Pitch correction

Hi guys!

i’ve been fooling around with the talented hack or autotalent plugin to correct some pitch issues in a session with terrible results, can anyone tell me a bit about how you’ve used it? got good results? recommendations?

The best auto tuner I’ve found for Linux is zita-at1.
More info here:
http://kokkinizita.linuxaudio.org/linuxaudio/index.html

It’s a standalone JACK client so you’d use it on an insert. It’s optimised for the vocal frequency range, so it might not work on bass instruments. (Having said that I used it successfully on a distorted bass with a high harmonic content).

I’ve also got terrible results with free pitch correction plugins.

During my last project I downloaded a trial copy of Melodyne. It’s a bore to have to copy the audio file, reboot into Windows, do the tuning, then reboot again and copy the files back, but it did produce excellent results. I might see if I can run it in a VM - if that works well I might purchase the “essentials” package.

It would be good to have a linux version - Melodyne’s secret for success is that it doesn’t work in real time - it has to analyse the file first, but then it can do a far better job of putting stuff in tune without making it sound like a robot (though you can make it do that as well). A free package that took the same “analyse first” approach could quite possibly do a good job.

Actually something I’d like in Ardour is the some help with the built in “transpose” function - if it could autocorrect a single note that would be much easier than me having to guess how many cents to raise or lower the pitch - or a preview function where I could loop a couple of seconds and adjust the pitch until it sounds right.

Just found Zita-at1 and tried it.
Great when it works, not so great when it doesn’t… worth keeping though.

@jrigg: thanks a lot, i’ll look into zita at-1

@anahata: yes it would be great to have a good time-pitch feature in Ardour, i’ve been working this week in a studio that uses Live, and the time-pitch handling is just amazing, seriously no hassle at all, i hope this feature is taken into account eventually for a nice improve.

I tried to use Zita-at1, couldn’t get it to install from http://kokkinizita.linuxaudio.org/linuxaudio/zita-at1-doc/quickguide.html, however i did manage to install “zitaretuner-lv2” which is in DreamStudio 12.04’s respository and worked as a ladspa plugin, no GUI other than ardour’s standard.

I did work and did a good job bringing some tune to my crappy vocals, will need a lot of tweaking to understand better the actual implications of every parameter, not the ultimate solution of course but a great help indeed. Thanks jrigg!!!

I thought I’d revive this thread to report on my recent experiments with Melodyne, which I’ve mentioned above.

I installed Virtualbox on my AV Linux system and created two VMs using Windows installation DVDs: one for Windows XP 32 bit, and one for Windows 7 64 bit. I then experimented with different emulated audio interfaces and drivers. The combination that worked best for me was Windows XP with Virtualbox providing AC97 emulation and ASIO4all installed, and telling Melodyne to use the ASIO driver. Using the VirtualBox guest additions I can make a Linux directory shareable as a Windows network folder.

This combination provides me with a perfectly usable Melodyne stand-alone editor. In Ardour I created a special export preset (32 bit linear, no other processing) and use stem export to export the track I want to tune, saving it in the shared folder. I have to stop Ardour and start the VM to use Melodyne but that’s much faster than rebooting the physical PC to Windows, which is what I did before when I was using Melodyne’s one-month trial.
When I’ve finished tuning, I re-import the result into a new track in Ardour, and it’s usually a good idea to keep the old and the new on separate tracks, with the old muted, until I’m sure the newly edited/tuned version is all it should be.

This setup is trustworthy enough that I am now considering splashing out for the full Melodyne editor (upgrading is easy).
I don’t care that Windows XP support has ended, because I’ll strip it down, disable networking and use it for just one application.

I did also try running Melodyne under Wine. It nearly works (shows editor window and plays sound!) but the text is missing from most of the user interface buttons.

Of course, if LinuxDSP came up with a comparable pitch correction package I’d pay good money for it :slight_smile:

text missing under wine could be due to missing fonts or a library, use wine tricks to install additional libraris, fonts etc. it you may need to just try stuff to see what works and what doesnt.

Check the software requirements of the windows software as it may need a service pack or visual basic runtime or something.

When I mentioned the Wine problem, I wondered if anybody would have a useful suggestion. Thanks for that - I’ll try it!
(hadn’t even heard of winetricks)

winetricks is a utility to help installing extra libraries and programs that many software can depend on.

its still not guarenteed to get a program working 100% though under wine. Not yet anyway and im not sure if wine will ever get to a stage where things work neer 100%

Hi,

@anahata

AV Linux comes with Winetricks pre-installed which should appear in the Settings or Preferences menu as ‘Wine Tools’ (depending on which version you are using). Having said that I doubt it is as simple as missing fonts in Melodyne, but maybe if you’re lucky…

@GMap.

I agree that it probably isnt as simple as installing fonts, but its a start. there are other stuff that could possibly help. Its just finding the right library or software that is the tricky part, and even then it might still not fix it.

You might want to post a thread on wine or something and maybe someone can give some help

If I could run Melodyne under Wine, would I be able to use it as an Ardour plugin (using the VST build of Ardour from AV Linux) ?

If not (and it sure looks like living dangerously), I’m quite happy to continue running in standalone mode on an XP VM under Virtualbox, which works absolutely fine.

Hi anahata!

Whether using Wine directly or the combination of FST and Wine which is utilized by both Festige and ArdourVST I think you have to face the Wine bullet which is most likely the weak link in the chain. If there is a Melodyne VST DLL then you could try either installing it or copying it to the /usr/local/lib/vst directory which is the default in AVL (be aware I have no idea what the registration authentication method is for Melodyne) then run ArdourVST and see if it works, if ArdourVST crashes or it doesn’t work simply remove the DLL and any generated ‘.fsi’ files and you should be back to square one…

Another very longshot that has just come along is the latest Carla 2.0beta1 Plugin host by falkTX which has some unique WinVST bridging that allows running WinVST Plugins and may or may not be able to run certain Plugins that FST or DSSI-VST fail with, however it is early beta and my experience running the Carla-Rack LV2 Plug within Ardour have been quite dicey so far ans have succeeded in taking JACK out at the knees, however it may be possible to run the Carla Standalone application with more stability and check out the possibilities.

The latest Carla 2.0beta1 is here with all the WinVST stuff bundled in: http://bandshed.net/avlinux6-debs/carla/carla_20140520-2.0-beta1-static+nsmfix-avlinux6-1_i386.deb

*Please note that there is a known bug with the plugin scan if ‘LADSPA’ is selected so to scan for LV2 and VST deselect the option to scan for LADSPA…

The pitch correction in regions leaves a 10 ms delay artifact a fast echo. It does work but with a fast echo. Any work arounds?

@FranklinRussell: these forums are not the right place to report bugs. Please file this on tracker.ardour.org, and add a lot more details because nobody else has ever reported this behaviour.

Using vst Autotune plugin from here : http://www.antarestech.com/download/latest-software.php
and vocal pack from them : https://www.lucidsamples.com

Replying to this old post because this post ranks high on search engines.

See also: Video Tutorial: how to pitch-correct vocals with x42-Autotune in Ardour 6

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