Audio Damage Goes Back To The Future
While the instruction manual for Audio Damage's Discord V2 plug-in discreetly says, "Discord is a digital pitch-shifter and delay plug-in, modeled after a particular vintage unit which is still highly desired for its vocal-doubling abilities and chorusing effects", the English MusicThing blog is rather more emphatic. They describe the Discord as "A VST plug-in which sounds like the legendary Eventide Harmonizer H910, which 'f***s with the fabric of time'. It's a pitch-shifter and delay, which does subtle double-tracking or massive stereo warping bwoyoyoing effects."
Just plugging in a guitar or a synth and flipping through Discord's presets, it's amazing how many classic effects from the late 1970s and early '80s are there: Trevor Rabin's massive harmonized lead guitar tone from Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart". The dub effects on the Rolling Stones' "Undercover of the Night", the pitched snare drum from Bowie's "Sound and Vision" and all sorts of swirling pitched feedback loops perfect for a song's break or ending.
One tip to tweaking the effect is to pull the mixing knob on the Discord GUI back slightly, so that the harmonized effects are placed behind the lead instrument rather than competing with it. Also, adding some additional delay or chorusing afterwards helps to further smooth out the sounds.
For fifty bucks, there's a lot of bang for the buck in this plug-in, and a lot of fond memories, as well. For special effects, and for instruments, it's a natural, particularly since Eventide's own H910 clone is currently only available for Pro Tools, and retails at ten times the cost of Discord.
Harmony4 Is The Future
In contrast, TC-Helicon's Harmony4 for their VST-based PowerCore hardware effects module represents either modern electronic harmonization's state of the art, or something much, much closer to it. (Which is reflected in its $599 price.) As the number in its name implies, it can dial up to four harmony voices, for instant quartets. (Actually quintets: you can blend up to four virtual Harmony4 vocalists behind a non-modified vocalist.)
Comparing Harmony4 with the vintage vibe captured by Discord illustrates 30 years of technological advancement, especially in regards with to formant modeling. Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines formants as "a characteristic component of the quality of a speech sound; specifically: any of several resonance bands held to determine the phonetic quality of a vowel". They're the key to successful voice modeling, as they create the character and timbre of a voice. Just to pick two extremely disparate voices from random, the vocal formants of Mariah Carey are very different from, say, James Earl Jones, which is why the timbre of their voices sound so different. But early harmonizers like the Eventide H910 weren't designed to take formants into account, which is why traditionally, the further a voice is raised or lowered from its original pitch, the phonier (and often sillier) it sounded.
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