Fast. Easy. Good. The holy triumvirate for software developers. Since the dark ages of vocal tuning plug-ins, developers have been struggling to achieve this Holy Trinity. They faced challenges on all fronts. Accurate detection, correcting pitch without requiring a science degree, and algorithms that sounded good without producing artifacts were the goals.
Celemony and Antares were the first in the game. Melodyne has evolved into a fully mature time and pitch editing environment. The many incarnations of AutoTune range from deep and sophisticated to simple, elegant, and fun. Waves, zPlane, iZotope, and others have waded into the game over the years with varying degrees of complexity. And of course, Synchro Arts has brought their own unique and powerful approach to multi-track vocal timing and pitch correction to the party as well.
So, do we need yet another player in this already crowded field? There are plenty of already excellent options, yet it turns out we do. MetaTune from Steven Slate has hit the sweet spot combining elements from each of its predecessors, with a remarkably intuitive and fantastic sounding set of tools. Plus, adding a few nice twists of its own.
At first glance, the MetaTune interface looks somewhat like the Autotune GUI. A piano keyboard for selecting keys and pitches and a couple of macro-style knobs to dial in the essential main parameters. But there's more lurking in there.
MetaTune makes the process of identifying what needs to be tuned simple, even when you don't already know the key of the performance. Play in the source audio, and the heat maps over the keyboard will identify the pitches used, the amount of correction applied, and even the likely root note. I tried it on a few sources, and it worked each time flawlessly. If you are the type that prefers to work by ear, there are tone generators on each note to click to hear their pitches along with the track to help identify the critical (root) notes. You can even use the tone generator to audition major or minor chords when clicked to identify not only the root note but the quality of the key (major or minor).
The critical parameter in all pitch correction plug-ins is speed control. In other words, how fast the tracked pitches are retuned. MetaTune has the usual range from natural-sounding to the hard quantized robotic effects we expect from these plug-ins. The sustain knob has a positive and negative range to control how much or little retuning is applied to sustained notes.
There is also a unique negative speed range to slam the tuning algorithm hard. One of the big problems when working with hard tuning is the "flutter" effect, where the tuner keeps overcorrecting the performance, tuning your audio to short notes you don't want to hear. MetaTune has a Note Stabilizer function to compensate for this, where it ignores the short notes (despite the speed setting) and focuses on the longer notes instead. Three different speed settings (40 ms, 80 ms, 200 ms) allow you to set it effectively to ignore, for example, vibrato on sustained notes.
Another powerful and unique feature MetaTune offers is the ability to group multiple instances across multiple tracks. When you instantiate it across numerous tracks of stacked vocals, changes to the parameters in one instance affect all instances equally. This is a huge time saver when working with complex vocal arrangements.
And if all this weren't enough, MetaTune also has a great sounding and dead simple doubler function. A single control point adjusts both the stereo width of the generated voices on the horizontal axis and the dry/wet level on the vertical axis.
And speaking of dry/wet, I've never seen an Amount slider on a vocal tuning plug-in. But it is a great idea, especially when used with extreme negative speed effects.
Final Thoughts
So the ultimate question remains: do you need MetaTune? Of course, this does not bear a simple yes or no answer. Different users have different styles of working and have different needs. I like the fact that MetaTune doesn't try and do everything and that it focuses on one thing: intuitive and straightforward monophonic pitch correction. If you want polyphonic pitch correction, this isn't the tool for you, and it also does not do timing correction. I like that its feature set focuses on the single primary task of tuning your vocals.
MetaTune is a no-brainer if you are starting with pitch correction plug-ins and want something fast, easy, and good. Suppose you are already invested in one of the other solutions. In that case, you may find the negative retuning speed, note stabilizer, and doubler functions a significant enough draw to incorporate MetaTune into your plug-in folder. Slate has set the bar just a little bit higher with MetaTune, and we ultimately all benefit from that.
For more details on MetaTune, head to the Slate Digital website.
Image Credit, Los Muertos Crew - pexels.com