Antares

Has anybody used the "Antares" plugin for Digital Performer (is it available
for Logic Audio too?) for unusual tunings? I just saw a blurb on it. They say
that it takes a recorded waveform (i.e., digitized audio rather than MIDI events
for example) of a monophonic solo line and adjusts the pitch of each note to the
nearest note in a given tuning system.

If so, here are my questions:
1. Can you specify your own tunings?
2. Can you manually specify the mapping of pitches note-by-note?
3. Can you set it to intervene on pitches that are something of a
toss up (i.e., close to two different possibilities, and thus may
not be correctly mapped automatically)?
4. They say that you can add vibrato to notes. Does that mean
that it automatically obliterates vibrato thereby necessitating
correcting for it?
5. How natural-sounding are the results? Not surprisingly, the
ad claims that they're nearly indistinguishible from the original
other than being in tune (to that tuning system).

> Has anybody used the "Antares" plugin for Digital Performer (is it available
> for Logic Audio too?) for unusual tunings? I just saw a blurb on it. They
> say that it takes a recorded waveform (i.e., digitized audio rather than
> MIDI events for example) of a monophonic solo line and adjusts the pitch of
> each note to the nearest note in a given tuning system.

Hi Gary, I posted some info about this sometime ago :

Anatares AutoTune
http://www.antares-systems.com

In addition to being able to specify tunings, there is a graphical mode :

The Graphical Mode is similar to the Automatic Mode in that it also
continuously tracks the pitch of the incoming sound and modifies the output
pitch to be closer to a desired pitch. But in the Graphical Mode, the
desired pitch is not a scale tone, rather it is given graphically by you and
is called the "target pitch function".
...

In Graphical Mode, the user draws the target pitch function using line and
curve drawing tools.

The graphical mode is not available in the rack mount, so you'd need the
plug-in versions, or stand-alone version for Mac/Win.
--------------

Resolution : "...the .01 cent accuracies by which the various scales of the
Automatic Mode are internally specified."

"Auto-Tune DSP algorithm computes the pitch to an accuracy of .0001 samples
per cycle, or .0004 Hz."
-------------

Compatibility:

Auto-Tune is currently available as a plugin to Steinberg's Cubase VST,
MOTU's Performer, Antare's AudioStream tandalone application and the PC
DirectX plugin environment.

Auto-Tune is currently available as a plugin to Digidesign's DAE/TDM system.
-------------

Later,
Drew

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Gary Morrison wrote:
>
> Has anybody used the "Antares" plugin for Digital Performer (is it available
> for Logic Audio too?) for unusual tunings?

I've used the Pro Tools version. Don't know about D.P. or L.A. but it
should be essentially the same.

> If so, here are my questions:
> 1. Can you specify your own tunings?

Yes! And it has Partch built in, believe it or not. And lots of ETs,
Wells, meantones, and "ethnic" scales.

> 2. Can you manually specify the mapping of pitches note-by-note?

Yes.

> 3. Can you set it to intervene on pitches that are something of a
> toss up (i.e., close to two different possibilities, and thus may
> not be correctly mapped automatically)?

If by intervene you mean automatically judge whether or not to adjust
the pitch of a note, no. It adjusts all of the notes in a given range
according to the current algorithm, or none at all. You can, of course,
adjust a few in a row, skip one or more, adjust a few more in a row,
etc. IOW, you don't have to correct a whole waveform at once.

There are actually two different modes. The above describes the auto
mode. The graphic mode makes a graph of the pitches, after which you
redraw it and it adjusts the pitches according to your drawn graph
rather than according to a pitch map. You could pitch one D up and the
next one down. It's difficult, though, to draw adjustments smaller
than, say, a 1/12 tone (you're looking at about 1/3" of screen per
semitone). IOW, graphic mode is great for correcting a "bad" pitch here
and there, but maybe not so good for picky microtonal work.

> 4. They say that you can add vibrato to notes. Does that mean
> that it automatically obliterates vibrato thereby necessitating
> correcting for it?

Not necessarily, though it could. You can set it to accomodate a
certain amount of vibrato using parameters called "how fast" and "how
picky" or something like that. You can have it add simple pitch
modulation but that always sounds synthetic in my experience.

> 5. How natural-sounding are the results? Not surprisingly, the
> ad claims that they're nearly indistinguishible from the original
> other than being in tune (to that tuning system).

It's surprisingly good -- best I've ever heard. It really has gotten
rave reviews throughout the pro audio industry and is in very widespread
use. A picky ear listening through a high quality monitoring system
will hear slight artifacts occasionally, if listening for them. If you
were to shift a pitch by more than a whole tone, I imagine the side
effects would become more obvious.

If you try to correct a singer whose style is especially active in terms
of scoops and fall-offs, you'll find that you have to spend a lot of
time correcting pitches by hand with the graph method -- quicker to just
get the performance out of the singer in the first place. For most
singers, it's a life-saver.

--
David J. Finnamore
Nashville, TN, USA
http://members.xoom.com/dfinn
--