Hi Guys/ Girls.
Today I wanted to sequence VCV Rack (Rings) with my Eurorack Sequencer (Melodicer). I use the ES-8 to send pitch and gate from my sequencer to VCV. It did work but the Pitch was totally off. Meaning when my sequencer was playing a C-note in VCV this was a D or an E, and so on. I didn’t get it to work properly so in the end i used a VCV Rack quantizer. This went better but it still didn’t play the exact notes that my sequencer was playing.
I tried the sequencer with other Eurorack vco’s and as long as i stay in Eurorack it goes well so the sequencer is spitting out the right voltages.
You probably know this but the ES-8 is not hardware calibrated - so what you put into it is not exactly what comes out.
When going the other way (sequencing your hardware from VCV) you can use the Silent Way voice controller module ($10) to calibrate your ES-8 for perfect pitch - or alternatively the free Nysthi Tunathor. I don’t think they will work the other way round though - so as in your OP, the answer is to use a quantiser in VCV.
Yup, and the same goes for the ES-9. It was one of those “nobody told me that” moments. So basically: You cannot expect the ports on the Expert Sleepers modules to transfer the exact voltage voltage you put into it. It will be off by a bit, either plus or minus, and you should not expect that amount to be linear either, and you should not expect it to be the same for each port either. This doesn’t really matter for triggers, gates or audio, but for pitch-voltage, which is very fine and precise increments, it bites hard. The only solution is to use a quantizer at the receiving/consuming end, and/or if that’s not enough, to use a calibration module.
I haven’t tried, but maybe I should. The Silent Way calibration modules basically build an internal calibration table, as far as I understand it, which takes in a pitch-voltage and gives out a pitch-voltage (right?), where the point is that the pitch-out voltage will give you the same audible result as the pitch-in voltage, when it has travelled through the ES- hardware. So I think it should be able to translate pitch both ways, but I guess I’ll have to try myself. Will report back when I’ve tried it…
Just one additional note on this: There is one hardware calibrated module from Expert Sleepers, namely the ESX-8CV. It is an expander for the ES-5 which is an expander by itself and needs to be connected to the ES-8, ES-9 or ES-3.
Yeah. In Rack, tuning Rings to C4 is probably easiest done with Bogaudio:Stack. Add an octave and 6 semitones (or precisely 1.5 volts) to the pitch, and it’s tuned to C4:
I did try it once but I found it doesn’t work well with VCO’s that don’t take negative voltages, and there was a couple of other issues, where the calibration routine kind of vent it’s own way, even though it didn’t receive any audio any more. It didn’t seem “intelligent” enough. Maybe I’ll try it again…
I use that all the time because it’s the best thing for the job but I find that it doesn’t let you add a mono value to a set of poly values in a poly cable. It only adds the first one. It’s easy to get round with that Bogaudio Polymult but it is something to be aware of.
I’m surprised it isn’t calibrated, but I believe you. Before VCV, Squinky Labs used to make custom firmware for the ES “Disting”. That IS accurately calibrated from the factory, and they provide instructions for how to calibrate it yourself.
The trick for us was loading our custom firmware without erasing the factory calibration, but with ES help we got it to work.
Anyway, Disting came from the factory very well calibrated. I wonder why ES-8 isn’t calibrated?
I investigated and found that it’s quite possible to get pitch-accurate sequencing, of Rack to hardware and hardware to Rack. So I wrote this guide to do it:
