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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Eventide’s Retrospective Flashback #7.1 Highlights Its H949 Harmonizer®
Little Ferry, NJ, August 10, 2021 – As part of its ongoing 50th Anniversary celebration, Eventide’s Flashback Series, which highlights groundbreaking legacy Eventide products that solidified the company as an audio technology leader, continues with the latest installment – Flashback #7.1: The H949 Harmonizer® (1979).
The H949 Harmonizer was designed to improve upon the performance of the H910 Harmonizer which had been released in 1975 to great acclaim. The success of the H910 was gratifying, especially considering its limitations (for instance, it provided only 100 milliseconds of delay). Eventide was already thinking about a new, improved model even as the first H910s shipped. At the time – the mid ‘70s – IC technology was sprinting ahead. The 4k-bit RAM chips in the H910 became “old news” once 16k-bit chips were available. And, by 1977, logic ICs had progressed to doing simple but fast arithmetic, which enabled a host of unheard-of effects. The H949 benefited from the rapid pace of IC development with improved audio specs and much more. It represented a major advance in the very notion of an effects box and introduced the terms algorithm, random, and micropitch to the audio lexicon. The marketing message was simple – “more of everything,” and that meant longer delays, radical new features, and better audio specs.
The flashback focuses on a particular problem that the H949 was able to address – specifically, the “devilish pitch change glitch” that plagued the H910. Why was taming the glitch so important? Didn’t some people love that devilish glitch? Yes, perhaps some did, but most simply tolerated the unpredictable audio hiccup while appreciating that the H910 opened up a new world of sonic possibilities. Others had hoped that the H910 could be used to help solve a sticky problem: “pitchy” vocals. On that score, it fell short for two reasons. First, it was difficult to dial in small, precise pitch ratios, and second, the random glitch made for hit-or-miss results. But the glitch needed a solution, and the flashback breaks down in great detail how Eventide endeavored to find the answer.
The H949 was the first pitch-change box designed to be a tool for tuning. It had the necessary fine resolution, as well as the ability to analyze audio in real time and make decisions that avoided audible glitches. 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 tune a track with wandering pitch. Bear in mind that, in 1979, Auto-tune was still more than a decade away. Engineers discovered that, while the process was a hands-on, real-time performance, the H949 pitch adjustment algorithms could bail them out when tracks desperately needed tuning.
A highlight of Flashback #7.1 is the embedded video – Susan Rogers on the Eventide H949 Harmonizer® – where the legendary recording engineer breaks down her use of the device. From tuning background vocals to using it on hi-hat/cymbals on Prince tracks, hear why Susan Rogers considered the H949 Harmonizer an essential studio tool.
Flashback #7.1 is the latest in the ongoing series of Flashbacks that help celebrate Eventide’s 50th Anniversary while providing readers a true historical perspective on the company. The episodes feature insights, photos, videos and documentation excerpts that chronicle Eventide’s ongoing quest to find unprecedented ways to bend, distort and manipulate sound.
The Eventide 50th Flashback retrospective episodes can be found at the following links:
50th Flashback #1: The PS101 Instant Phaser
50th Flashback #2.1: The DDL 1745 Delay
50th Flashback #2.2: The DDL 1745A Delay
50th Flashback #2.3: The DDL 1745M Delay
50th Flashback #3: The Omnipressor®
50th Flashback #4.1: The H910 Harmonizer®
50th Flashback #4.2: H910 Harmonizer® — The Product
50th Flashback #4.3: H910 Harmonizer® —"Minds Blown"
50th Flashback #5: FL 201 Instant Flanger
50th Flashback #6: HM80 – The Baby Harmonizer® (1978)
50th Flashback #7.1: The H949 Harmonizer®
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Photo File 1: H949.jpg
Photo Caption 1: The latest installment of Eventide’s 50th Anniversary Flashback series of legacy product vignettes features the ground-breaking H949 Harmonizer which introduced unheard of effects and introduced the terms algorithm, random, and micropitch to the audio vernacularPhoto File 2: H949_Open.jpg
Photo Caption 2: Have you ever wondered what function was served by the mystery chips with their numbers sanded off found inside the Eventide H949 Harmonizer®? The answer is revealed as the inner workings and the application of the H949 – indistinguishable from magic in 1979 – are featured in the latest installment of Eventide’s 50th Anniversary Flashback series of legacy product vignettesPhoto File 3: Eventide_Flashback_71.jpg
Photo Caption 3: The latest installment of Eventide’s 50th Anniversary Flashback series of legacy product vignettes features the ground-breaking H949 Harmonizer which introduced unheard of effects and introduced the terms algorithm, random, and micropitch to the audio vernacularAbout Eventide:
Since 1971, Eventide has remained at the forefront of recording technology. In 1975 it revolutionized the audio industry by creating the world’s first commercially available digital audio effects unit, the H910 Harmonizer®. Since then, its legendary studio processors, stompboxes and plug-ins have been heard on countless hit records. Eventide® and Harmonizer® are registered trademarks of Eventide Inc. www.eventideaudio.comClyne Media
Email: frank.wells@clynemedia.com
Tel: 615-662-1616, Mob: 615-585-0597, Fax: 615-662-1636,
Clyne Media, Inc.,
169-B Belle Forest Circle, Nashville, TN 37221;
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