what do you use fo pitch shifting?

[elroy jetson]

Hey gang. I'm working on a show and the directors want pitched dialogue. I'm using Pro tools HD and using the basic pitch and time plugs and they sound like absolute shit. I was wondering what you guys use to pitch dialogue as to not end up with tracks that have more artifacts than an indiana jones movie.

In using elastic time for TCE, i've noticed that the X form algorithms sound way better than the others. Much more usable. How is it for pitch? I mean the directors havn't said anything, but i can hear the artifacts like crazy and it drives me nuts.

thanks

[Jaques Beraques]

Wavelab has the Dirac-Algorithm which is very slow but sounds pretty sweet.I used it to pitch up flat Instruments and its the best i´ve heard so far.

[seansolo]

melodyne. Even just the plug in. Best I've heard yet.

[tekyon]

The best pitch shifting software ive ever heard is SoundHack. Soundhack | freeware (its on the right side). Its a small tool with powerful results. The interface may be a little foreign at first but it shifts octaves without losing any information. It also does some other amazing things like convoluting and mutating the frequency envelopes of two sounds, and it also has a binaural panner.

[Frank S.]

Serato

[rlg]

Melodyne is great, great, great. I used to use Autotune, but it was a pain to make any changes sound natural. Melodyne works great by default by just moving the "blobs" around, but also has tremendous editing tools to get more detailed work done, and they work very intuitively. And Melodyne Studio is great for timing across multiple tracks, too. I cannot wait for the new version of the plugin, which supposedly will allow editing individual notes in chords.

[Dunebuggy]

Pure pitch by Sound Toys for real time

[tigheguy]

I'm with the melodyners. There are so many possibilities and almost every aspect of the voice (or anything) can be manually controlled. It is easy to learn, the detection is the best that I've heard, and with some practice, can be a quick and extremely effective application. Haven't had much use with the plug-in, but I'm sure it is consistent with the other versions.

[gravityminor]

melodyne is my current fav too

[Lake]

We do some of our 25 frame deliveries from 24 frame stems/PMs with Serato Pitch and Time, but it's amazing how different some of the alternatives can sound. For example we have found that using bog standard TCE on ProTools works better on dialogue if you use samples as the time references compared to using timecode.

[bkositzky]

Wow, Melodyne looks phenomenal. Definitely will check it out!

[elroy jetson]

melodyne doesn't really do it for me for dialogue. it's great for singing and instruments though.

My specific application is pitching up dialogue tracks for television. Some characters need pitching as much as 4 or 5 semitones. The digidesign stock pitch shift and time shift sound awful. I'll check out serato and x form. Any other opinions? i know that south park pitches Matt and Treys voices up and i never notice the ugliness that i'm getting. anyone know what they are using?

[danijel]

Originally Posted by elroy jetson

melodyne doesn't really do it for me for dialogue. it's great for singing and instruments though.

My specific application is pitching up dialogue tracks for television. Some characters need pitching as much as 4 or 5 semitones. The digidesign stock pitch shift and time shift sound awful. I'll check out serato and x form. Any other opinions? i know that south park pitches Matt and Treys voices up and i never notice the ugliness that i'm getting. anyone know what they are using?

southpark is recorded slower, so they're not time-correcting.
you can't go much better than melodyne. it's usually better than MPEX2, but i haven't heard MPEX3. it's integrated into Sonar, and it's in prosonique's own TimeFactory 2.

[seansolo]

we also use Serato here, but on the two new systems we're putting together it seems that just the melodyne plugin is cheaper than the pitch'n'time LE!

[Eilam Hoffman]

+1 Pure Pitch

[londontown]

+1 for serato

[seanmccoy]

Melodyne plugin here. Particularly for shifting up.

[macleodgrant]

melodyne maybe good for dialog but i've definitely found that it affects the air on singing vocals in a way i don't like - i still use it though but shift between waves tune and melodyne now

[Sonsey@mac.com]

Originally Posted by elroy jetson

melodyne doesn't really do it for me for dialogue. it's great for singing and instruments though.

My specific application is pitching up dialogue tracks for television. Some characters need pitching as much as 4 or 5 semitones. The digidesign stock pitch shift and time shift sound awful. I'll check out serato and x form. Any other opinions? i know that south park pitches Matt and Treys voices up and i never notice the ugliness that i'm getting. anyone know what they are using?

Ummm...ADR? :) Seriously... I went through this with an animated TV show last year...even asked the same question at the DUC. In my case an actor had reached puberty and no longer sounded "young enough". In the end no matter what I tried (and I tried everything mentioned here), the artifacting on 4 or 5 semitones was just too much to be believable. They ended up recasting the character with a younger actor. Probably not the answer you're looking for...

You could always try the old hardware standby, the Eventide, if you have access to one.

[Arcana]

Melodyne is great for editing notes. Very flexible and have some nice advanced features such as changing the vibrato.
I don't have anything to compare it to but I'm not particularly impressed with the pitch shifting. Yes, it's great for moving a note a few cents but once you pitch shift a note 5 semitones or so it's all artifacts and a bit Mickie Mousey.
Maybe that's how far technology have reached I don't know, but it's certainly not perfect yet.

[subbasshead]

AudioSculpt (ircam) is the best pitch shifter and time stretcher i've ever used..
as with SoundHack it employs non-realtime spectrum analysis/resynthesis
& for example i time streched a bell chime sound 1000% with no artefacts
(try that with digis time expansion!)

FWIW to buy AudioSculpt you have to pay for a yearly subscription

[danijel]

Originally Posted by subbasshead

AudioSculpt (ircam) is the best pitch shifter and time stretcher i've ever used..
as with SoundHack it employs non-realtime spectrum analysis/resynthesis
& for example i time streched a bell chime sound 1000% with no artefacts
(try that with digis time expansion!)

all right, but does it work good on subtle changes? like a couple percents? i read somewhere that some algorithms work good for extreme, some for subtle, but non is all-rounder. of course, a program can use different algorithms depending on your settings.....

[iluvatar]

Originally Posted by subbasshead

AudioSculpt (ircam) is the best pitch shifter and time stretcher i've ever used..
as with SoundHack it employs non-realtime spectrum analysis/resynthesis
& for example i time streched a bell chime sound 1000% with no artefacts
(try that with digis time expansion!)

FWIW to buy AudioSculpt you have to pay for a yearly subscription

I just discovered the wonders of varispeed on our RADAR machine. It's only got a range of -2399 to +702 cents and it's definitely a bit more old school in the way you have to use it (i.e. as a separate machine, not a plugin), but it sounds perfect: no artifacts whatsoever.

-Dan.

[MATTI]

You can always try try recording for example at 32 khz
and play back at 44.1, instant cartoonish sound,
Header investigator is your friend here.
Mainly Melodyne here for more usual things

Matti

[joenovice]

Originally Posted by londontown

+1 for serato

Pitch n' Time is the shiznizzle........

[PostFade]

Fairlight CC-1's come with a licenceable Serato Pitch n'Time LE built in and being VST it's much cheaper than say in a PT plugin. It's just so good for speech and tweaking music timings that I think I'll ask the Sydney guys to get Serato to do the full version as a CC-1 plug as that is amazingly adjustable for music.

[Airon]

Give ReaPitch in the DAW Reaper a try.

You can pick the algorithm for each region(called item in Reaper) individually and render out the single track. A method for bringing material in and out of Reaper would be to session convert the tracks with EDL Convery Pro or ProConvert to Samplitude EDL or Vegas Text EDL, which Reaper can import/export.

ReaPitch is to me by far the most flexible so far. It features Elastique2, Elastique 1, Dirac and Soundtouch. You can pitch formants individually too, and Reaper can do per-item fx (hit SHIFT+E to add a plugin or plugin chain to an item).

[siriusbliss]

Samplitude's Timestretch is great.

Did a test the other day - turned a 4-minute tune into 4 HOURS (for an ambient drone thing I'm working on).

Great fun.

Greg