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Page 1 of 2 A Little History
Pitch correction has come a long way from the days of manually dialing in micro-pitchshifts on an Eventide Ultra-harmonizer, while the vocal is playing back live. This is truly the golden age of pitch correction, if there ever was one. When Antares Audio Technologies released their ground-breaking plug-in for ProTools recording systems back in 1997, it was really something quite amazing.
I can remember recording a demo for my group with my buddy Jonathan Minkoff and him saying, "Now, there's this new plug-in that just came out recently called Auto Tune. It can be used to automatically correct pitches of your vocals. Is this something you guys want me to do on this demo, because I can buy it right now and get workin'!"
The adventure began. We had an interesting time getting to know the controls of this novel plug-in. In 1998, after opening my own studio, I chose to use a different pitch correction plug-in that had come onto the market, PitchDoctor, from SoundToys (the company had a different name at the time and I can't recall it now). PitchDoctor was good, but it wasn't quite cutting it. After a few months, I ditched the 'Doctor and moved over to AutoTune, and I haven't looked back.
Recently, some newcomers have made their way to the scene, Melodyne and Waves Tune...and that's a completely different ball of wax. I think this latest version of AutoTune (version 5), is now closer to being like Melodyne than ever. I find that Melodyne makes it almost too easy to tune (and overtune) vocals, to the point where I don't want to even use it. So, with AutoTune I stay.
The New Version
So here we are, at the fifth generation of AutoTune. What's different? What's better? What's worse? What is it still missing?
First of all, I think this new version (here, I'll refer to it as AT5) is a great improvement over the previous one. The first thing you notice when pulling up AT5 is the new look. Generally, I don't spend too much time thinking about the "look" of a plug-in. It's not how the interface looks, it's how it sounds! Right? Well, it also determines how well you're going to work with the plug-in. If you've ever seen Antares' plug-in called Kantos (wicked plug!), it is the ugliest and most complicated thing I've ever seen. I won't use Kantos, too insane.
AT5 sports a fresh look, with a lighter, cooler color-set than before. The window itself is a bit larger, which allows all of the controls a little more breathing room than before. I would LOVE it if I could resize the window (at least when I'm in Graphical Mode), but I know that it's a constraint that ProTools puts on its plug-ins and not something that Antares chose (BTW, I'm a Digidesign Development Partner).
Most of the controls from the old AT4 are still there, and in pretty much the same places. I'll split this next section of the review up into two parts: Automatic Mode and Graphical Mode.
Automatic Mode
I know most people abhor the idea of using AutoTune in Automatic Mode. Too many flips, blips, and wacky sounds. In previous versions, I've actually used Automatic Mode in an interesting way and it was fairly successful. Basically, pick your scale (add/remove notes that are needed/not-needed), and set the Retune Speed to like 20. Then let it play and listen. Most likely, it'll be fine but you'll hear a few funky things here and there. Then just automate the Retune Speed so that it's a bit slow on those funky parts....voila! You've got a pretty fast setup for AutoTune. Of course, with AT5, you can fly through tuning using the new and improved Graphical Mode.
Graphical Mode
This is where the big change is. I actually purchased AT5 as soon as I heard that the Graphical Mode will now lock to the ProTools timecode. Graphical Mode, pre-AT5, was essentially useless. I'm pretty sure Bill Hare only used AutoTune in the AudioSuite version, just tuning notes that were needed. Now you can do that, but have it be totally non-destructive. Just start at the beginning of the song, pull up Graphical Mode, click Track Pitches, and hit play. Let it play through the whole song, tracking the pitches. Then stop and go back to the beginning. Click "Snap To Pitch" (this is new too!! YAY!) and start drawing some lines. Don't worry about losing your selection, like in AT4, because you can't! HA! It's almost fun tuning vocals now. Now tuning just flies by! You don’t have to start at the beginning. If you just want to tune a passage, you can just Track Pitches for that section and manually tune the notes. It won’t lose you place. Brilliant!
How Does It Sound?
AutoTune still sounds like AutoTune. If you finesse it and slow the retune speed enough (and even use two slowly retuned AutoTunes on one track), you can get it to sound pretty natural. There is a new Humanize knob in Automatic Mode, but I can’t really hear any difference when I try the extremes. You can also adjust how much natural vibrato gets through but, sadly, I can’t hear a huge difference with that knob either.
Should I Upgrade from AT4 to AT5?
Definitely, yes! The new functionality that allows Graphical Mode to track with the Host Clock totally makes the plug-in usable and even fun to use!
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