I’ve used a lot of pitch-shifting pedals in the past - mainly the diatonic “smart harmony” of the Eventide PitchFactor and the very clean, clear Electro-Harmonix RingThing. The Eventide really only works with a monophonic signal, but the EHX transposes the entire signal by the same amount, and does it very well. Has anyone done this with the OWL?
They describe the Ring Thing as a “Single Sideband Modulator”.
“Single-sideband modulation is a new effect based on Ring Modulation but where only one band is present, making it a more harmonious effect.”
I really like the idea of having a button to tune the ring modulation frequency to the input signal fundamental frequency. Seems like it has some interesting modes too, but I couldn’t guess how the algorithm works - a bit of googling brings up some interesting results. Fascinating!
What modes and functions of the pedal are you particularly interested in?
Regarding pitch shifters, there’s a few in the library which you’ve probably tried already. There’s also the DroneBox effect which will give a sympathetic resonance tone. Finally there’s a couple of FFT based spectral effects (and one or two more on the way!), but the processing artefacts might be a bit too much if you’re after a clean, musical sound.
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Even better than the button that you hold to tune it is the fact that it has two outputs, and you can patch one of them to the modulation input, which causes it to follow the pitch in real time - the most musical ring modulation I’ve ever heard.
However, I was just referring to its pitch-shifting mode, which can also be modulated by one of the outputs, an effect I have likened to a “self-aware Uni-Vibe.” But even without that patching, the pitch-shifting mode is very accurate and simply affects the entire signal, so leads, chords, fingerpicking - everything is perfectly shifted, no glitchy artifacts or tracking issues.
I don’t have a Ring Thing, but it was on my radar because I like frequency shifters, which is what the single sideband is - instead I bought another pedal called OWL that had some FS algorithms. 
But it also has ring mod and pitch shifting modes in addition to the upper and lower frequency shift modes. It sounds like we are after a good clean pitch shifting mode here, and you can take a look at Multi PitchShifter or Pitch Shifter patches for starters.
If you haven’t tried the Ring Thing in person, you should do so - you actually need to boost the output before you patch it back into the Mod jack (an LPB-1 does the trick nicely), but it works brilliantly in all four modes. It’s also worth noting (from the manual): In both RM and PS modes, the effect, after the BLEND knob, is sent to the L output jack and the R output is 100% dry signal. In both UB and LB modes one sideband is sent to each output. In UB mode, the upper band is output from the L output and the lower band is sent out the R output. In LB mode, the lower band is output from L output and the upper band is sent to the R output. So when you’re patching one of the outputs back into the Mod jack, you can get very different sounds by switching modes.
The Ring Thing is the only effects pedal I have left - I built the Owl board into a 1U rack enclosure in a handy SKB case with my HD Pod Pro. Now I just need to build a little patch bay/effects loop switcher for the back panel and I’ll be able to sit stray pedals on top and use 'em with minimal fiddling around, until the day my Pure Data skills progress to the point of not needing them anymore.
In my case, I was only really interested specifically for the FS in a pedal format, which the OWL can do nicely for me. 
But the Ring Thing seems to be a brilliant under the radar pedal - perhaps because the name implies it’s just another ring mod.
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Not to mention the fantastic chorus, vibrato, and other effects you can get out it. I don’t know who writes the algorithms for EHX, but they do great work.
Let me know if you come up with any Ring Thing-inspired patches for the Owl, and I’ll be working on the pitch-shifting in the meantime.
So, pitch-shifting aside, what can you tell a complete and total programming noob about FFT-based patches for the Owl?
I initially got the Owl to pull off some feedback loop delay effects that I couldn’t achieve within any existing hardware, and I was able to quickly stumble my way through Pure Data and make it happen in about an hour and a half. As I continued to experiment and make it more complicated, I was clearly not in love with the Pure Data layout, so I just started the 30 day trial of Max.
Since the Owl is limited to gen~ objects, would it be easier to keep working in PdVanilla, or is there a fairly straight-forward work-around for getting gen~ patches to work? I haven’t had a chance to try the kissfft approach, nor do I know anything about it other than that it exists.
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