same, in frequencies its different for any different note pitch…

One cent is 1/100 of a semitone, so, for 12 tone equal temperament, it is fixed at 2^(1/1200). What you wanted to say is that the difference of to pitches 1 cent apart differs, but the ratio is constant, the factor is 1 cent.

Usually I don‘t do music with a calculator… What you request exists already, just not as complicated as you imagine…

Why would you need a calculator? The user should of course by default still see the note 'names' (if they choose to display the frequencies as 'notes'). I'm talking about the MIDI protocol level, not the UI.

[Dionysos]

I don't really understand the point of this thread. The master pitch function works quite well in FL, for what it is – individual instruments can be excluded from the function and there's a control for the pitch range of each plugin. If the range of a plugin doesn't match FL's global range, the master pitch knob will only use the range that the plugin exposes, so they need to be matched up for it to work reliably.

I don't understand where the other DAWs come into this.

[Halonmusic]

i believe all DAWs do that. energyXT and LMMS does it aswell. Reaper too i believe.

[Tj Shredder]

If you mean masterpitch A=431 Hz, then all synths need to understand MTS… Of course you would define that in Hz. In the OP there was a talking about cent, which sounds more like a transposing function, which as well would require support for MTS-ESP, which in addition allows for using microtuning scales. Its less a function of the DAW than a function of the synths…

[Boy Wonder]

To me, that's one of those 'Less Is More' deals. For the first few days of using Cubase 12, I thought it was my imagination that beats weren't quantized tightly. I thought I was losing my mind. Then, I discovered 'Soft Quantize' had been on by default. Man, if there was some way to use a scalpel to remove that button, I'd use it. I'd do the same thing with a Master Pitch. I'd be nervous that I accidentally triggered it and my tracks were not in concert pitch. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.