Antares Autotune Key Archives

Antares' Auto‑Tune needs no introduction, and the company have now launched a super‑simple version that is more affordable and doesn't need an iLok to authorise. The control set has been pared down to a minimum, but still provides the tools you need to implement either gentle and natural pitch correction or super hard-tune 'Auto‑Tune as an effect'-type processing. Auto‑Tune Access can track according to a pre‑selected scale, a scale specified by the user, or to a chromatic scale; clicking on the keys displayed at the bottom of the screen adds or removes notes from the current scale. This keyboard has plenty of space to display the note names and to highlight the currently identified note. However, it doesn't appear to be possible to change the frequency of A, which can be a bit limiting, especially if you're working with a piano that's not in concert pitch.

In normal use there are only two controls to adjust — what looks like a large knob in the centre of the screen is actually a display that shows the currently detected note and the amount of pitch correction being applied. However, there is also a Hold button that can lock the current note, which can be automated in most DAWs. Retune Speed offers slow, medium or fast options: fast gives the familiar hard-tune effect, and you can't select in-between positions. Likewise, Humanize just presents three options. Of these, Max allows more of the natural pitch variations to come through, helping to preserve a natural vocal sound, especially at faster correction speeds — but this should be turned off for the most dramatic hard-tune effect.

On the tech side, Auto‑Tune Access is light on CPU load and has very low latency, making it suitable for live use. It is also compatible with Auto-Key, the optional Antares plug-in that detects the key and scale of a piece of audio, then sends that information to Auto‑Tune Access or Pro.

In use Auto‑Tune Access worked flawlessly within the limits that any fully automatic pitch‑correction plug-in can. Where it can come unstuck is when the singer's pitching is so bad that they stray more than halfway between the intended note and the next note in the scale, in which case you can end up with a perfectly tuned wrong note. When applied to an already reasonably in‑tune vocal, the results sound quite natural as long as a slow or medium retune speed is selected and one of the Humanize options dialled in. It also delivers the familiar robotic vocal sound with Speed set to Max and Humanize set to Off.

If your DAW already has auto‑pitch-correction capability, such as Logic Pro's Pitch Correction plug-in, then Auto‑Tune Access may not bring anything new to the party, but if not and you don't need all the fancy Auto‑Tune Pro features, Auto‑Tune Access is a very practical proposition for adding polish to vocals that are already 'nearly there'.

$99

www.antarestech.com

Antares Audio Technologies was founded in 1990 as Jupiter Systems by Dr. Harold (Andy) Hildebrand. From 1976 through 1989, Dr. Andy had worked as a research scientist in the geophysical industry, producing groundbreaking work for Exxon Production Research and Landmark Graphics, a company he co-founded to create the world’s first stand-alone seismic data interpretation workstation. Upon leaving Landmark in 1989, he returned to one of his first loves, music, studying music composition at the Shepard School of Music at Rice University.

In the course of his studies, Dr. Andy encountered what was, at the time, considered an unavoidable limitation of the process of digital sampling. Faced with this limitation — the inability to create seamless “loops” in samples of multiple instrumentalists — he set about to overcome it. Utilizing cutting-edge digital signal processing (DSP) technology drawn from the geophysical industry, he had soon invented a new looping technique that, to the amazement of everyone who heard it, did indeed succeed in “doing the impossible” (a description that would be applied with uncanny consistency to each subsequent Antares product). Convinced that there was a market for his new technology, he formed Jupiter Systems to further develop and market the program, now called Infinity. Infinity met with immediate market success, becoming the premier looping tool for professional sound designers.

Following the success of Infinity, Dr. Andy next turned his attention to the emerging market for software plug-ins. Drawing again on geophysics-based DSP technology, he developed and introduced MDT (Multiband Dynamics Tool), one of the first successful Pro Tools plug-ins. This was followed by JVP (Jupiter Voice Processor), SST (Spectral Shaping Tool) and, in 1997, Auto-Tune, a program that corrected pitch problems in vocals and other solo instruments. Auto-Tune became an instant phenomenon, firmly establishing Antares (as the company had been renamed) as a developer of truly astonishing products using DSP technology. Auto-Tune quickly became the largest-selling audio plug-in of all time.

In late 1999 Antares once again created a new product category with the Antares Microphone Modeler, a plug-in that allows any reasonable quality microphone to sound like any of a wide variety of other microphones. At the Audio Engineering Society Conference in September of 2000, the Mic Modeler was honored with the TEC Award as the year’s Outstanding Achievement in Signal Processing Software.

Over the next five years, Antares developed a variety of innovative audio tools, including kantos 1.0 Audio Controlled Synthesizer, Filter Quad Rhythmic Multimode Filters, Tube Analog Tube Modeler and, of course, new and more powerful versions of Auto-Tune.

In 2004, Antares made the strategic decision to focus on the development of unique production tools for vocalists. That focus initially culminated in the introduction in 2005 of the AVOX Antares Vocal Toolkit, a bundle of five innovative plug-ins, including THROAT Physical Modeling Vocal Designer, the world’s first tool for modeling vocal characteristics through a model of the human vocal tract. Subsequent versions of AVOX added more unique plug-ins, including Harmony Engine Evo, the industry-leading tool for generating realistic vocal harmonies.

Most recently, Antares has extended the reach of Auto-Tune technology to the world of guitars with the development of Auto-Tune for Guitar technology. Auto-Tune for Guitar is an entirely DSP-based suite of functions that offer everything guitarists have always wanted from a guitar along with capabilities they never imagined possible. From perfect tuning, flawless intonation and astonishing tonal flexibility to alternate tunings that open up entirely new areas of inspiration and creativity, Auto-Tune for Guitar technology seriously expands the flexibility and range of the electric guitar while letting guitarists continue to play their own way.

Auto-Tune for Guitar technology made its first appearance in the Peavey AT-200 guitar, which has received unprecedented accolades from the guitar press. A custom installation kit for luthiers as well as a floor pedal that will provide Auto-Tune for Guitar functionality to any guitar with a hex pickup are currently under development.

In addition to developing our own products, Antares is committed to wider distribution of its proprietary technologies through strategic relationships with other key partners, both in and out of the professional audio and musical instrument industries. Current partners include Peavey Electronics, ART, Tascam, Starmaker Interactive, Tropisounds, and  Music Mastermind, Inc., with more in the pipeline.

Antares website

Auto‑Tune keeps evolving, and the latest version incorporates both its best pitch‑correction ever and a nod to its past.

Antares’ Auto‑Tune was the first automated pitch‑correction plug‑in, and more than 20 years on it is still in daily use throughout the world. Naturally, there have been frequent updates in that time, and the latest of them introduces Auto‑Tune Pro. This brings a very fresh new look, with major GUI improvements, as well as a few ‘under the hood’ changes and added features.

Basic Layer

Like previous versions of Auto‑Tune, the Auto‑Tune Pro plug‑in can operate in two modes. The automatic, real‑time mode gives results fast, while a more forensic graphical editing mode can produce more natural results if you have the time for some manual editing. The number of controls has grown over the years, and in this new Pro version, the Auto mode can be switched between a Basic view, which hides some of the more exotic features to help the new user, and an Advanced view where all the controls are available. Views can be switched during a session to de‑clutter the GUI if required, and any changes made in Advanced mode will still apply. A row of small buttons and knobs at the top of the screen control input type, scale, key, formant adjustment, transpose, detune and tracking.

A new Basic view makes only the key Auto mode parameters available.The centre of the window is now dominated by a circular display that shows how much pitch‑shift is being applied, with the detected note displayed in the centre. As before, correction can be chromatic, or restricted to a preset or user‑designated scale. In Basic mode, four knobs cover Retune Speed, Flex‑Tune, Humanise and Natural Vibrato, the latter allowing a singer’s original vibrato to be either reduced or intensified. A Flex‑Tune knob applies the pitch‑correction only to notes that are close to the correct pitch, ignoring bends and swoops that fall outside of its range, while the Humanise control delays the onset of correction for long sustained notes to prevent them from feeling over‑tuned and synth‑like. Careful use of these tools helps achieve a natural‑sounding result in most cases even without using the graphical editing mode.

Clicking the Advanced button reveals seven smaller rotary controls used to create and control an artificial vibrato that can be set to come in gradually, along with a row of buttons for adjusting the correction scale so that individual notes are removed or exempted from correction. Also in this section are the buttons that allow the correction to be controlled from a keyboard or MIDI track; in Logic Pro a version of the plug‑in shows up as a MIDI‑controlled effect that can be used in an instrument track, with the audio coming in on a side‑chain, so you can control the audio processing from a MIDI track or a real‑time MIDI input. This feature, combined with all the parameter automation options, means you can really go to town on special effects.

Classic & Modern

Turning to the graphical editing mode, existing users will notice that there is a larger and slicker display, which now includes the ability to create and save zoom presets to speed up navigation when editing. Otherwise, the tools look very similar to those in the previous version. The major addition here is that Auto‑Tune Pro now supports ARA (Audio Random Access), a technology developed to provide closer integration between audio plug‑ins and their host DAW. Within ARA‑compatible DAWs, you can edit in Auto‑Tune Pro’s Graph Mode without first having to play the selection to get the audio into Auto‑Tune.

Unfortunately, although ARA v2 is supported in several other DAWs, Auto‑Tune Pro is only compatible with PreSonus’s implementation at present. If your DAW doesn’t support ARA, you have to keep doing it the old way by selecting Pitch or Pitch and Time analysis, then activating the DAW’s transport to play through the desired section of audio. Auto‑Tune will then display the familiar pitch graph, where tools can be used to push errant notes closer to their intended positions, flatten out wobbly notes, change the melody or create a harmony.

Antares say that improvements are constantly being made to their retuning algorithm, but, bowing to public demand, they’ve also reintroduced the Auto‑Tune 5 algorithm here, in the guise of Classic Mode. Activated by the Classic button in the toolbar, this is the version that was abused to create the distinctive sounds of many hit records, so although the latest algorithm is more natural sounding, it is sometime fun to fire up the old one. Irrelevant controls are locked out in this mode.

A Light Touch

In use, the Auto mode is often all that is needed to fine‑tune an already decent vocal performance; the secret to transparency is to use automation to ensure that little or no processing is added where it isn’t needed. A slow correction speed allows the natural performance to come across, and you can dial up the intensity only for those sections of vocal that need it. If more ‘feel’ needs to come through, the Flex‑Tune control is a useful ally. Switching to Classic mode highlights just how much the tuning algorithm has improved over the years, as the current version sounds far more natural by comparison with its predecessors — that old version, set to a fast correction speed, conjures up feelings of nostalgia.

The Graph mode remains the key to getting the most natural results from Auto‑Tune.In Graph mode, the Line and Note tools make setting the target pitch for each note very straightforward, and the Line tool can also be used to follow transitions to keep them sounding natural, as you can add as many points along the line as you need. There’s also a freehand curve drawing option so you can get transitions or pitch glides to sound exactly as you want them. The Retune Speed control determines how assertive the pitch correction is within the selected area — if a note doesn’t need fixing you can just leave it alone.

As with previous Auto‑Tune versions, changes may be made in the time domain as well as in pitch, which is handy for making backing vocals sit in time with a main vocal. The other tools work as before, and even if you’re accustomed to a different pitch‑correction plug‑in, it doesn’t take long to become familiar enough to get the job done in Auto‑Tune Pro, and I felt very comfortable with it in no time at all. Users will no doubt continue to argue as to whether the Graph mode is as good as Celemony’s Melodyne, but the beauty of Auto‑Tune Pro is that it provides the best of automatic pitch‑correction alongside a perfectly practical graphical editing mode within a single product. A worthwhile upgrade and deserving of the Pro title.