In the modern music industry and studios, autotune software plays a great role. Using autotune software, both advanced and beginner musicians can modulate their voices to sound better. With that said, if you are a music enthusiast and are looking for a way to create great music or a personal mix, you are reading the right post.

1. Adobe Audition Spectral Views
2. Adobe Audition Spectral View 2

In this write-up, we are going to discuss the best free and paid, autotune programs.

Adobe is well-known for its PDF Reader, but the company also offers a powerful audio editor called Adobe Audition. This tool allows you to edit your audio files like a pro: you can mix, edit, and create audio content with a tool that includes multitrack, waveform, and spectral display. Audition is a comprehensive toolset that includes multitrack, waveform, and spectral display for creating, mixing, editing, and restoring audio content. This powerful audio workstation is designed to accelerate video production workflows and audio finishing — and deliver a polished mix with pristine sound.

What is autotune software?

In simple words, autotune refers to the process of tuning music to make it better and immersive. Using autotune digital software, you can modify the pitch, create specific sound effects, change the speed of the vibration, increase, or decrease the pitch, and correct errors in vocal intonation.

Thinking about which software to choose?

Worry not, we will enlist the best list that you can use on Windows 10.

Best Free and Paid Autotune Software for Windows 10

Using the best Autotune program listed below, you can modify voices and create the desired music. Moreover, Virtual Studio Technology (VST), a combination of software and hardware can also help create audio and virtual instrument effects. This technology lets you add different instruments to a single audio track. Thereby, making the listed software the best autotune tools to record and mix music.

1. FL Studio – Create music on the go with the best autotune software

Website:https://www.image-line.com/

Available platform: Windows, Android, iPhone

Price: $14.99

Trial Version – 30 Days

Available for almost all popular platforms apart from macOS, FL Studio is a semi-professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software. Using the audio samples and integrated instruments, with this best software for Windows, you can create songs from scrape. Also, you can make real mixes and take advantage of 30 days trial versions to test all the features.

Features:

• Advanced sound creation
• Save to WAV, MP3, or FLAC, AAC, and MIDI
• Easy project sharing
• Mixer for solo, effect bus, pan, and volume adjustment
• High-quality audio engine

Pros

• Pattern-based MIDI tools
• Free lifetime updates
• Automation clips
• Create music from scratch

2. AcidPro – Best autotune tool for creative musicians

Website:https://www.magix.com/in/music/acid/acid-pro/

Available platform: Windows

Price: $149

Trial Version – 30 Days

When it comes to producing and mixing music, Acid Pro is an expert. Using the new version of this software you can easily do the multitrack recording and can take full advantage of the PC when creating projects. Moreover, its powerful 64-bit engine supports 24-bit and 92 kHz. With that said, this autotune software for PC comes with 16 tools and 13 effects to choose from. Using these features, a musician can easily change length, pitch, and other settings. In addition to this, you can change MIDI data using on-line editing and can create customized grooves.

Features:

• Beatmapper and Chopper
• Ground-breaking audio technology
• Easy mix and match of sample pitched and tempos
• Multitrack recording
• 64-bit engine to quickly create music
• Groove Cloning and integrated CD burning

Pros

• Loop-based sequencing
• Easy to add volume fades, crossfades, and other audio manipulation
• Automate controls on plug-in
• 64-bit engine

3. Avid Pro Tools – Autotune software for everyone

Website:http://connect.avid.com/ProToolsFirst-Register.html

Available platform: Windows and Mac

Price: $29.99 but Free Pro Tools | First is free

Trial Version – 30 Days

Available in three versions:

Pro Tool First – ideal for songwriters, musicians who don’t want to know about technicalities

Pro Tools Pro – suitable for advanced and professional musicians

Pro Tools HD – great autotune software for audio and production professionals

You can create a wide variety of music, compose, record, edit, and share tracks. This means, whether you are a musician or like to add sound to an image, the latest Avid Pro Tools will help achieve all that. Using the new features added to this tool, you can create music with Audio -to-MIDI capabilities.

Features:

• Immersive audio
• Collaborate with Avid Cloud
• 115 Plugins added to Pro Tools
• Work with up to 10 collaborators in cloud
• Track Freeze feature to lock/unlock plug-ins
• Keep all version history and data organized

Pros

• Cleanest audio editing workflow
• Fast 64-bit recording
• Enhances audio quality
• Integration with UAD devices

4. Waves Tune

Website:https://www.waves.com/plugins/waves-tune#tab-overview

Available platform: Windows and Mac

Price: starts at $29

Trial Version – 7 Days

Offered by the popular and well-known Waves Audio Ltd, Waves Tune is a great software for PC and Mac. Using this, you can easily do pitch correction, and add effects. Available in three types:

Waves Tune Real-Time – useful when mixing music during live performance

Waves Tune and – pitch correction, pre-recorded track editor

Waves Tune Lt – Basic autotune tool with starter-level features

You can make changes to pre-recorded tracks, mix music, and do a lot more.

Features:

• Zero or near-zero latency
• Unlimited audio processing in Waves Tune Real-time
• Rewire support and format correction
• Great pitch editor
• Pitch edit graph and waveform overview
• 3 timeline modes

Pros

• Transparent real-time pitch
• No latency
• A great fine-tuning control set
• Comprehensive feature set

5. Cubase – Best Autotune to create, produce and repeat

Website:https://www.steinberg.net/

Available platform: Windows and Mac

Price: $559.99

Trial Version – 30 Days

Your coach to learn professional-level music mixing and autotuning. Using Cubase, the best digital audio software, you can create crystal clear sound quality and satisfy the demands of musicians. Created by Steinberg replacement for quality, this helps compose, create, edit, and mix the music. Available in three different versions, there’s no limitation on using this software.

Cubase Elements – record, edit, and mix MIDI tracks and audio

Cubase Artist – offers advanced sequencing and editing tools

Cubase Pro – best autotune for professionals and music veterans

Features:

• Channel Strip
• MixConsole
• Sample Track 2
• Fully-integrated vocal editor and pitch changer
• Comprehensive drum production software
• Seamlessly monitor and control recording

Pros

• Robust plug-in bundle
• powerful mixer
• Modern UI
• Comprehensive editing

6. Melda MAutoPitch

Website:https://www.meldaproduction.com/MAutoPitch

Available platform: Windows and Mac

Price: Free

Trial Version – 30 Days

This free pitch correction tool is one of the best autotune software and VST plug-in. Using its scalable and resizable GUI, users can choose between buttons, sliders, and knobs. This tool is created to deliver results and it is downloaded by more than 50,000 users every month. With the ability to take care of stereo signals and mono, it provides high-quality performance and is robust.

Features:

• Automatic pitch corrector
• Formant shift and stereo-expansion
• Advanced GUI
• Multiparameter
• Unlimited sampling rate
• Fast and fully optimized for AVX2 and AVX512

Pros

• Great tool for beginners
• Free of cost
• Advanced GUI
• Resizability and customization without affecting CPU performance

7. GVST – Gsnap

Website:https://www.gvst.co.uk/gsnap.htm

Available platform: Windows, Mac, and Linux

Price: Free

Developed by Graham Yeadon of Gvst this one is the most loved autotune software and plug-in. The tool automatically detects the pitch and tunes the voice. Moreover, using GSnap the free autotune software, you can add new effects and module voice. To use this tool, you need a monophonic input signal and then can leave everything on the tool. The interface with 12 knobs is like a soundboard from where you can get the most out of your audio.

Features:

• Subtle settings to nudge off-key
• Advanced sound settings like Cher effect and T-Pain
• MIDI control mode
• Several sound modulations option
• Free to use
• Create a special effect or improve the recorded one easily

Pros

• Multiple sound modulation options
• Free to download and use
• Add special effects to sound
• Powerful digital audio software

8. Antares Autotune Pro – autotune software for professionals

Available platform: Windows and Mac

Price: $ 399

Trial Version –14 Days

Created by Antarestech, Auto-tune has undergone a lot of changes in the past 20 years and it is the most advanced edition of Auto-Tune. Moreover, it includes Auto mode for real-time correction and effects. Also, you can use the Auto-key plug-in and Graph Mode for more changes. This best paid autotune software also includes Classic Mode for a more humanized touch. All the modes included in this tool give quick and easy access to core features of Auto Mode and Advanced View.

Features:

• Free software upgrades
• Unlimited auto-tune
• Optimized for low latency processing
• Record and edit live performances
• Light CPU footprints
• Automatically detects keys and scales

Pros

• Fantastic real-time autotuning
• Graph mode for manual editing
• Autokey feature
• Classic mode for legacy auto-tune sounds

9. Adobe Audition – Powerful tool to edit, mix, record, and restore audio

Website –https://www.adobe.com/in/products/audition.html

Available platform: Windows and Mac

Price: $20.99

Trial Version – 7 Days

Designed by Adobe, a company known for its photo editing software, this best autotune software is popular for pitch correction. It offers strong VST plugins and using its trial version, you can check the quality of audio. Moreover, it includes multitrack, waveform, and spectral display for creating, editing, mixing, and restoring audio. The tool also provides step by step tutorials for those who are new and want to mix music seamlessly.

Features:

• Record, edit and integrate music clips
• Create a podcast
• Add oomph to audio
• Remix tracks
• Repair and restore audio tracks
• Robust audio toolkit

Pros

• Does not use a lot of computer resources
• multitrack feature to produce great content
• Strong audio restoration
• Excellent waveform editor

10. Audacity

Website:https://www.audacityteam.org/

Available platform: Windows, Mac, and Linux

Price: Free

With 100 million downloads, Audacity is one of the popular and powerful free cross-platform autotune software. Using this free audio software, you can easily create multi-track audio and record music. This digital sound tuning tool lets you record live audio, export & import sound files, and do a lot more. Also, using its newest version, the Audacity plug-in, you can use it both as an audio and music editor.

Features:

• Real-time preview of VST, LV2, LADSPA, and Audio Unit (macOS)
• Easy editing
• Supports 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit sound quality
• Keyboard shortcuts of easily accessing tracks
• Spectrogram view mode
• Record live audio via microphone or mixer

Pros

• Wide variety of controls and capabilities
• A robust audio editing tool
• Free to use autotune software
• Easy to use, multiplatform tool

Summary

Hopefully, you find this article on the best free and paid, autotune software interesting and will give these tools a try. To know more about these digital sound recorders and mixers, you can visit their official site and once satisfied can purchase autotune software. If anyone in your circle is looking for a digital tuning tool, do share the post with them. Moreover, if you are a beginner and are not interested in investing in music production software, you can give the free autotune tools a try. Do let us know which one you picked and what you liked in the tool, in the comments section.

Time stretching is the process of changing the speed or duration of an audio signal without affecting its pitch. Pitch scaling is the opposite: the process of changing the pitch without affecting the speed. Pitch shift is pitch scaling implemented in an effects unit and intended for live performance. Pitch control is a simpler process which affects pitch and speed simultaneously by slowing down or speeding up a recording.

These processes are often used to match the pitches and tempos of two pre-recorded clips for mixing when the clips cannot be reperformed or resampled. Time stretching is often used to adjust radio commercials^[1] and the audio of television advertisements^[2] to fit exactly into the 30 or 60 seconds available. It can be used to conform longer material to a designated time slot, such as a 1-hour broadcast.

Resampling[edit]

The simplest way to change the duration or pitch of a digital audio clip is through sample rate conversion. This is a mathematical operation that effectively rebuilds a continuous waveform from its discrete samples and then re-samples that waveform again at a different rate. When the new samples are played at the original sampling frequency, the audio clip sounds faster or slower. Unfortunately, the frequencies in the sample are always scaled at the same ratio as the speed, transposing its perceived pitch up or down in the process. In other words, slowing down the recording lowers the pitch, speeding it up raises the pitch. This is analogous to speeding up or slowing down an analogue recording, like a phonograph record or tape, creating the Chipmunk effect. Thus the two effects cannot be separated when using this method. A drum track containing no pitched instruments can be moderately sample-rate converted for tempo without adverse effects, but a pitched track cannot.

Frequency domain[edit]

Phase vocoder[edit]

One way of stretching the length of a signal without affecting the pitch is to build a phase vocoder after Flanagan, Golden, and Portnoff.

Basic steps:

1. compute the instantaneous frequency/amplitude relationship of the signal using the STFT, which is the discrete Fourier transform of a short, overlapping and smoothly windowed block of samples;
2. apply some processing to the Fourier transform magnitudes and phases (like resampling the FFT blocks); and
3. perform an inverse STFT by taking the inverse Fourier transform on each chunk and adding the resulting waveform chunks, also called overlap and add (OLA).^[3]

The phase vocoder handles sinusoid components well, but early implementations introduced considerable smearing on transient ('beat') waveforms at all non-integer compression/expansion rates, which renders the results phasey and diffuse. Recent improvements allow better quality results at all compression/expansion ratios but a residual smearing effect still remains.

The phase vocoder technique can also be used to perform pitch shifting, chorusing, timbre manipulation, harmonizing, and other unusual modifications, all of which can be changed as a function of time.

Sinusoidal spectral modeling[edit]

Another method for time stretching relies on a spectral model of the signal. In this method, peaks are identified in frames using the STFT of the signal, and sinusoidal 'tracks' are created by connecting peaks in adjacent frames. The tracks are then re-synthesized at a new time scale. This method can yield good results on both polyphonic and percussive material, especially when the signal is separated into sub-bands. However, this method is more computationally demanding than other methods.^{[citation needed]}

Time domain[edit]

SOLA[edit]

Rabiner and Schafer in 1978 put forth an alternate solution that works in the time domain: attempt to find the period (or equivalently the fundamental frequency) of a given section of the wave using some pitch detection algorithm (commonly the peak of the signal's autocorrelation, or sometimes cepstral processing), and crossfade one period into another.

This is called time-domain harmonic scaling^[5] or the synchronized overlap-add method (SOLA) and performs somewhat faster than the phase vocoder on slower machines but fails when the autocorrelation mis-estimates the period of a signal with complicated harmonics (such as orchestral pieces).

Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) seems to solve this by looking for the period closest to a center period that the user specifies, which should be an integer multiple of the tempo, and between 30 Hz and the lowest bass frequency.

This is much more limited in scope than the phase vocoder based processing, but can be made much less processor intensive, for real-time applications. It provides the most coherent results^{[citation needed]} for single-pitched sounds like voice or musically monophonic instrument recordings.

High-end commercial audio processing packages either combine the two techniques (for example by separating the signal into sinusoid and transient waveforms), or use other techniques based on the wavelet transform, or artificial neural network processing^{[citation needed]}, producing the highest-quality time stretching.

Frame-based approach[edit]

In order to preserve an audio signal's pitch when stretching or compressing its duration, many time-scale modification (TSM) procedures follow a frame-based approach.^[6]Given an original discrete-time audio signal, this strategy's first step is to split the signal into short analysis frames of fixed length.The analysis frames are spaced by a fixed number of samples, called the analysis hopsize${\displaystyle H_a\in \mathbb{N}}$.To achieve the actual time-scale modification, the analysis frames are then temporally relocatedto have a synthesis hopsize${\displaystyle H_s\in \mathbb{N}}$.This frame relocation results in a modification of the signal's duration by a stretching factor of${\displaystyle \alpha =H_s/H_a}$.However, simply superimposing the unmodified analysis frames typically results in undesired artifactssuch as phase discontinuities or amplitude fluctuations.To prevent these kinds of artifacts, the analysis frames are adapted to form synthesis frames, prior tothe reconstruction of the time-scale modified output signal.

The strategy of how to derive the synthesis frames from the analysis frames is a key difference amongdifferent TSM procedures.

Speed hearing and speed talking[edit]

For the specific case of speech, time stretching can be performed using PSOLA.

While one might expect speeding up to reduce comprehension,Herb Friedman says that 'Experiments have shown that the brain works most efficiently if the information rate through the ears—via speech—is the 'average' reading rate, which is about 200–300 wpm (words per minute), yet the average rate of speech is in the neighborhood of 100–150 wpm.'^[7]

Speeding up audio is seen as the equivalent of speed reading.^[8][9]

Pitch scaling[edit]

Adobe Audition Spectral Views

These techniques can also be used to transpose an audio sample while holding speed or duration constant. This may be accomplished by time stretching and then resampling back to the original length. Alternatively, the frequency of the sinusoids in a sinusoidal model may be altered directly, and the signal reconstructed at the appropriate time scale.

Transposing can be called frequency scaling or pitch shifting, depending on perspective.

For example, one could move the pitch of every note up by a perfect fifth, keeping the tempo the same.One can view this transposition as 'pitch shifting', 'shifting' each note up 7 keys on a piano keyboard, or adding a fixed amount on the Mel scale, or adding a fixed amount in linear pitch space.One can view the same transposition as 'frequency scaling', 'scaling' (multiplying) the frequency of every note by 3/2.

Musical transposition preserves the ratios of the harmonic frequencies that determine the sound's timbre, unlike the frequency shift performed by amplitude modulation, which adds a fixed frequency offset to the frequency of every note. (In theory one could perform a literal pitch scaling in which the musical pitch space location is scaled [a higher note would be shifted at a greater interval in linear pitch space than a lower note], but that is highly unusual, and not musical.^{[citation needed]})

Time domain processing works much better here, as smearing is less noticeable, but scaling vocal samples distorts the formants into a sort of Alvin and the Chipmunks-like effect, which may be desirable or undesirable.A process that preserves the formants and character of a voice involves analyzing the signal with a channel vocoder or LPC vocoder plus any of several pitch detection algorithms and then resynthesizing it at a different fundamental frequency.

A detailed description of older analog recording techniques for pitch shifting can be found within the Alvin and the Chipmunks entry.

See also[edit]

• Dynamic tonality — real-time changes of tuning and timbre

References[edit]

1. ^https://web.archive.org/web/20080527184101/http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/audio_notes/f_audionotes.shtml
2. ^http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v9n7/122_Variable_speech.php
3. ^Jont B. Allen (June 1977). 'Short Time Spectral Analysis, Synthesis, and Modification by Discrete Fourier Transform'. IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. ASSP-25 (3): 235–238.
4. ^McAulay, R. J.; Quatieri, T. F. (1988), 'Speech Processing Based on a Sinusoidal Model'(PDF), The Lincoln Laboratory Journal, 1 (2): 153–167, archived from the original(PDF) on 2012-05-21, retrieved 2014-09-07
5. ^David Malah (April 1979). 'Time-domain algorithms for harmonic bandwidth reduction and time scaling of speech signals'. IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. ASSP-27 (2): 121–133.
6. ^Jonathan Driedger and Meinard Müller (2016). 'A Review of Time-Scale Modification of Music Signals'. Applied Sciences. 6 (2): 57. doi:10.3390/app6020057.
7. ^Variable Speech, Creative Computing Vol. 9, No. 7 / July 1983 / p. 122
8. ^http://www.nevsblog.com/2006/06/23/listen-to-podcasts-in-half-the-time/
9. ^https://web.archive.org/web/20060902102443/http://cid.lib.byu.edu/?p=128

External links[edit]

Adobe Audition Spectral View 2

• Time Stretching and Pitch Shifting Overview A comprehensive overview of current time and pitch modification techniques by Stephan Bernsee
• Stephan Bernsee's smbPitchShift C source code C source code for doing frequency domain pitch manipulation
• pitchshift.js from KievII A Javascript pitchshifter based on smbPitchShift code, from the open source KievII library
• The Phase Vocoder: A Tutorial - A good description of the phase vocoder
• How to build a pitch shifter Theory, equations, figures and performances of a real-time guitar pitch shifter running on a DSP chip
• ZTX Time Stretching Library Free and commercial versions of a popular 3rd party time stretching library for iOS, Linux, Windows and Mac OS X
• Elastique by zplane commercial cross-platform library, mainly used by DJ and DAW manufacturers
• Voice Synth from Qneo - specialized synthesizer for creative voice sculpting
• TSM toolbox Free MATLAB implementations of various Time-Scale Modification procedures
• Pitch Shifter Audio Tool Online pitch-shifting audio tool implemented by SoundTouch algorithm
• PaulStretch, a well-known algorithm for extreme (> 10×) time stretching