Auto Tune v.s. Waves Tune

[Dirty Halo]

Originally Posted by organik

a good singer who dosent sing out of key !! LOL

Which is better integration and easier to use within Pro Tools> Waves Tune or Melodtne?

And what do you have to do to each to make work, any importing or are they all integrated enough to work as simple pull-down plugs by now?

Thanks

-a

[Tony Shepperd]

Originally Posted by macleodgrant

well here's a quick example of just taking a dry vocal and shifting it up by 5 semitones with both melodyne and tune. there's been no tuning though at all

Thanks for posting these samples.
This confirms what I have found disliked about Melodyne.
There are to many artifacts for me.
Every time I get a track from someone to mix and they have used Melodyne, there has always been a ton of artifacts left after processing.

[macleodgrant]

Originally Posted by Tony Shepperd

Thanks for posting these samples.
This confirms what I have found disliked about Melodyne.
There are to many artifacts for me.
Every time I get a track from someone to mix and they have used Melodyne, there has always been a ton of artifacts left after processing.

i'm going to run a more real world testing between melodyne & tune on this particular vocal (just tuning though)! it's a vocal from 3 years ago and pretty crap quality but all i have for the track so it is what it is...

i will do it in both melodyne and waves and will also let you know my opinion with regards to usability which so far leans in melodyne's favour

[Steve MacMillan]

To really judge the difference between Tune and Melodyne you have to hear what an expert with each can do with it.

For instance, Melodyne does some really weird things on esses and breaths. A Melodyne expert would probably seperate the breaths so there is no shifting on those bits.

Tune sounds far better when you delete all of the auto created curves, let it trace the real pitch curve and edit the bits that need tuning without the lookahead.

I like them both. Tune has some real advantages tracking difficult material. I do a lot of live mixing for DVD and nothing tracks thru trashy leakage like Tune. Melodyne is not even close. You can't stretch with Tune.

With clean material, and some knowledge about how to avoid artifacts, they both work very well. It's a bit like saying, which is better a C12 or a Tele 251? A lot of it comes down to who's driving.

STeve

[danielbest]

Originally Posted by macleodgrant

i'm going to run a more real world testing between melodyne & tune on this particular vocal (just tuning though)! it's a vocal from 3 years ago and pretty crap quality but all i have for the track so it is what it is...

i will do it in both melodyne and waves and will also let you know my opinion with regards to usability which so far leans in melodyne's favour

i'm waiting for your audio files to compare.. thanks...

[Tetness]

Waves Tunes

[macleodgrant]

Originally Posted by danielbest

i'm waiting for your audio files to compare.. thanks...

cool, just busy finishing the bass in the track and then i'm going on to the vocals. i should have something by the end of next week...sorry for the delay!

i was working on a bass track last night in melodyne plugin to adjust the timing and just putting it through melodyne screwed it up! i don't think i'm going to use it to edit this bass track because of that. ok, the bass isn't that great to start with and i've had better success with other bass tracks but i just made it so much worse. i reckon i will post samples of that too, i.e. what the track sounds like once it's just been recorded into the plugin!

[danielbest]

i'm re-posting what i think about Tune:

i've seen here a lot of people who use Melodyne and Auto-Tune, but what do you think about Waves Tune? i think Auto-Tune is crap (you tune anything and its sound plastic and metalic), i've heard Melodyne and i think it sounds much more natural, it's harder to notice when its working, BUT... the sound quality of the vocals its so bad, i thinks its sounds darker and lifeless, like something with a hollow inside, in addition the audio detection some times is not correct and the vocals sound with some artifacts (i hate that), on the other hand, Waves Tune in some parts, mainly in note transitions, sounds more noticiable, but just with some extreme adjusts like 4 semitones... in spite of that i think Tune blows Melodyne in audio quality, and i think it's very difficult to notice that it's working on my vocals, obviously if you set well the parameters for every note manually with care to make it sounds tuned but natural (there has to be a balance)... what do you think Tune users?? or i'm wrong and finally Melodyne it's better than waves Tune??

(sorry for my english).

[Mikey MTC]

Like some of the others here, I've got both and in the perfect world I think you need both.

I think for overall quality and lack of artifacts, Waves Tune is the best. Another advantage of Waves Tune is the ease at which you can draw in the notes you need. Like when the singer does some bizarre Mariah Carey style super lick and notes fly everywhere. It's easy with Tune to put those notes where they need to be, including getting the slides to start and finish at the right place. Yes, Melodyne pretty much does this too but Waves' ability to pencil in the right notes like a MIDI piano roll makes it the easiest.

Also, if detection is getting difficult you can pre-EQ with a lot of HPF and LPF while detecting and then disable it for playback. You can't do that with the Melodyne plugin because it would record that filtered sound as the audio.

Having said that, Melodyne I personally find easier to use. The plugin is a hassle because you can't use any key commands but at least you can blow the plugin screen up nice and big. The stand-alone version is the bomb the way you can assign key commands to almost everything and edit multiple tracks all a once.

On the whole - if I've got to do a massive, often perilous job, I'll use Melodyne. If I've got to do a single lead vocal and I want the absolute most invisible tuning possible, I'll use Waves Tune. For background vocals I'll often use the Audiosuite version of Waves Tune because then it's in and out and you haven't got a plugin lying around chewing CPU cycles.

I'd definitely miss either one if I lost it though.

[macleodgrant]

i said i would do a shootout and did one but my experiences were of frustration.

waves tune is not a user friendly plugin like melodyne.
horizontal scrolling with mouse wheel doesn't work
navigation in general just feels miles away from melodyne! if you could resize the interface it would help a lot but the interface is just too small. the detection can be a bit of a nightmare. if you detect an entire piece and it detects only a few notes incorrectly (which it did) then you have to remove those parts and then change the RANGE and rescan that part of the audio! this is very counterintuitive as i had to do a couple of passes to get it right!

i tried to capture a bass track for tuning but for some reason tune didn't appear to record most of the notes as if it were out of range. i gave up on this!

the tools are also unintuitive and you should read the manual to understand the tools to use them properly. the most frustrating part is that you can't seem to control the tuning with a tool but rather have to first select the note, then turn 3 knobs (note transition, speed & ratio) to get the effect that you're looking for. it's a little less fussy than melodyne with regards to the relation between the appearance of the tuning curve and what you hear. if you draw in a curve yourself and there's a glitch in your drawing then it doesn't seem to sound whereas in melodyne if there's a glitch then you hear it (it seems to have a tolerance). i also found i couldn't get the effect i wanted at the note transition and it was necessary to draw in the tuning line but my drawing aint so good and there doesn't appear to be a way to smooth out your drawing afterwards! i just got too frustrated and spent way too much time trying to get it right. splines would be great here!

waves tune, once it captures the vocal and if detection is correct, before any changes are made, it does sound more natural than melodyne. tuning capabilities i found could be similar and you can push tune a little further than melodyne but IMO it's just a lot harder than i feel it needs to be. it took ages to get anywhere with it that i just gave up and went to melodyne! i think i'll wait for Tune V2 if it ever happens though for a quick edit to a word or phrase i think it could be quick! i prefer melodyne's approach in that where you remove the audio from melodyne, it reverts to the original audio on the track (unaffected) whereas with tune you don't have the option so you would have to put it on a new track!

melodyne for navigation and how intuitive it is to use is just amazing and DAW designers should take some tips from these guys!
zooming, mouse wheel and panning are a dream. you can correct the detection too which save a bit of time.

melodyne captured the bass track that waves tune wouldn't but it affected the sound way too much. the bass was nice and full and after just being recorded into melodyne the quality was affected in a big way. i then decided to edit the bass manually and ignore the tuning issues which weren't too bad anyways.

for vocals, melodyne is a real lifesaver. for instance, if you are trying to make harmonies sit in time with the main vocal for better intelligibility then it's all possible here and the tools to do it are so intuitive. you don't even need to read the manual to use this plugin, seriously! the interface can be made larger so it's much easier to navigate. unlike tune, it doesn't have rewire capabilities so you can't navigate your session within the plugin alone. i didn't find this to be a huge limitation as i used logics 'play from left window edge' key command and just scrolled over the session keeping the part i'm working on at the left of the arrange. i always had to click to activate the arrange before i could scroll (using mouse wheel) though in leopard this should no longer be an issue!

navigation from within plugins should get a lot easier as the new audio unit implementation (i think new in leopard) allows plugins to now send midi information to the DAW which is very interesting and would mean waves tune wouldn't need to use rewire to set locate points, etc and also means it shouldn't be too long before melodyne has similar functionality!

conclusion
waves tune
waves need to rethink the tools a little bit more and add a tool that allows you to graphically tune and adjust note transition rather than using the knobs.
detection should be easier to adjust after being captured
should be able to resize the interface
should be able to smooth the tuning line after you've drawn in your own or they should implement splines as a drawing option

waves tune has a lot of power but its made difficult to use by the lack of navigation options. the quality is good and in caes better than melodyne but i feel they need to implement the note transition and speed into tools...much like the 'demodulation' in melodyne. i need to try tuning a different bass track but i don't see why i shouldn't be able to do this in tune...i will keep you updated!

melodyne
great interface, great tools and easy to access. the fact you can edit timings can be a real lifesaver. sometimes (dependent on mic and preamp used) i've noticed the vocal loses a bit of highs (air) and is slightly darkened - this isn't always the case. the fact you can edit the detection is great. the fact the bass track changed so much just lets us know that we should be relying on these kinds of tools to 'fix in the mix' and that we should always try and get the best at source.
for the most part the artefacts are minimal in vocal tuning

one more thing, i found waves tune great for helping to come up with harmony ideas and for that tune sounds more natural to me! it captures quick and you can just push notes to wherever you want and it helped me to show the vocalist what i was looking for

[B-Muzik]

YES melodyne is the best but outta waves and auto-tune waves comes in 1st...

1st Place: Melodyne
2nd Place: Waves Tune
3rd Place: Antares Auto Tune

Auto Tune is good but sometime it has to change the voice to end it in tune...it can create an effect that sounds cool but sometimes u dont want that and the only thing that u want is the natural sounding voice...

[B-Muzik]

Originally Posted by macleodgrant

i said i would do a shootout and did one but my experiences were of frustration.

waves tune is not a user friendly plugin like melodyne.
horizontal scrolling with mouse wheel doesn't work
navigation in general just feels miles away from melodyne! if you could resize the interface it would help a lot but the interface is just too small. the detection can be a bit of a nightmare. if you detect an entire piece and it detects only a few notes incorrectly (which it did) then you have to remove those parts and then change the RANGE and rescan that part of the audio! this is very counterintuitive as i had to do a couple of passes to get it right!

i tried to capture a bass track for tuning but for some reason tune didn't appear to record most of the notes as if it were out of range. i gave up on this!

the tools are also unintuitive and you should read the manual to understand the tools to use them properly. the most frustrating part is that you can't seem to control the tuning with a tool but rather have to first select the note, then turn 3 knobs (note transition, speed & ratio) to get the effect that you're looking for. it's a little less fussy than melodyne with regards to the relation between the appearance of the tuning curve and what you hear. if you draw in a curve yourself and there's a glitch in your drawing then it doesn't seem to sound whereas in melodyne if there's a glitch then you hear it (it seems to have a tolerance). i also found i couldn't get the effect i wanted at the note transition and it was necessary to draw in the tuning line but my drawing aint so good and there doesn't appear to be a way to smooth out your drawing afterwards! i just got too frustrated and spent way too much time trying to get it right. splines would be great here!

waves tune, once it captures the vocal and if detection is correct, before any changes are made, it does sound more natural than melodyne. tuning capabilities i found could be similar and you can push tune a little further than melodyne but IMO it's just a lot harder than i feel it needs to be. it took ages to get anywhere with it that i just gave up and went to melodyne! i think i'll wait for Tune V2 if it ever happens though for a quick edit to a word or phrase i think it could be quick! i prefer melodyne's approach in that where you remove the audio from melodyne, it reverts to the original audio on the track (unaffected) whereas with tune you don't have the option so you would have to put it on a new track!

melodyne for navigation and how intuitive it is to use is just amazing and DAW designers should take some tips from these guys!
zooming, mouse wheel and panning are a dream. you can correct the detection too which save a bit of time.

melodyne captured the bass track that waves tune wouldn't but it affected the sound way too much. the bass was nice and full and after just being recorded into melodyne the quality was affected in a big way. i then decided to edit the bass manually and ignore the tuning issues which weren't too bad anyways.

for vocals, melodyne is a real lifesaver. for instance, if you are trying to make harmonies sit in time with the main vocal for better intelligibility then it's all possible here and the tools to do it are so intuitive. you don't even need to read the manual to use this plugin, seriously! the interface can be made larger so it's much easier to navigate. unlike tune, it doesn't have rewire capabilities so you can't navigate your session within the plugin alone. i didn't find this to be a huge limitation as i used logics 'play from left window edge' key command and just scrolled over the session keeping the part i'm working on at the left of the arrange. i always had to click to activate the arrange before i could scroll (using mouse wheel) though in leopard this should no longer be an issue!

navigation from within plugins should get a lot easier as the new audio unit implementation (i think new in leopard) allows plugins to now send midi information to the DAW which is very interesting and would mean waves tune wouldn't need to use rewire to set locate points, etc and also means it shouldn't be too long before melodyne has similar functionality!

conclusion
waves tune
waves need to rethink the tools a little bit more and add a tool that allows you to graphically tune and adjust note transition rather than using the knobs.
detection should be easier to adjust after being captured
should be able to resize the interface
should be able to smooth the tuning line after you've drawn in your own or they should implement splines as a drawing option

waves tune has a lot of power but its made difficult to use by the lack of navigation options. the quality is good and in caes better than melodyne but i feel they need to implement the note transition and speed into tools...much like the 'demodulation' in melodyne. i need to try tuning a different bass track but i don't see why i shouldn't be able to do this in tune...i will keep you updated!

melodyne
great interface, great tools and easy to access. the fact you can edit timings can be a real lifesaver. sometimes (dependent on mic and preamp used) i've noticed the vocal loses a bit of highs (air) and is slightly darkened - this isn't always the case. the fact you can edit the detection is great. the fact the bass track changed so much just lets us know that we should be relying on these kinds of tools to 'fix in the mix' and that we should always try and get the best at source.
for the most part the artefacts are minimal in vocal tuning

one more thing, i found waves tune great for helping to come up with harmony ideas and for that tune sounds more natural to me! it captures quick and you can just push notes to wherever you want and it helped me to show the vocalist what i was looking for

Yeah melodyne is really user friendly...thats crazy! And its sick!