Testing audiophile claims and myths

[bigshot]

Here is the guy on YouTube I was referring to. He analyzes vocal performances and shows what is natural and what is overprocessed. Abuse of autotune appears to be rampant both on recordings and live performances.

https://youtube.com/@wingsofpegasus?si=yjU9yISjcYmLPFxk

 

[2leftears]

Here is the guy on YouTube I was referring to. He analyzes vocal performances and shows what is natural and what is overprocessed. Abuse of autotune appears to be rampant both on recordings and live performances.

https://youtube.com/@wingsofpegasus?si=yjU9yISjcYmLPFxk

Somehow I knew in your earlier post you were referring to Wings of Pegasus . That guy is on a crusade...

I've watched quite a few of his videos over the last few months, but I still find it a mixed bag; both useful information as well as him sometimes drawing conclusions I am less convinced about. The most useful information I have taken from his videos is that pitch correction and autotune, whilst related, are not the same thing.

What bothers me most from my layman's perspective is his seemingly 'magic' ability to see if a vocal was pitch corrected or not based on some pitch analysis. His central premise seems to be that no singer sings perfectly on pitch, thus if the pitch analysis shows perfect pitch, it likely has been pitch corrected. But then I recall him looking at a John Denver performance, where he used the exact same analysis to demonstrate how exceptionally good John Denver was for singing on-pitch. I just cannot see how he can tell apart sympathetically and well-applied pitch correction on the one hand, versus on the other hand a singer who simply performed well. It sometimes feels a bit too much as if he can draw whatever conclusion suits his theory most, but that is just me looking at his videos from a layman's perspective.

I don't disagree with his opinion that unsympathetically applied pitch correction (and especially autotune) can ruin what makes a singer's voice special, but the examples he uses are a bit hit-and-miss as far as I can tell.

 

[71 dB]

There’s a guy on YouTube who analyzes vocal performances. He has shown horrible examples of performers who can’t sing abusing autotune. He also points out that good singing is about control over pitch, not necessarily being on pitch all the time.

I have watch these videos. Of course there are always examples of technology used incorrectly, but that doesn't mean it is always used badly.

It is one thing if you personally dislike how autotune sounds and you want your singing without autotune, but your attitude makes people who can't sing perfectly look like criminals who ABUSE technology! As if technology shouldn't help people to do things!? Cher can sing and control pitch, can't she? Despite of this she "abused" autotune. Doing so she created a song that sounded unique to the public and introduced to the public a new way to manipulate vocals.

Should compressors be banned, because good singers should be able to control volume? Should De-hissers be banned, because good singers should be able to control their voice around 7 kHz? Should saturators and vocoders be banned for the same reason? Of course not! Those are tools to shape the final product. Autotune is another tool and the new thing is AI singing. Autotuned singing is at least based on real humans singing.

For me it is genre-dependent. I would never want autotune near J. S. Bach's cantatas or the songs of The Carpenters, but I like heavy autotune in yolo dance pop around 2011.

 

[Vamp898]

Who needs Autotune when you have this Voice?

 

[2leftears]

Who needs Autotune when you have this Voice?

I hadn't heard of Jun Togawa before. Which is weird because having looked her up now I see she has closely collaborated with Susumu Hirawasa, who I am a great fan of. Need to check out more of her music.

There are traditional Japanese vocal styles for which autotune would make absolutely no sense at all; some of that style comes through a little bit in Jun Togawa's vocals there. Another example are traditional song styles from the Ryukyu islands; trying to pitch correct (or autotune) that would completely defeat the object:

ネーネーズ (Ne-Ne-Zu, with the song Chibumi)


​

The same applies to much of traditional Middle-Eastern and North-African music, IMO.

 

[bigshot]

I hear bad autotune all the time in commercials and on YouTube. Maybe I’m more sensitive to it, but I think it’s probably more likely that other people have become used to it. It also could be that I favor expression over accuracy.

 

[Vamp898]

I hadn't heard of Jun Togawa before. Which is weird because having looked her up now I see she has closely collaborated with Susumu Hirawasa, who I am a great fan of. Need to check out more of her music.

There are traditional Japanese vocal styles for which autotune would make absolutely no sense at all; some of that style comes through a little bit in Jun Togawa's vocals there. Another example are traditional song styles from the Ryukyu islands; trying to pitch correct (or autotune) that would completely defeat the object:

ネーネーズ (Ne-Ne-Zu, with the song Chibumi)

​

I think her most famous song is this

 

[2leftears]

I hear bad autotune all the time in commercials and on YouTube. Maybe I’m more sensitive to it, but I think it’s probably more likely that other people have become used to it. It also could be that I favor expression over accuracy.

I have a mental filter that blocks out commercials. YouTube; that could also be reflection of what you happen to come across on YouTube. With recommendation algorithms thrown into the mix I'm not sure there is something as a 'typical' YouTube experience. E.g. I've trained it not to feed me commercial western pop nonsense; I now rarely get any of the well-known names in pop music appear in my YT recommendations. Unfortunately the algorithms have a very strong mean-reversion to mainstream commercial stuff, so the personalised training gets easily messed up if you are not careful about editing your watch history.

 

[castleofargh]

I have a mental filter that blocks out commercials. YouTube; that could also be reflection of what you happen to come across on YouTube. With recommendation algorithms thrown into the mix I'm not sure there is something as a 'typical' YouTube experience. E.g. I've trained it not to feed me commercial western pop nonsense; I now rarely get any of the well-known names in pop music appear in my YT recommendations. Unfortunately the algorithms have a very strong mean-reversion to mainstream commercial stuff, so the personalised training gets easily messed up if you are not careful about editing your watch history.

YouTube this month has been pointing me toward French politics and Indian stand up, when I have zero interest in politic, and of course I don't watch stand-up comedy in a language I don't understand. Then again, Google knows more about me than I do, and that is a fact! So I probably should start learning Hindi.

It's almost as hilarious as Amazon suggesting purchasing all the stuff we just got from them. I imagine the superbly smart algorithm: "You got some O-rings, and a new toilet last week for the first time since internet exists, so you probably need new ones by now".
I hope those aren't the AIs taking over the world.

 

[2leftears]

YouTube this month has been pointing me toward French politics and Indian stand up, when I have zero interest in politic, and of course I don't watch stand-up comedy in a language I don't understand. Then again, Google knows more about me than I do, and that is a fact! So I probably should start learning Hindi.

It's almost as hilarious as Amazon suggesting purchasing all the stuff we just got from them. I imagine the superbly smart algorithm: "You got some O-rings, and a new toilet last week for the first time since internet exists, so you probably need new ones by now".
I hope those aren't the AIs taking over the world.

I've never understood those Amazon recommendations myself. Just bought a new vacuum cleaner, so they naturally assume I need another one?

The YouTube recommendation algorithm is more tricky to pin down how it works (or how it is supposed to work; one has to make allowances for possible bugs). In my experience, it is largely based on your watch history, and then correlated to other people's watch histories in order to generate the recommendations, and I am sure with some additional generally promoted content as well. Unbeknownst to you, you may share one or more particular interests with a group of people who, unlike you, are interested in French politics and Indian stand up. If it is AI then there is good chance the programmers don't fully understand how the algorithm works either; mapping AI weights onto deterministic models we can actually understand is still an immature science as I understand it.

 

[Vamp898]

I think Google would fix it, if they would properly understand themself how it works

 

[bigshot]

I don’t know how one would completely avoid commercials. I’m not opposed to them. It’s a good way to pay for content. But it seems that whenever I see one with singing, it’s been heavily autotuned..

 

[2leftears]

I don’t know how one would completely avoid commercials. I’m not opposed to them. It’s a good way to pay for content. But it seems that whenever I see one with singing, it’s been heavily autotuned..

I've never paid them much attention TBH. As I said I ignore commercials; I either mentally block them out, or I skip them altogether. I would lose my marbles otherwise.

 

[71 dB]

I have zero interest in politic,

Why? Politics affects everyone's life in many ways. I don't understand people who are not interested in politics. Politics isn't something that happens "elsewhere." Bad politics comes and bites our asses!

 

[71 dB]

I don’t know how one would completely avoid commercials. I’m not opposed to them. It’s a good way to pay for content. But it seems that whenever I see one with singing, it’s been heavily autotuned..

Commercials being autotuned is the smallest problem I have ever heard. Talk about first World problem! 99 % of commercial are horrible audiovisual noise, necessary evil to finance "free" content. I ignore commercials as much as possible (often includes muting the sound) and whether commercials use autotune or not is completely irrelevant for me.