Owner`s manual
16
Formant Correction and Throat Modeling
Formant Correction
A sound’s “formants” are the combined acoustic resonances that result
from the physical structure of whatever is producing the sound.
In the case of a human voice, air from your lungs is forced through your
vocal chords, causing them to vibrate. From there, the voice is propagated
through the throat, the mouth and out through the lips. It is the shape of
these structures that create the resonant characteristics that define your
unique vocal identity.
When a vocal is pitch-shifted by large intervals without formant correction,
not only is the pitch of sung notes shifted, but the formants are shifted
as well. The resulting eect is not just of a person singing higher or lower
notes, but of a person who is literally growing or shrinking (depending on
the direction of the shift). While this can be useful for producing singing
chipmunks, it typically does not produce realistic vocals when shifted more
than a semitone or two.
Engaging Auto-Tune Live’s Formant Correction prevents the shifting of
a voice’s resonant frequencies to ensure that its vocal characteristics are
preserved over the pitch shift range.
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: Over the very small intervals usually associated
with basic pitch correction, formant shifting is essentially inaudible and
Auto-Tune’s classic pitch adjustment technology still provides the optimum
results. Formant Correction is designed to be used on tracks where notes are
shifted by larger intervals.
Throat Modeling
As mentioned above, the shape of a singer’s throat is a prime contributor to
their vocal character. Auto-Tune Live’s Throat Length control lets you use
Antares’ unique throat modeling technology to modify a voice’s character
by passing it through a precise physical model of the human vocal tract.