Frequency shifter
The Frequency shifter moves every frequency in a sound by the same number of Hz. It goes in any
effects rack, as an insert or on a MoonAn Orbiter body that works as a send and return: the World is sent to it, and it returns only its effect, which the Main mix adds to the dry sound.: a drum loop, a pad, a voice, a
whole mix.
What it does that a pitch shifter doesn't. A pitch shifter multiplies: up an octave, 100 Hz
becomes 200 Hz and 1 000 Hz becomes 2 000 Hz, so the harmonics stay in line and the sound stays in
tune with itself. A frequency shifter adds: shifted up 50 Hz, 100 Hz becomes 150 Hz but
1 000 Hz becomes 1 050 Hz. The harmonics stop lining up, so the sound turns metallic, bell-like,
like a broken radio. The further you go, the stranger it gets.
It loads set to shift up 50 Hz. On a World it loads at Dry/wet 50 %, so you hear it as soon as you add it; on a Star it loads at 0 %, and on a Moon at 100 %.
What a shift sounds like
- A few Hz. The pitch barely moves, but at Dry/wet 50 % the dry and the shifted sound
beat against each other: a slow swirl, like a phaser that never resets. - Tens of Hz. Out of tune with itself: metallic, ringing, a sound from another room.
- Hundreds to thousands of Hz. Harmonics torn apart: alien, clangorous.
- Up brightens and thins the sound; down darkens it.
- Through zero. Shift a sound down further than its own frequencies and they fold back up: a
200 Hz tone shifted down 500 Hz comes out at 300 Hz. Sweeping Shift through 0 and down is the
classic growl, and it never clicks.
Shift
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1Shift | The big knob: how many Hz every frequency moves, −5 kHz … +5 kHz, +50 Hz as it loads. Up / Down shows beside its name. Fine near 0 (tenths of a Hz in the middle of the turn), coarse at the ends; it clicks into 0 at twelve o'clock. |
| 2Spread | Shifts the left side up and the right side down by half this much, 0 … 1 kHz. The two sides beat against each other, so the sound swirls across the stereo field. At Shift 0 it is a pure widener: left up, right down. Back at 0, both sides come back together within a few seconds. |
| 3Low cut | Keeps everything below it out of the shifter: the bass passes dry, solid and in tune, under a shifted top. Off at 20 Hz. |
Spiral
The Spiral feeds the shifted sound back in through a delay, so each repeat is shifted once
more: up a step, and up again, an endless staircase (or down, on a downshift).
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| 4Sync | Off (as it loads), you set Time in milliseconds. On, Time is a note length of the Orbiter's tempo, from 1/2 to 1/32T; 1/8 as it loads. |
| 5Feedback | The big knob: how much goes round again, 0 … 95 %. At 0 there is no Spiral and Time does nothing. Turning it up doesn't make the sound louder: the level is held, the trail just gets longer. |
| 6Time | The time between one repeat and the next, 1 ms … 1 s, 120 ms as it loads. Short (under about 30 ms) the repeats blur into a rising or falling shimmer; long, you hear each step of the staircase. Moving it bends the repeats like tape. |
With a lot of Feedback one note can ring louder than the rest; pull Feedback down a little.
Output
7Dry/wet blends the dry sound with the shifted one, and 8Level sets the level after it.
At 50 %, small shifts beat like a phaser: the dry and the shifted sound at equal level. At
100 % you hear the shifted sound alone (with Low cut on, the bass under it stays dry).
On a Moon it starts at Dry/wet 100 % and returns only the effect; the Moon level sets how much you
hear (see Audio effects).
The screen
9A still dodecahedron, the sound as it comes in, holds a turning icosahedron, the shifted sound.
- The inner solid turns one way on an upshift and the other way on a downshift, faster the
further the knob is from 0. At Shift 0 it stands still. - The big number, bottom left, is Dry/wet; the dial, bottom right, Feedback. At Dry/wet 0 %
the picture is muted. - The word is Up · or Down · and Beating (under 10 Hz), Metallic (to 200 Hz) or
Clang; Wide at Shift 0 with Spread, Still at 0 without.
Try it
- A slow swirl on a pad. Shift 0 Hz, Spread 1 Hz, Dry/wet 100 %: the two sides beat against each other once a second, and the pad turns.
- A bell out of a piano. Shift +120 Hz, Dry/wet 50 %: the shifted copy is no longer in tune with the note, and the two ring together like metal.
- A rising spiral. Shift +30 Hz, Feedback 70 %, Time 1/8 with Sync on: each repeat steps a little higher than the last.
- A shifted top over a clean bass. Low cut 200 Hz with any of the above.
Mapping
Every control can be mapped to the Orbiter's axes, and Sync to its toggles: see
Edit.