I have auto-tune and it's quite jerky. I was wondering if there's anything that provides more realistic pitch correction for vocals and if anyone has tried Akai Pitch Right. I've heard some good things, but I'm pretty skeptical. I'm a song writer and I put vocal tracks down just as demos, but now I'm wanting more out of them. I'm probably too horrible for lessons.

Is PACE really a concern? A friend gave me his auto-tune 3.0 (updated to 3.08 or something like that) and my computer seems to run fine. What are some known effects of PACE?

I recently used the Akai PitchRight (as well as DecaBuddy) on a tune, and found it surprisingly smooth: I was actually trying to get that crappy, overused over-quantized damn "Cher" effect on a vocal track (we were intentionally trying to be as obnoxious as possible on the tune )...and it actually took some work to get it to do that (and the "singer" in question definitely does NOT have a great voice, so it's not as if he had already come close to the target ).

On the other hand, I know of some other people who didn't like the results the Akai plugins gave them at all....so Your Mileage May Vary™.

Both PitchRight and DecaBuddy have 30 day full-function demos that you can download from their website...would be worth at least trying it out that way to see if it fits your needs.

I am interested in your experiences with DeccaBuddy. I've said this before on these forums, but don't you think there is a HUGE gap in the market for a GOOD software harmoniser. If I am not very careful I will sneek into the local music store and hurl about 600 Scottish Pounds (trust me , at current exchange rates that is a lot of dollars) for tc-helicon's VoiceWorks.

Yours,

The stone deaf Scottish singer.

I tried the demo myself but it didn't come with any presets - none of them do in fact - so I found it hard to get into

www.rbcaudio.com

VoiceTweaker Pro. Not sure if you do the correction using the "Auto" mode or use the graphical user interface. IMHO, the auto mode leaves the vocal sounding very processed. With VT Pro, I use the GUI and am pretty much able to pitch correct it without any artifacts at all. A few pros and cons about VT PRO:

Pros:

1. You can download the demo and I think it's a fully working 45 day trial.
2. Half the price of AutoTune.
3. It does have piracy protection but it's not the PACE kind and is pretty unintrusive. The software generates an encrypted string and you send that to RBC Audio and they send you back a key to unlock the software.
4. Has alot of features/presets/etc that I don't use too much as I only use it for pitch correction right now.
5. Seamless pitch correction (using the graphical editor).

Cons:

1. The editor GUI is very small (but really no worse then auto tune).
2. No new development on the product in over two years. (I did contact the developer and he was very receptive to my suggestions. He indicated that they were considering working on a standalone version which would be vastly better then what they have now due to limitations with the DX plugin spec. That was two months ago and still nothing new on their website ).
3. DirectX support only, no VST/VSTI support.

My only big gripe is I've been buying too much unique, ingenious software packages where future development seems to just stall out. Chainer, PhatMatik Pro, VoiceTweaker Pro, TCWorks FXMachine, etc. These are great packages but nothing new in over 6 months. I may end up buying Tracktion just because Jules churns out a new version every WEEK! .

Todd

Bill wrote:

I am interested in your experiences with DeccaBuddy. I've said this before on these forums, but don't you think there is a HUGE gap in the market for a GOOD software harmoniser. If I am not very careful I will sneek into the local music store and hurl about 600 Scottish Pounds (trust me , at current exchange rates that is a lot of dollars) for tc-helicon's VoiceWorks.

DecaBuddy was interesting. I definitely wouldn't want to use it any kind of situation where the resulting harmonies were bare, standing alone in a mix by themselves (say, attempting to emulate an a cappela barbershop quartet )....it's definitely not that clean!...but when I took the resulting tracks and blended them into the tune we was working on, I found the results to be surprisingly nice.

It didn't hurt that we were going for a joke-y, intentionally cliche-ridden techno/house-style tune with a very dense mix, so any artificial-sounding compontents to the overall sound were looked at as a positive element in this case.

But on the other hand, we also gave it a try on a rather weird country-western-for-children-style song we were working on (yep, ours is definitely a rather bizarre recording project... ). This tune was fairly sparce in comparison to the other...just couple of twangy Duane Eddie-style guitar parts and electric piano with a basic rhythm section behind it. In this case, I wanted a kind of 4-part male/female vocal harmony going on under the choruses to give it that bluegrass kind of edge....and DecaBuddy did a surprisingly decent job of taking the one guy's vocal part and actually generating semi-convincing male *and* female harmonies from it. Not perfect by a long-shot, but definitely usable. We ultimately never used it on the tune, though...not because we weren't happy with the results DecaBuddy gave us, but because we decided having harmonies of that density wasn't right for the song after all.

Quote:

I tried the demo myself but it didn't come with any presets - none of them do in fact - so I found it hard to get into

That's interesting, as I could've sworn that both plugins had preset harmonies available in them, based on different scale patterns (I was only using the 30 day demo myself...they've since timed out, so I can't go back and check).

But it's true that there wasn't any kind of presets like "Instant CSN&Y" or something like that, if that's what you mean....but then, I can kind of understand why: these kind of things really shine when you tweak them to work specifically for the song(s) you're working on at the time; the scales I created for the tunes weren't really anything that might have made sense outside of that particular song itself. I can imagine it being fairly difficult/impossible to really create any kind of "magic bullet" preset that would miraculously work on any song you slapped it onto.

As for me: I personally liked the results I got out of both PitchRight and DecaBuddy, to the point where I'm planning on purchasing them as soon as I can. But again, what works for me might not work for others...I know of some other folks who tried them and didn't like the results at all.

The hacked version of Auto-Tune probably has PACE taken out of it, no?

If so, I could buy Auto-Tune and then download the cracked version and use that, instead to avoid PACE.

Right?

I tried DeccaBuddy, and I have to say for the type of music I try to create I felt it was not convincing enough. I'm into the singer song writer/folk rock stuff. But, like others have said on this thread, it depends how you use it!

neptune......do NOT mention the w word.
I have auto-tune if you want to trade someting for it..........the problem I have with it is it is MONO only.

Bill wrote:

I tried DeccaBuddy, and I have to say for the type of music I try to create I felt it was not convincing enough. I'm into the singer song writer/folk rock stuff. But, like others have said on this thread, it depends how you use it!

Yeah, I'd have to agree that in such a musical setting, DecaBuddy probably wouldn't be the best bet....the vocals would probably a little too "naked" in the mix for the effect to fit in well.
Well, unless you're specifically going for a techno-cyber/folk hybrid, perhaps.
(not that far-fetched, really, when you notice how many modern country tunes have the dreaded overly-quantized Cher-style AutoTune front and center in their mixes these days....it's scary. It's come to the point where I can hear those artificial-sounding vocal bends fram across the room, even when I cane barely hear the rest of the song. My wife refers to the massive proliferation of this effect as "Antares Radio" )

As much money as I spend on software to help me with my musical HOBBY, I don't feel guilt for saying the "W" word.


I still never got my question answered.