Using the Pitch Shifter in CustomForge Song Manager

[Shroud]

I am just starting to use the CFSM, and reading through the guide I noticed the pitch shifter functionality. I like playing a lot of Thin Lizzy which are often in Eb standard, and Van Halen which are instead often in Drop D, so I am very interested in an option that would let me avoid retuning my instruments (especially painful on the guitar since it has a Floyd Rose bridge). So I have a couple of questions before attempting to use the CFSM pitch shifter...

1) I know that a pitch shifter generally distorts the sound in a not so pleasant way, how bad do you think is the case with RS pitch shifter? I can see that the guide "suggests" to use headphones, is it really that bad even with a single half-tone step down? Does it also sound just as bad with the bass?

2) There seems to be an option for turning Drop D into E standard. Given that it would be a single-string change, how is that even possible with a pitch shifter? What does the CFSM do to the CDLC in this case?

3) There is also an option called "preserve stats", by the name it sounds like not selecting this option means you lose your progress in the song?

4) On the other hand, because the guide says not to keep both versions of the CDLC if you chose "preserve stats", does it mean you can have both the original version and the pitch-shifted version in your game without conflicts?

Thank you everyone!

[coldrampage]

2 hours ago, Shroud said:

1) I know that a pitch shifter generally distorts the sound in a not so pleasant way, how bad do you think is the case with RS pitch shifter? I can see that the guide "suggests" to use headphones, is it really that bad even with a single half-tone step down? Does it also sound just as bad with the bass?

It sounding bad is simply because the acoustic sound of your instrument will be in a different tuning and will clash with the pitch shifted sound you hear in rocksmith which is why headphones are recommended. I find it works best with guitar but it's not too bad on bass either. Unless if you use the emulated bass option in-game it'll ignore the custom tones and won't be pitch shifted anymore.

2 hours ago, Shroud said:

2) There seems to be an option for turning Drop D into E standard. Given that it would be a single-string change, how is that even possible with a pitch shifter? What does the CFSM do to the CDLC in this case?

You cannot properly pitch shift drop D to E standard since there's no way to independently pitch shift a single string. It keeps drop D songs as is and will shift other drop tunings down to drop D so you'll only need to change one string.

If you use the "Force E Standard Tuning" option you'll have a pretty bad time from an auditory point of view since a fair bit of the song will be out of tune (even with the pitch shifter) but the game will adjust it's note detection to match. I'd just stick with the standard pitch shift option though.

2 hours ago, Shroud said:

3) There is also an option called "preserve stats", by the name it sounds like not selecting this option means you lose your progress in the song?

4) On the other hand, because the guide says not to keep both versions of the CDLC if you chose "preserve stats", does it mean you can have both the original version and the pitch-shifted version in your game without conflicts?

Preserve stats is mostly for the other repair mods where it doesn't create a whole new copy of the song. As longs as you don't use it with the pitch shifter you can have both versions at the same time with no issue and the non pitch shifted one will still keep it's old stats.

[Shroud]

On 7/11/2022 at 1:12 AM, coldrampage said:

It sounding bad is simply because the acoustic sound of your instrument will be in a different tuning and will clash with the pitch shifted sound you hear in rocksmith which is why headphones are recommended. 

Ha! I should have thought of that 

But anyway THANKS A LOT for the tips! The pitched shifter worked like a charm  

[Shroud]

Uhm... actually I have a new question: does the pitch shifter have problems with bass-only customs?

After the initial successes, I tried to pitch shift a large bunch of CDLCs all at once. Then I started playing them in game (with the bass), and noticed that some of them sounded off... I think the notes have been transposed correctly but the sound of the bass is actually not pitch shifted. I checked those failed ones in CFSM and the only thing that I noticed they all have in common is that they all have only the bass chart and no guitar charts. It could be just a coincidence so I will try to test more in the future, but I wonder if there is some known issue there.

[coldrampage]

3 hours ago, Shroud said:

Uhm... actually I have a new question: does the pitch shifter have problems with bass-only customs?

After the initial successes, I tried to pitch shift a large bunch of CDLCs all at once. Then I started playing them in game (with the bass), and noticed that some of them sounded off... I think the notes have been transposed correctly but the sound of the bass is actually not pitch shifted. I checked those failed ones in CFSM and the only thing that I noticed they all have in common is that they all have only the bass chart and no guitar charts. It could be just a coincidence so I will try to test more in the future, but I wonder if there is some known issue there.

It's a bit dodgy overall, not sure if this was known yet but it seems to get the pitch shift value from the guitar paths so for ones with bass paths in different tunings or bass only it doesn't work right. Lead/rhythm only songs seem to work fine though. I'd also assume that if 2 tracks share tones but are in different tunings it would also screw up the pitch shifting quite badly as it doesn't re-add unique tones to each arrangement either.

Tried this song where the guitar and bass are in different tunings and it shifted both by the same amount, making the bass 2 semitones higher than it should be as it was in standard not drop tuning.

Tried this bass only song and the pitch shifter was set to 0 afterwards so it's not getting the value to apply to the shifter from the bass track but is still changing the songs tuning value anyway.

[Shroud]

Ah ok! What a pity, I think I have quite many CDLCs in either situation...

Is the CFSM still actively developed? Should I create a post in the "Issues" subforum and hope that this might be resolved in the future?

[coldrampage]

10 hours ago, Shroud said:

Ah ok! What a pity, I think I have quite many CDLCs in either situation...

Is the CFSM still actively developed? Should I create a post in the "Issues" subforum and hope that this might be resolved in the future?

I'm not sure how active the devs are but it'd be worth a try.