AutoTune 5 Native Review by Houston Haynes

Antares Auto-Tune 5 Native

Since Antares first introduced the auto-tune concept to the world back in 1997, it has been viewed with a bit of ambivalence in the recording industry, both from the production and audience perspectives. Sometimes you love it, sometimes you hate it, sometimes it's a bit of both - but when it's at its best, you never even know it's there. Along with a host of other technologies that we take for granted in the studio, auto-correction of music tracks has advanced since the early days, and Antares has been considered the gold standard for pitch correction over the past ten years. So what does the latest incarnation of their most recognized product - Auto-Tune - have to offer that makes it worth the price of admission? Does it really have something new under the hood or is it just another pop-star makeover? In this review I'll cover a few of the new ins and outs to see if this plug-in really shines through.

More Than Just Another Pretty Face

Anyone that has chased the dream of being in show business knows that looks aren't everything, but it sure doesn't hurt if you've got 'em. Antares has completely re-organized the interface for Auto-Tune 5, which not only improves the appearance, but also the form and function - with much better contrast and a layout that is logical and conducive to workflow. Most importantly, the pitch edit display is much larger than it used to be. Along with the ability to draw curves with a pen tablet, this is a huge improvement.

Likewise, there have been a range of other detailed refinements, such as better organization of buttons and other controls as well as the automatic and graphic tracking controls that have been merged to a single options screen. These seemingly minute adjustments to the workflow make a significant difference in the speed and usability of the plug-in. And let's face it, when most folks are putting Auto-Tune 5 to use, it's usually with the sand dropping through the hour-glass as the producer is tapping his fingers on the mixing console – all-the-while you're trying to fix a take that the singer just belted so hard they lost their voice. Just like a well-designed piece of hardware, a unified and logical layout in a plug-in can make all the difference between a stress-free session or an awkward moment and mumbled excuses. Antares really got it right here, but don't be fooled - Auto-Tune 5's beauty is more than skin deep.

Under The Hood

An optimized pitch detection algorithm seems to be the foundation for many of the new DSP functions that Auto-Tune 5 has to offer. There's a new real-time natural vibrato feature that allows you to steer the depth of vibrato for a track while keeping its general shape intact. Likewise, there's a humanize function, which makes for smarter pitch correction speed depending on whether the notes are shorter or longer in duration. Both of these features go a long way toward making Auto-Tune 5 a set-it-and-forget-it dead-simple plug-in to use for fixing vocals and instrumental tracks, and provides a nice middle ground between the previous version's Automatic and Graphical modes - which forced the user to graphical mode as soon as the track shifted gears and the re-tune speed in Auto mode became a problem.

They have also have made some improvements on the usability/system side of things. They now allow multiple instances in graphical mode (depending on your host) and the editing tools all function when either correcting or tracking pitch. There are several selections for host sync, and selectable clock source control to go along with it. They've also built in pen tablet input, which can be an extremely fast and accurate way to input pitch corrections on the fly. This has always been a big league tool, but it looks like Auto-Tune 5 has just stepped into a league of its own.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Let's face it, many people will simply use Auto-Tune 5 as a surgical tool - a cut-and-dry fix-it device that never gets the spotlight. Auto-Tune 5 seems to be quite content to do the mundane chores of keeping vocal tracks in tune, and makes the process as pain free as possible. For most of the people that will limit their use of Auto-Tune 5 to this type of duty, Auto mode will do the trick. Simply select the type of voice or instrument you're tracking, set the scale, retune speed, humanize and perhaps the natural vibrato control and let it roll. The results can be remarkably good. I fixed a bass guitar part in one song (it had one string out of tune and it was driving me nuts) and a female vocal in a film cue that allowed it to sit back into the mix nicely.

During final mix, we had been struggling with a pitch change tool that comes built into the host, mainly because the vocalist's pitch had wandered north and south of center a bit, and with the pitch smearing that came with her relatively wide vibrato we couldn't seem to quite nail it - and in some cases we made things worse. Auto-Tune 5 did in 90 seconds (we had to do a few passes with different re-tune speeds to get it just right) what we couldn't do in more than an hour with a pitch envelope in an offline process-brilliant.

For those situations where you need to have more control over the re-tuning process, graphical mode is where it's at. Not only do you get a very accurate visual reference for the base track as well as the effect that Auto-Tune 5 is imparting, you also have nearly free reign to shape the effect how and where you like. In another film cue, the director had asked to replace a cello part with a Chinese erhu, a stringed instrument with a distinctive nasal sound quality and performance that's characterized by lots of slides and a pronounced vibrato. He loved the track, but there was a problem because it didn't seem to matter what we did with it, the instrument always interfered with the dialog that was going on in the foreground. The tuning seemed OK, but the combination of the dramatic vibrato and nasal sound quality made it continuously jump out front, and by the time we *thought* we had it tamed, it had nearly completely disappeared from the mix. Auto-Tune 5 to the rescue.

We instantiated the plug-in and checked things out in Graphical mode. Wow. I had no idea that the vibrato could be driven that far north and south of center pitch - we're talking Wagnerian soprano "warble you could drive a truck through" territory. We dialed down the vibrato and made some adjustments to a few of the slides (the re-tune speed in graphical most behaves a bit differently than in Auto mode - where it splits the difference between the analyzed curve and the target curve - nice), and with a bit of EQ and a darker reverb setting suddenly everything jelled and the director lit up like a Christmas tree and said "that's it!" Mission accomplished. Aside from feeling a great deal of satisfaction that we had that scene behind us, the director was very impressed with the visual reference, which also allowed him to feel like he could engage in solving what seemed to be an intractable mix problem. He said several times during the session how much he liked that interface, and to have a good visual reference makes everyone more comfortable with the changes made. This is the kind of experience that puts you on a producer's or director's short list for a call back for their next session or project.

Better Than Your Average Temperament

So enough with geeky tech features and the "client impression factor" - what about all of the *other* stuff that Auto-Tune 5 can do? You know - all of the things that you never hear about because Auto-Tune 5 is only thought of as a Swiss Army knife for fixing vocal tracks.

Auto-Tune 5 can also be extremely useful in a wide range of other tasks. When I was spending more time out of the studio performing as a trombonist, one of the things that we constantly worked on was "tuning the section", which meant adjusting the pitches from each player in longer chords (particularly at cadence points) such that the sum and difference frequencies of the played notes would line up with the bass note (otherwise known as "just" intonation). Even when we were performing alongside an equal tempered instrument such as a piano (which often will use a modified or "stretched" equal tempered scale) there were times when the brass section would slip out of equal temperament and "land on" a chord that would give a solidity and stability to the sound. In most cases, the audience does not identify it directly, but recognizes the sound as "locked in". It's particularly gratifying to the players and audience alike, but is devilishly hard to reproduce in the best of circumstances, let alone in a project studio or with sampled instruments. This is where Auto-Tune 5 comes to the rescue, again.

As you cycle individual players through the studio to play an individual part, they'll almost always drift toward the equal-tempered pitch, and when you've got all of the tracks in place, the overall sound lacks cohesion. Likewise with sampled instruments, they tend to be sampled at equally tempered intervals, which makes the sound more compatible across a range of applications, but is also one of the give-aways to their "fakeness" when you hear a chord played by a brass section that sounds like a freight train.

If you use a sampler's frequency to re-tune the instrument to a single just temperament, (aside from the fact that it can take some time) you can lose the ability to re-tune the sound on the fly - and - it's yet another giveaway when all of the horns are playing in just intonation at all times. That's something that doesn't happen unless you're playing in a specific "period" mode, and usually when you have a tuning-stable instrument (such as a harpsichord) to keep everyone rooted to the same scale. Again - the result of the "always on" just intonation is that it sounds fake to most listeners.

The beauty of Auto-Tune 5 is that it allows you to mimic the behavior that real, modern professionals use to bring their notes into line. Simply select the key and scale that you're planning to "hit", and set the re-tune speed to a fairly low setting (and make sure that "humanize" is set very low or turned off completely). During the faster passages every "player" is centered on the equal tempered scale, but when settling on longer cadence points, they "gravitate" toward the just-tempered pitch of the note that they're playing. I've used this several times, both in situations where I've mixed live players with virtual instruments as well as all-virtual arrangements. The results can be uncanny. Of course this works best when mixing recorded solo instruments along with Garritan's "ensemble builder" approach with Personal Orchestra and Jazz & Big Band, as well as the Stradivari Solo Violin and Gofriller Solo Cello instruments. You can even make minor adjustments to the re-tune speed per track, and get a more effective spread as the ensemble "focuses in" on a particular chord, each instrument at their own rate (as it would happen in a real ensemble).

There are several ways to achieve this effect - such as pitch bend on each MIDI track, smarter samplers, or even pitch envelopes on audio tracks - but Auto-Tune 5 gets you there in no time flat. This technique is a worthy investment - particularly when your demo reel is in a stack of other CDs/DVDs and the subtleties in your tracks can be the difference between getting a "that's nice" response and "here's what I'd like for you to do on my next project". Little things mean a lot in the business, and Auto-Tune 5 makes it almost too easy to get this part of the equation exactly right. It can help you nail it down while preserving the feel of your tracks, and at the end of the day that's what it's all about.

Along The Fringes

Aside from all of the things that Auto-Tune 5 does to tame your tracks - there are a respectable number of things that it can do to put your tracks "out there". Take a solo bell sound and tune it to the Ling Lun scale or one of the Carlos intonations. Use the scale editor to create your own intonation that matches some wild off-the-wall instrument that you found at the local flea market. I had a friend that bought a few Mbira (thumb piano) instruments and we sampled and mapped them to the nearest equal tempered note. But we left the original pitches in place and built a scale in Auto-Tune 5 that fit each instrument. We then used the same "just" technique above with other synth and sampled sounds, and came up with something completely unexpected and exciting. What started out as an "empty exercise" for a product review ended up as a background track for a documentary. Inspiration comes from the strangest places, and one of the most unexpected is a tuning plug-in, but it happens.

Pitch And Time Is Money

Antares has seen fit to completely re-engineer the user interface, while offering substantial refinements of its inner workings. It not only means that you'll be able to do the same tasks you're doing now - but more quickly, it will also mean that you'll have the opportunity to hear many of the sounds in your studio in a completely new light. Once you become familiar with the new functions and workflows in Auto-Tune 5, you'll be able to close the books on the more mundane mixing tasks and will be able to venture further into the more interesting work. Improving your music means not only asserting control over problem areas, but also doing those things in a fast and efficient way so that we can move on to the fun stuff.

Auto-Tune 5 not only helps you with the cut-and-dry tasks of cleaning up your latest take, but it does it in a way that you can focus on to more interesting things - and make better music. And whether you're an experimental music recluse or working for the next American Idol, you'll find plenty of fresh territory in Auto-Tune 5 to carry your
music forward.