Antares Auto-Tune 5, Owner'S Manual

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Chapter 2: Introducing Auto-Tune 5
Some background
In 1997, Antares Audio Technologies first introduced the ground-breaking
Auto-Tune Pitch Correcting Plug-In. Auto-Tune was a tool that actually
corrected the pitch of vocals and other solo instruments, in real time,
without distortion or artifacts, while preserving all of the expressive nuance
of the original performance. Recording Magazine called Auto-Tune a “holy grail of recording.”
And went on to say, “Bottom line, Auto-Tune is amazing… Everyone with a Mac should have this
program.” (In fact, we know of quite a few people back then who bought kilo-buck ProTools™
systems just to be able to run Auto-Tune.)
In the intervening years, Auto-Tune established itself as the worldwide standard in professional
pitch correction. Today, it’s used daily by thousands of audio professionals to save studio and
editing time, ease the frustration of endless retakes, save that otherwise once-in-a-lifetime
performance, or even to create unique special effects.
Now, never content to leave a good thing alone, Antares has created Auto-Tune 5. Preserving the
great sound quality, transparent processing, and ease of use of previous versions of Auto-Tune,
Auto-Tune 5 adds significant new features as well as a sleek new user interface.
So what exactly is Auto-Tune 5?
Auto-Tune 5 is a precision tool for correcting
intonation errors or creatively modifying
the intonation of a performance. Auto-Tune
5 employs state-of-the-art digital signal
processing algorithms (many, interestingly
enough, drawn from the geophysical
industry) to continuously detect the pitch of
a periodic input signal (typically a solo voice
or instrument) and instantly and seamlessly
change it to a desired pitch (defined by any of
a number of user-programmable scales, MIDI
input, or through the use of graphical editing
tools).
To take maximum advantage of the power
of Auto-Tune 5, you should have a basic
understanding of pitch and how Auto-Tune 5
functions to correct pitch errors. This chapter
presents basic terminology and introduces
Auto-Tune 5’s operating paradigm, giving you
information you need to use it effectively.
A little bit about pitch
Pitch is typically associated with our
perception of the “highness” or “lowness”
of a particular sound. Our perception of pitch
ranges from the very general (the high pitch
of hissing steam, the low pitch of the rumble
of an earthquake) to the very specific (the
exact pitch of a solo singer or violinist). There
is, of course, a wide range of variation in the
middle. A symphony orchestra playing a scale
in unison, for example, results in an extremely
complex waveform, yet you are still able to
easily sense the pitch.
The vocalists and the solo instruments that
Auto-Tune 5 is designed to process have a very
clearly defined quality of pitch. The sound-
generating mechanism of these sources is
a vibrating element (vocal chords, a string,
an air column, etc.). The sound that is thus
generated can be graphically represented as
a waveform (a graph of the sound’s pressure
over time) that is periodic. This means that
each cycle of waveform repeats itself fairly