Pitchbend causes zipper noise (affects all Steinberg plugins)

Virtual instruments HALion
, ,
1

The default pitchbend in all Halion-based plugins isn’t smoothed enough, causing low but audible zipper noise, specially audible in high notes.

Demonstration:
pitchbend zipper.zip (1.36 MB)
In the first half, I set the pitchbend range to 0 and used the modulation matrix to modulate the pitch with pitchbend. I’m using the default “Smoothing”, so the zipper noise isn’t audible.

In the second half, I used the default pitchbend provided by Halion. The zipper noise is clearly audible, specially with headphones. You get the same noise if you use the modulation matrix and set the Smoothing to 0 ms.

2

I forgot to include a MIDI file. Here it is:
zipper pitchbend midi.zip (814 Bytes)
It’s very audible if you try it with the Init Program.

Roland modules released after 2000 don’t have this zipper noise (don’t know about other manufacturers), so some Smoothing is probably considered acceptable even for live use.

3

Hi Romantique Tp,
as of yet this is the intended behaviour to keep the performance of a zone as low as possible. But we will examine if there is room for improvements.

best regards
Gerrit Junge