Since I’ve realized that open source audio software is very much a thing, I’m trying to switch from Reaper to Ardour and start using foss plugins exclusively. I haven’t tried a whole lot of them yet, but with all the options I’ve seen others talk about, I don’t think I’ll be sacrificing much in the transition, which is exciting. It’s the mark of a talented community making awesome software.
Then there’s the issue of pitch correction. I know there aren’t many options when it comes to this, but I kept getting the impression that X42 Autotune is the best foss option.
I’ve been using Melda Production’s MAutoPitch and, on occasion, Reaper’s proprietary tuner up until this point. Both are good for my uses, as the music I make does not require transparent correction, so I don’t need something as robust as Melodyne (though, if it’s source code was ever leaked and compiled for Linux, I’d jump on that in an instant).
I gave X42 Autotune a test run today, and it would be perfectly usable for me, if it weren’t for the lack of format compensation when it alters pitch. I’m not a dev, and I have no clue how difficult this could be to implement, but this is the only feature of any utility thus far keeping me from running things completely open source.
To be fair, my test was a bit intensive: I recorded some lines originally spoken by the turrets from the Portal games, as their voices are heavily tuned to achieve that robotic effect. I did my best to imitate the sing-songy delivery, and then fed a MIDI track into X42 as I mapped out the notes. Given how strict the tuning has to be for such an effect to sound right, the lack of forment compensation really kneecapped it. It’s unfortunate, because I like the plugin otherwise and will likely use it for smaller corrections, but if this is the best foss option, then I suppose I’ll have to rely on at least one closed source plugin for now.
That is, unless anyone has any other recommendations for open source or even closed source pitch correction that doesn’t rely on (intrusive) licenses. MAutoPitch operates without a hitch in it’s free variety, and I even managed to extract it from the bundle it comes in, as I don’t care about any of the other Melda plugins, but I’m very ready and willing to ditch it in favor of anything better.
I’ll give MXTune a shot regardless, but may I ask, is Stretch just an algorithm for formant shifting, and not a plugin on it’s own? It looks that way to me, but if there’s a way to install it as a plugin, I’m interested.
I wish I could code lol I’d love to develop something like this.
There’s an interesting-looking tool called “Sonic Visualizer” that comes with an install of Ubuntu Studio. It contains a program “Tony” that might be useful. I don’t believe it can be used as a plug-in but it seems like there could be ways to work around this. Unclear how it will do with formants. It’s on my list to experiment with, but I haven’t yet had made the time to do so. See:
There may or may not be a version 2 of the plugin that remedies this after this year’s Linux Audio Conference.
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The current version will remain as-is to not break existing sessions.
Personally I only use it for small corrections where formant shifts are not noticeable.
Try gsnap with midi input. I have great results with that. And for pitch and formant shifting (or also for pitch correction), the best for me is gform from the gvst plugin.
I transposed one time a melody 5 semitones higher in melodyne and in gform. And in gform the sound was more naturally.
That sounds great and regardless of when it comes to fruition, I look forward to version 2!
Small corrections are what I use it for too, and thank you for the response, by the way. Hope I didn’t come off like I was dunking on your plugins. I really like them and they’ve made the switch to Ardour much easier.
