Nice black panel on your Plaits!
I normally route my external gear back into VCV and use Hot Tuna to check the validity of my cv out. You might find it doesn’t track quite perfectly across the whole range of octaves. But if it does, that’s cool!
I did a thorough measurement for calibration of my ES-3 MK3 when I got it. It’s not terrible, but I agree, It does need some calculation on rack to get it spot on. My memory played a trick on me, when I wrote that they’re calibrated.
Anyhow, I did the measurements using a multimeter and google sheets LINEST() calculated the 4th order polynomial correction formula for each output.
Here’s a sheet with the values for each of the 8 output channels. Maybe someone can use the method.
Disclaimer: I’m not brilliant with maths.
It does sound pretty close! Bear in mind that any offset in voltage will be different for each output/input, and different across the range.
The problem with doing that is that the inputs are not hardware calibrated either - so you are getting one calibration ‘error’ on the way out, and another on the way back in. The only real way to check the validity of the CV out is to check the voltage externally.
You’re right that the offset is not constant across the voltage range so it’s not easy to compensate for in Rack without using something like Silent Way or Tunathor, which is why they exist of course.
Or you can always just use an external quantiser to take care of it…
Yep that’s the way to do it (and your maths looks much better than mine haha). It’s interesting that on average the diversion seems to be greatest at around +/- 8 or 9 volts which are unlikely to be used for pitch - the voltages closer to zero are more accurate.
Bottom line is if it sounds good then it probably is good - but at the same time it’s worth knowing about this as you don’t want to make the best melody ever only to find out later that it was all recorded slightly out of tune.
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If people are wanting worry free tuning on eurorack VCOs I can heartily recommend acquiring one of these. You can pretty much set and forget tuning for up to 4 sources and it also offers semitone/octave switching on each. Works a treat on external sources like Behringer Model D too.
The only disappointment is you can’t use it to automatically tune anything that is plucky as it seems to rely on a fairly consistent tone to do its thing.
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The problem with doing that is that the inputs are not hardware calibrated either - so you are getting one calibration ‘error’ on the way out, and another on the way back in. The only real way to check the validity of the CV out is to check the voltage externally.
I meant checking the AC tuning of the external VCO, but agreed, DC out and DC in is just going to give you two unknowns.
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Update on my Eurorack integration inside VCV Rack 2 Pro, running inside a DAW - now working perfectly without any noticable lag: Since I already had a Presonus studio1824c, I added an Expert Sleepers FH-2 with one FHX-8CV expansion for full range CVs instead of another audio device that were on my list like the ES-3, ES-8 or ES-9. I had issues with midi and or audio routing in FLstudio. I downloaded test versions of Ableton and now finally in Bitwig, everything works like a charm. So I am running VCV Rack as a plugin using the FH-2 for CV and triggers. VCV Rack receives MIDI from Bitwig, sends data to the FH-2. The audio channels of the interface can be individually made available or unavailable to Bitwig. I reserved some inputs of the audio device so they are available now directly to the VCV Rack plugin. I guess I’ll switch DAWs now… Maybe a user error tho, idk … If I ever want more audio rate signals in and out, I will most likely get an ES-3 or ES-8. The ES-9 only has SPDIF, not ADAT afaik.
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Btw, if you want to use pitch bending or glide on real Eurorack modules controlled by VCV Rack, use the MTS-ESP modules from ODDSound instead of the stock MIDI to CV and CV to MIDI modules. The stock ones didn’t produce smooth glides while the ones from ODDsound did.
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