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Autotune can only do so much.

Actually, you'd be amazed at what some of the modern vocal effects can do, especially with a well trained engineer/producer. Antares , for example, can do everything from change the pitch/time, to alter the vocal characteristics of the track using things like "throat modeling". They can generate harmonies complete with tiny imperfections to make it sound more "human", They can make a voice have more "rasp" or "smokiness", so when you hear guys screaming (think Chris Cornell) and you think "how can they do that without their voice getting sore?", the answer is, they're not. Those are the effects at work.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not against the use of vocal effects. I look at them the same way I look at guitar effects. If you layer a guitar with enough delay, chorus, compression, tube distortion, tape saturation, EQ, and maybe some octave effects, even a rudimentary player is going to sound pretty killer. They're not going to stand up to a virtuoso like Al DiMeola or Steve Vai. Same goes for vocalists. Sure, you can find someone of marginal talent and make them sound good with effects, but they're never going to touch really capable, trained singers.

I love it when slashdot heads into my field... This isn't new (hardware autotune) http://www.antarestech.com/products/avp.shtml Do you realise how incredibly polished and "produced" a modern arena tour is?

Will the likes of Britney or Metallica be able to survive in a post-industrial music world? I doubt it. And the music stores which pander to this kind of rigid, unimaginitive pap? I doubt it.

I'm a musician, so I get your point and I don't think its always easy do play simple punk or rock, but that is besides the point. The poster suggested that if the pro's leave the scene, all we will be left with is bad musicians so maybe I didn't make myself clear. The pro scene has it's share of good and bad musicians as does the amature scene.

Oh, and I used to think that both singers you mentioned were good until I started hearing more autotune on their recordings. I'm not saying they can't sing well but gratuitous use of autotune makes me think that they can't keep in tune.

Yes, there is. I can;t recall the name, but it's made by antares (of autotune fame).
quick google brings us Kantos...
As to how well, it works? Good question! It's too late in the day for me to see if there's a demo, but you could always report back for us?

Maybe they update the page every 10 years or something. In 2008 they'll have coverage up through 2000 perhaps?

If they can cover up through 2004, probably one of the most important developments is software-based synthesizers, which either use totally new methods of synthesis (example: Antares Kantos) or emulate many of the older models on that list.

So there have been improvements in electronic music and synthesis in recent years, but nowadays everything is so electronic anyway that we don't hear anything and think "oh that's groundbreaking."

An analogy can be made with computer special FX. It's kind of like how the dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park movie blew everybody away and were revolutionary back then. Now, over 10 years later, CG effects are 100 times better, but everybody is so used to CG effects by now that not a lot of it is revolutionary any more.

An now all we need is self tuning singers

The good folks at Antares Audio Technologies have got you covered with both hardware devices and software plug-ins (for Pro Tools, CakeWalk, Nuendo, etc) that'll correct bad singer's pitch.

this

Believe it or not, Autotune already exists! This product is the sole reason people like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake can be called "singers"

I realize this is a bit offtopic but does anyone know how I can pitch shift mp3s in realtime? Is there something comparable for Macs?

This ties in with the trend of virtual sound control in recent years. For example, Antares have the Microphone Modeller, which (I think) does a resonable job of turning your Shure 57 into a virtual vintage Telefunken U47. Line 6 have been doing amp modelling for years, and now they have the Variax, a guitar with built-in DSP to emulate the sound of other guitars. I can see session guitarists liking this, as long as the sound quality is up to scratch...

With a piece of pitch correcting software or hardware, like widely used Auto-Tune, a singer do not even need to have good ears, as all his false tones will be corrected. And software like Band in a box will make all arrangement for ya, just tell it what style you want. Songs can be made like sandwiches at McDonalds, and many are actually done this way. It has nothing to do with music, it's only about business. While people eat this sounding food, it will be so.

I'm a musician, singer, and sometimes sound engineer and producer, and I am usually able to pick out use of these boxes in a recording situation. In a live venue, it's tougher because the people who can afford their use, maintenance and programming are typically large acts where the typical venue and audience size obscures their sound. Generally, the signs of pitch touch-ups on recordings, such as done by the Antares boxes, are: (1) pitch in the singer's voice that is abnormally accurate when holding a single tone, and (2) unnaturally quantized sounding intervals when the singer is changing pitch.

The most trained human voice still has a characteristic "wobble," warble, or inaccuracy, especially when changing pitches. Even the most notably gifted singers, Pavarotti, Celine Dion, Aretha Franklin, etc., have their peculiar signatures or inaccuracies, most of which are simply felt sympathetically and probably not recognized, even by highly trained ears, when one is not paying very close attention. When these inaccuracies (or as I prefer to call them, "human touches") are eliminated, a trained ear can usually pick it up.

Just to run a gamut that should encompass the listening habits of some readers, you'll hear quite a bit of this on many country hits of the past several years, like that song that goes "I am Rosemarie's granddaughter..."; a number of cuts on Avril Lavigne's album; of course the infamous Cher single "Believe," which used the auto-tuner as a gimmick for the song's hook and pretty much took the tool "out of the closet," so to speak; and innumerable other dance and pop records. (Oops, showing my age there, sorry.)

You can of course get Antares plug-ins for ProTools (TDM, RTAS), VST or MAS for Mac, or DirectX for PC. (I don't know them, shill for them, or whatever. Just passing on the 411.)

The same crafty people who unwittingly unleashed "The Cher Effect" on the world with Auto-Tune have now used this power for good: kantos can follow pitch-bending, constrain input notes to all notes of a scale, or constrain the input to only certain notes.

This technology has been around for year, in www.antarestech.com has had HOME versions of this stuff (including multiple auto-tune 1U rack units specializing in overal sound, vocals, etc) for under $400. This aside from the plugins for most software that can be had for under $100 and the farm cards for pro-tools hardware. Jeez.... i would have thought it a sad day when /. was behind the times.

From Antares' site:

Female singer before
and after processing.

Lots more at the product info page.

From Antares' site:

Female singer before
and after processing.

Lots more at the product info page.

From Antares' site:

Female singer before
and after processing.

Lots more at the product info page.

Autotuners have been around and in use for a few years now. Aside from the obvious use of being able to correct pitch on a performance, they also have other uses.

For example, autotuners can be used to change pitch during performance in ways that vocalists simply cannot. A good example (well, most people will know it anyhow) of an autotuner and vocoder used in combination is in Cher's song "Believe"

Antares Autotune is probably the most popular autotuner, and is said to be what Cher's track actually used. It's available in DirectX, VST, and several other versions and has a free trial version for anyone who's interested.

Nonsense...

Over-compression is a problem with many recordings, sure, that's not because of Pro Tools. Many amateurs over-compress too, and they have been since they figured out how.

"Voice-tuning" is usually done by a product made by Antares and has nothing to do with Pro Tools. It's available for every other recording software too, and is available as an external box. Auto-Tune is actually used on many recordings these days to clean up the singing. Again, this is the fault of the people using Pro Tools, and has nothing to do with Pro Tools. Pro Tools doesn't do this out of the box (at least, last I used it).

In fact all your complaints have nothing to do with Pro Tools. Popular music was faddish and homogeneous long before Pro Tools.

PT is a great program and turns any machine into a flexible multi-track recorder. It reminds me a lot of Photoshop in that it has a good interface, it helps you get your work done, it opens up huge new possibilities, and certain features of it are cliched and over-used by a lot of folks (are we sick of drop-shadows yet? over-sharpened photos? "funky borders"?)

There's nothing "evil" about PT. It doesn't "do" anything unless someone pushes the buttons and slides the sliders.

You could argue that any music tech is bad ... tape recorders (no live music!) ... soundproof studios (where's the ambience?) ... electric guitars (all the sound is effects) .. microphones (they color the sound!) ... but you'd be wrong .. Pro tools like any other music tech has opened up a lot of possibilities, and popular music aside, I love to hear the things people can do when they start to push the boundaries of those possibilities.

I have a Mexican pop album, which will remain nameless (except to say said album became platinum in Mexico), which has some very noticable processing of this nature. I am extremely familiar with the piece of gear they used and its sound (which is unmistakable on this album); it costs considerably less than $1000. I also have a another similiar device which costs twice as much, but is noticably more transparent.

Fixing singers that can't hit notes is actually one of the cheaper parts of a recording. It is the microphones and the room which cost the most when making a good recording.

- Sam

> People would still go to live performances, but we could dispense with much of the recorded music industry.

Beg to disagree. A big part of what makes music, recorded or otherwise, compelling is the subtle, and occasionally random, nuances of performance. Or at least that's the case for me... As I type this, I'm listening to an old Bob Dylan record that definitely doesn't use Antares Autotune.