Testing audiophile claims and myths

[bigshot]

I guess you just aren’t aware of how pervasive autotune is.

 

[andrewski]

I guess you just aren’t aware of how pervasive autotune is.

It's coming from inside the house.

 

[bigshot]

I saw a horror movie where threatening phone calls were traced to an unused line in the attic!

 

[gregorio]

If you can sing, I don’t see a purpose to autotune.

Clearly you don’t, however there is one, in fact at least a couple, so that just means you personally “don’t see” or don’t know what the purpose is, rather than there actually not being one!

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.

Sure, one obvious use of autotune is to take people who are marketable but can’t sing well and make them in tune. Another use it as an effect, the obvious case of Cher’s “I believe” again and another use is to tweak a recording. Even those with great voices do not have the perfect “control over pitch” and timing they want over every single note they’ve sung. In times past, the solution to this would be doing numerous takes, editing between them and just living with the imperfections (you didn’t want) that couldn’t be tweaked. Unfortunately, that ultimately destroyed some bands. For example Brian Wilson, like many of the greats, was a perfectionist and would sometimes demand many more takes than anyone apart from him was happy with and reportedly, it wasn’t unusual that ABBA would do a hundred or so takes, until the singers literally couldn’t sing anymore. It’s physically demanding, took huge amounts of time, cost a lot of money, is mentally and physically exhausting, as well as being very stressful and frustrating, and after all that it’s still not absolutely perfect (although it’s commonly almost imperceptibly close). I’m surprised they stayed together as long as they did! Melodyne can avoid that situation.

Abuse of autotune appears to be rampant both on recordings and live performances.

Sure but then you can abuse pretty much everything when mixing/editing; EQ, reverb/delay effects, modulation and compression of course, in fact I can’t think of anything that can’t be and hasn’t been abused at times. Of course though, that’s no reason to blame the tools, we obviously cannot state that EQ, reverb, compression, etc., should never be used just because at times or even commonly they’re abused! That is potentially only a reason to blame how the tools have been employed and even that is largely/often due to consumer demand! Consumers demand paying only a couple of cents (or less) to stream tracks, so as revenue has dropped, therefore the time and money to record, edit, mix and master tracks must also drop commensurately. To go through a vocal in fine detail, only very judiciously applying autotune (Melodyne) requires skilled (expensive) personnel and the whole process, including getting approval and making adjustments depending on feedback can easily take a few days per track. Alternatively, just select the whole vocal track and apply a default setting to the whole thing, done and dusted in literally about 2 minutes, just not very well.

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.

Then you’re arguing against yourself. As Melodyne can enhance expression and reduce accuracy, you must be arguing for it’s use?! Of course, it’s not entirely this simple because consumers of modern popular music genres have become used to it and expect it.

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.

TBH, you can often tell and with quite a high level of confidence. It’s not only a case of singing precisely on pitch, although that is the main indicator but there is also pitch drift, modulation variability and the accuracy of the start and end points and timing of the slides. It would be extremely unusual to be spot on the pitch, to the cent, maybe for the odd note but not most of them, although sometimes you can’t tell if the notes are exactly accurate to the cent, due to the amount of modulation (vibrato). However, with experience you can make a pretty good guess if you take all of those variables into account, because even if a singer had perfect pitching, the chances of them also performing all the other variables perfectly is almost zero but of course, the more judicious/subtle the application, the more progressively difficult it gets to tell and the lower the certainty.

I hadn’t come across that channel before but he is knowledgeable of the issue and of Melodyne’s use. I’ve only watch a few of his vids, so I can’t tell exactly how expert he is and on the information he’s supplied, I’m not as certain as he appears to be in some cases (although his certainty maybe justified). I also don’t entirely share his opinion on the valid uses of Melodyne, however, he’s most certainly not one of the many YouTube BS’ers and I may not entirely agree with his opinion but it is a valid opinion. I did see one vid where he said it’s only used on the lead vox. Assuming I didn’t miss some context/conditions, that is certainly not correct, it would be entirely usual to use it on the backing vox and using it on guitars and even synths/pianos is not hugely uncommon, in fact Melodyne has features specifically aimed at polyphonic instrument manipulation.

G

 

[bigshot]

Myself, I’d rather punch in and have the singer fix the odd wobble here and there than leave it to the engineer. The difference between auto tune and compression or EQ or effects is that it’s not just altering the mix, it’s altering an aspect of performance. I’d want the singer and producer to decide to call for it themselves if they want to, not hand it over to the engineer to apply.

 

[gregorio]

Myself, I’d rather punch in and have the singer fix the odd wobble here and there than leave it to the engineer.

And who do you think would have controlled that punch in? Also, you are really showing your age here. Pretty much no one does punch ins anymore, we haven’t been limited to 24 track tape or worried about the storage space of a couple of MegaBytes for another take for 25 years or more.

The difference between auto tune and compression or EQ or effects is that it’s not just altering the mix, it’s altering an aspect of performance.

Firstly, I have no idea where you got that from, compression, modulation, delay based effects (and even EQ at times) absolutely do alter “aspects of performance”. Compression for example isn’t just about making stuff louder or manipulating “presence”, it’s very much and often primarily about sculpting the transients and the rest of the envelope that the musician/s performed. Secondly and in addition, altering the performance is the whole point of tape splicing, punch ins, bounce downs/layering and other aspects of editing that have been standard practice since the age of multi-track tape in the late 1950’s, not to mention the drum quantisation and other digital editing techniques that came with the age of the DAW. Melodyne is just another such digital editing technique, one that allows far more precise editing of various parameters that were not independently alterable previously.

I’d want the singer and producer to decide to call for it themselves if they want to, not hand it over to the engineer to apply.

And who do you think calls for the application of Melodyne/Autotune if not the Producer? You think the engineer just applies autotune while no one is looking and the producer and singer never notice or never have any right to demand changes if they don’t like/want it?

G

 

[John Lemon]

If you can sing, I don’t see a purpose to autotune.

As a singer, I can definitely tell that autotune isn't what most people think it is. It was supposed to be just a tool, helping voice calibration on recording sessions , it's not a magic filter to make your voice sounds better or whatsoever...However, some producers really abuse the use of it by creating an ''autotune style'' and weidly, millions of fans really like this kind of atrocity.

 

[bigshot]

Commercials are usually overseen by a director and agency folk. Even though I was the producer, I would trust the composer or singer to call for corrections of technical vocal details over any of us. The singer isn’t there at the mix, so corrections would need to be done during tracking. That’s how I did it at least. As little “fix in the mix” as possible. We would edit during tracking and would assemble the performance then do pickups and “punch in” corrections. It was actually editing. (Yes, I’m old.)

 

[FunkyBassMan]

I'm no expert on production (you may have noticed ), but it does beg the question if the whole production + mastering process involves a clearly identifiable final step that consists of setting an "optimal" level and compression on the final mix.

If so, then being able to model that and package it as a user-control on consumer audio equipment does open up a debate: how much of that final production decision should be baked into the master and control taken away from the consumer, and how much should be left to the consumer to optimise to their own preference?

I would be in favor of "as much as possible".

You see, there is no "optimal" mix or master; it's simply the manifestation of decisions of people and the use of gear at a certain moment in time. And without inside information, it's impossible to know what influenced that manifestation. There could have been severe time restrictions. There could have been a dictatorial voice, either in the form of the producer or some money person. One track may have been forgetfully muted. The original engineer may have been called away and the assistant finally got her chance to step up.
Further, a song can be mixed or mastered any number of ways that create a "good" final product. This is why (to me, anyway), mixing is so difficult. Should this be this a vocal-driven mix? A groove-based mix? An "effects" type sound? If it's groove-based, who leads? The drums or other rhythm parts? If the drums lead, is it kick/snare or high hat or even (like in a lot of latin music) percussion?

Therefore, I often do (if time and budget permit) a bunch of mixes with a lot of different takes, because you never know what you or others will like tomorrow after you've all rested from the tune.

So, I would even be in favor of eventually releasing all the individual dry tracks, so that the consumer could make their own mixes.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Added another, a DAC blind test. I would love to be able to do an ABX on the two DACs I have. My X-CANV8P has a DAC in it and I swear it does not sound as good as the Firestone FUBAR and Supplier that I use.

 

[Vamp898]

Added another, a DAC blind test. I would love to be able to do an ABX on the two DACs I have. My X-CANV8P has a DAC in it and I swear it does not sound as good as the Firestone FUBAR and Supplier that I use.

If you throw in around 200-230$, you can get an DI that will tell you exactly what the difference between those two DAC.

Chose a song where you hear a difference, play it with both DAC and let DeltaWave analyze the differences in the sound waves.

That is how I found out about the difference of my Walkman and my Phone and hence, sold the Walkman

 

[eq1849]

Added another, a DAC blind test. I would love to be able to do an ABX on the two DACs I have. My X-CANV8P has a DAC in it and I swear it does not sound as good as the Firestone FUBAR and Supplier that I use.

I tend to listen long term. Like weeks. Then switch it out. I've heard differences between USB and optical after listening for sustained periods of time. The better question is, do you go with ABX or your subjective preferences at the end of the day?

 

[2leftears]

I tend to listen long term. Like weeks. Then switch it out. I've heard differences between USB and optical after listening for sustained periods of time. The better question is, do you go with ABX or your subjective preferences at the end of the day?

I would go with subjective preferences. As long as one is honest and open about that to others, and doesn't try and turn it into pseudo-scientific 'facts'.

But I think an even better question is: how much are you prepared to pay extra for something that likely is a perception bias? If science suggest it is 99% likely a perception bias, then my decision usually is based on factors other than perceived differences in sound, such as preferred aesthetics, functionality, durability etc.

 

[MrHaelscheir]

I tend to listen long term. Like weeks. Then switch it out. I've heard differences between USB and optical after listening for sustained periods of time. The better question is, do you go with ABX or your subjective preferences at the end of the day?

Sure, listening for longer periods of time might subjectively enable perception of differences, but does it seem logical for one to enjoy or believe those differences to be real if they would not be immediately apparent when volume-matched ABing with an instantaneous switch (unless you are saying that prolonged listening enables subsequent immediate perceptibility of quick switches)? It seems like an intentional act of maximizing psychological influences and audio memory errors/drift to create a subjective effect out of one's probably measurably inert gear. Otherwise, maybe tweaking around immeasurable things really is the only psychological solution for some individuals' perception inducing hindrances that some others may not perceive at all.

 

[Vamp898]

I tend to listen long term. Like weeks. Then switch it out. I've heard differences between USB and optical after listening for sustained periods of time. The better question is, do you go with ABX or your subjective preferences at the end of the day?

That can absolutely happen. Either USB or TOSLINK can have enough jitter to make things audible.

My 49$ USB DAC thankfully has no jitter, but i am sure that very expensive devices can have a lot of that. For some reason, the more expensive an product gets, the worse it gets. I don't know how that works, but i think it basically boils down to people preferring slightly distorted sounds