Rather than risking a hard splice (and possible loud ‘click’), the crossfade smooths over any discontinuity. The audio segments would, in essence, crossfade. The H910 employed essentially the same method as human tape editors who used razor blades and a cutting block to splice tape at a 45-degree angle. It did its best to ‘smooth over’ the discontinuity that occurs when a pitch changer’s delay is forced to suddenly ‘jump’ by several milliseconds when the delay either gets to zero (increasing pitch) or becomes too long (decreasing pitch). The H910 was built with the earliest ICs-simple logic gates that could do little more than calculate a couple of memory addresses for each audio sample. Let’s explain what caused those devilish glitches in the first place. If you’re game, come along with us as we travel Nerd Boulevard! Alternatively, flash forward to Flashback 7.2 for a deep dive into the H949’s many groundbreaking features.
The path to solving the glitch problem took a number of twists and turns. Engineers discovered that the H949 could bail them out. This process was a hands-on, real-time performance. Bear in mind that, in 1979, autotune was still more than a decade away. Engineers welcomed this new capability and found that while monitoring a problematic track, they could twist the big knob-at the right time and by just the right amount-to bring a wandering pitch in tune. It had the necessary fine resolution, as well as the ability to analyze audio in real-time and make decisions that avoided audible glitches. The H949 was the first pitch-change box designed to be a tool for tuning. First, it was difficult to dial in small, precise pitch ratios, and second, the random glitch made for hit-or-miss results. On that score, it fell short for two reasons.
Others had the hope that it could be used to help solve a sticky problem: ‘pitchy’ vocals. Why was taming the glitch so important? Didn’t some people love that devilish glitch? Yes, perhaps some did, but most simply tolerated the glitch while appreciating that the H910 opened up a new world of sonic possibilities. But, for this Flashback, we’ll focus on the ‘devilish pitch change glitch’ that plagued the H910 and the method that we came up with for smiting it. The long list of “more of everything” included longer delays, radical new features, and better audio specs.
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