User Manual

8
repetitions of the waveform. Divide this time
into one, and you have the frequency in Hertz.
Auto-Tune 8 does exactly this: It looks for a
periodically repeating waveform and calculates
the time interval between repetitions.
The pitch detection algorithm in Auto-Tune
8 is virtually instantaneous. It can recognize
the repetition in a periodic sound within a few
cycles. This usually occurs before the sound
has sucient amplitude to be heard. Used
in combination with a very slight processing
delay, the output pitch can be detected and
corrected without artifacts in a seamless
and continuous fashion. (Although it must
be kept in mind that some plug-in protocols
introduce a certain amount of inherent and
unpredictable delay.)
Auto-Tune 8 was designed to detect and
correct pitches up to the pitch C6. (If the
input pitch is higher than C6, Auto-Tune 8
will occasionally interpret the pitch an octave
lower. This is because it interprets a two cycle
repetition as a one cycle repetition.) On the low
end, Auto-Tune 8 will detect pitches as low as
25Hz (when the Bass Input Type is selected).
This range of pitches allows intonation
correction to be performed on virtually all
vocals and instruments.
Of course, Auto-Tune 8 will not detect pitch
when the input waveform is not periodic. As
demonstrated above, Auto-Tune 8 will fail to
tune up even a unison violin section. But this
can also occasionally be a problem with solo
voice and solo instruments as well. Consider,
for example, an exceptionally breathy voice,
or a voice recorded in an unavoidably noisy
environment. The added signal is non-
periodic, and Auto-Tune 8 will have diculty
determining the pitch of the composite (voice
+ noise) sound. Luckily, there is a control (the
Tracking control, discussed in Chapter 3) that
will let Auto-Tune 8 be a bit more casual about
what it considers “periodic.” Experimenting
with this setting will often allow Auto-Tune 8
to track even noisy signals.
NOTE: The above description has
been in pretty much every Auto-
Tune manual since the beginning. While it is
still true in the general case, it must be noted
that Auto-Tune 8 includes technology
(originally introduced in Auto-Tune Evo) that
does a much better job with borderline
troublesome material than any prior version
of Auto-Tune.
How Auto-Tune 8 corrects pitch
Auto-Tune 8 provides two separate and
distinct ways to approach pitch correction:
Automatic Mode and Graphical Mode. The
basic functionality of each is described below.
Automatic Mode
Auto-Tune 8’s Automatic Mode works by
continuously tracking the pitch of an input
sound and comparing it to a user-defined
scale. The scale tone closest to the input is
continuously identified. If the input pitch
exactly matches the scale tone, no correction
is applied. If the input pitch varies from
the desired scale tone, and the amount of
variation falls within the range set by the
Correction Style control (described below), an
output pitch is generated which is closer to the
scale tone than the input pitch. (The exact
amount of correction is controlled by the
Retune Speed and Humanize settings,
described below and in Chapter 3.)
Scales
The heart of Automatic Mode pitch correction
is the Scale. Auto-Tune 8 lets you choose from
major, minor, chromatic or 26 historical, ethnic
and micro-tonal scales. Individual scale notes
can be bypassed, resulting in no pitch
correction when the input is near those notes.
Individual scale notes can also be removed,
allowing a wider range of pitch correction for
neighboring pitches. The scale can be detuned,
allowing pitch correction to any pitch center.
For added flexibility, you can also select the
target pitches in real time via MIDI from a
MIDI keyboard or a pre-recorded sequencer
track.