KVR Audio

monkeymanx · Post by **monkeymanx** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:08 pm

So I'm here comparing the different software plugins and bundles vs something like the Helicon Voiceworks. The Voiceworks now is only $600 new and does Harmonies, pitch correcting, reverb, de ess, gate, comp, eq, delay, and doubling... You can use it live or in the studio. Doesn't add any extra pressure to your PC or MAC's resources.

Now we have something like the Waves Vocal Bundle, I think the list price is $1000 but can be had for about $600. It has pitch correction, doubling, de essing, a vocal strip, and a de breath thing. Also it requires an ilok.

Alrighty, then we have Anteres Auto Tune which goes for around $350 or so and requires an ilok. Also, all this seems to be is a pitch corrector. You can buy their other bundle vocal toolkit for around $350 also and that has various effects like the Waves Vocal Bundle.

There is also the various faces of Melodyne. Their top of the line version is $700.

The Voiceworks seems like a better deal than any of these pieces of software. Of course software has the one advantage that you can change the effect on the recorded track without having to record the track all over again like you would have to with the Voiceworks. Is software getting somewhat overpriced for what it is at this point?

mr · Post by mr » Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:15 pm

MAGIX Studio cost $69 and has a pitch coorection "elastic editor" .... Some one tried it?

Jason Brian Merrill · Post by **Jason Brian Merrill** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:18 pm

considering that most software algorithms for pitch correction and manuplation are inferior (from what i have heard) i think they are a bit overpriced.

elastic audio works, yes.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:23 pm

I can sell you a copy of Leapfrog Rephrase cheap.

monkeymanx · Post by **monkeymanx** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:48 pm

Rephrase isn't really what I'm looking for. I've demoed it.

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:36 am

Gsnap is a free pitch corrector. Choir Boy is a dirt cheap pitch/formant shifter ($35). Discord2 is a delay-line pitch shifter (no formant shift) under $50. Sadly the only free pitch/formant shifter VST is gone from this planet, but it was fantastic.

And there are free offline pitch shifters/timestretchers all over the place on the web, like Praat, pvoc, soundstretch, Dirac, and pitchshifters in Csound and Pure Data.

I think the error was to look at over-priced crap like Waves and Antares.

The TC Helicon is excellent though, so if you want a hardware solution, definitely check it out.

foosnark · Post by **foosnark** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:40 am

There's also Madshifta (free).

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 1:40 am

software will seem overpriced if you only try the software you see ads and reviews for on those lame 'pro' audio sites.

there is a lot of stuff you can get for cheap or free that does the job. there isnt a whole lot of work done on pitch shifters in the free software scene, but there could be. i have it on my list of todos for my free effects package. i think maybe vocal stuff isnt as well known as for example synth or guitar stuff simply because the numbers of those working with vocals are less.

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:12 am

aciddose wrote:there isnt a whole lot of work done on pitch shifters in the free software scene, but there could be.

Jackle&Hyde was a master of the pitchshifter effects, put out some beautiful freeware for a while. Sadly he was angry and took his stuff home with him. I still hold out a torch that he'll come back one day.

Have a listen. Here's a choir made from one voice using omnivox (which was a formant shifter based on PSOLA):

http://www.sighup.ca/misc/harmonies.mp3

And here's a voice example taken from the TC-Helicon site.

Unprocessed.
Shifted with their HybridShift TM.

My attempt at similar results with omnivox.

Omnivox maybe isn't 100% perfect (and my formant shift is out a bit from theirs, had trouble finding the right spot), but pretty darn close. And I suspect the TC-Helicon processed example was EQ'ed post processing.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 4:36 am

the omnivox guys are still around, they only released that as a closed beta version but it got passed around more than they wanted. it is easy to get a copy of omnivox, but see what one of them had to say about it: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... c&start=30

the code involved for formant shifting, either through fft or lpc is not complicated. the only reason there are not a lot of free formant and pitch shifters is due to the fact nobody really cares about them. its a niche within a niche... in other words, there is too little interest in them to warrent the time of most coders.

the coders whom find the time to write this type of low demand niche software are those who expect compensation for their efforts in a majority of cases. generally the authors of free software write software in a category they are most knowledgable and for some purpose of self benefit. they then share the result of their efforts with others in order to reduce the amount of redundant effort taking place by others simmilar to themselves.

the commercial niche market is self-sustaining in that it exists because of the low demand for this type of software, and remains due to the lack of intrest by the free software community to provide free alternatives. the only solution to this problem is for ther intrest to increase.

you can see simmilar examples in the free subtractive software which was released around 99 to 01, it was only in 02 that free software started to get good in this department, and in my opinion it is still lacking. perhaps in the future once some coders pay more attention to these things and come to have knowledge and demand for pitch shifting and formant modification we'll start to see higher quality free implementations.

the omnivox code is supposed to be typical overlap-add fft with some minor modifications. apparently though, they thought thier implementation was so novel they went to all the trouble to do multiple layers of encoding on the binary. reverse engineering is easy, but in my opinion it would be more easy to start from scratch. i suspect (although i have not done extensive work on it) that their implementation is not nearly as novel as they thought at the time.

monkeymanx · Post by **monkeymanx** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:31 am

I've tried chiorboy also and gsnap. They just didn't sound natural to me. The Voiceworks seems to sound fairly natural to me. I havn't tried the couple other ones mentioned though.

I can Pitch Shift in Cubase but it always just sounds weird.

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 3:11 pm

aciddose wrote:i suspect (although i have not done extensive work on it) that their implementation is not nearly as novel as they thought at the time.

No, I agree, all based on well-known if not widely implemented methods. Still it sounds great, and as good as some expensive. They did however once post an audio clip of a real-time timestretch plugin they were working on, which based on the description of their methods, did in fact sound quite novel. But it never made it out of the lab.

Hadn't seen that post before. I have a copy of omnivox that was sent to me by the developer, and while I would never redistribute it, I won't delete either. I have the license that came with it, no mention of having to do that at all.

mellotronaut · Post by **mellotronaut** » Thu Jul 13, 2006 3:34 pm

Recently I tried this Antares 'Avox-bundle' and thought: such a crap for soo much money. There are a lot of free or cheap tools, that can satisfy most people's needs. ...but I think, 'Melodyne' is a fine and well working concept, anyway.

Moseph · Post by **Moseph** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:07 am

shamann wrote:
aciddose wrote:there isnt a whole lot of work done on pitch shifters in the free software scene, but there could be.
Jackle&Hyde was a master of the pitchshifter effects, put out some beautiful freeware for a while. Sadly he was angry and took his stuff home with him. I still hold out a torch that he'll come back one day.

Have a listen. Here's a choir made from one voice using omnivox (which was a formant shifter based on PSOLA):

http://www.sighup.ca/misc/harmonies.mp3

And here's a voice example taken from the TC-Helicon site.

Unprocessed.
Shifted with their HybridShift TM.

My attempt at similar results with omnivox.

Omnivox maybe isn't 100% perfect (and my formant shift is out a bit from theirs, had trouble finding the right spot), but pretty darn close. And I suspect the TC-Helicon processed example was EQ'ed post processing.

Holy crap. That's definitely a close comparison. I really wish I had stumbled across Omnivox when it was available now!

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Jul 14, 2006 5:44 am

apparently it was never available and according to what it says in the email, hybridshift is probably the same code as in omnivox. try searching some p2p networks, i found a copy of omnivox on gnutella (sometimes morons share their entire disk, and you can get all kinds of other goodies too) but i didnt download it. i'm also aware of some other more personal sources you can get it from, if it comes down to that.

i'm quite certain you'll be able to grab a copy on a filesharing network though. i suppose that may be classified as 'warez' or something, i'm not sure. it doesnt feel much like warez to me, and from a technical-legal point of view, it isnt illegal to distribute copies either. the best they could do would be to sue you for damages, if they could prove you ruined their commercial version's chances of sales. the problem is they dont even have a commercial version, so, you know.

dont ask me for a copy though, i dont personally have one.

Are software pitch correctors and pitch shifters overpriced?