Antares Auto-Tune DirectX

25 years making music, lots of studio experience, home studio
I use with Sonic Foundry products, Vegas Video and Sound Forge
Use with all types of music that I record, vocals and violin and an old mandolin that has a fretting problem.
PC with XP
Alesis M1 monitor system

easy to install, register
Fairly simple interface

Pretty amazing. I just did a project with about 30 kids coming into the studio to do solos. All various qualities of intonation and pitch. I fixed them all in moments, sometimes making rather lackluster performances shine. I then corrected a violin part for fiddle accompaniment and it tuned it perfectly without losing intonation. Pretty amazing as I said.

Very worth it. I can't understand why other users were having pops and clicks, mine is clean as a bell. Must be something in their system setup.
I just process a track from Vegas in Sound Forge and save as a take. Its easy to A/B in Vegas. I wonder why everyone that is recording less than perfect artists DOESN'T have this plug in.

PIII 600 260RAM 2x40Gb HD
Musician, Singer (lyrical)

It has a pretty nice interface but the graphical mode could be more efficient.

Sound quality is a joke.
I have the same problem as described here by another person: in live mode it works ok (..the sound quality still not good enought) but when you process it, it's a shame. Clicks, pops and frustrating results.

It was really disapointing.
Try a software called Melodyne from Celemony. I'll see what pitch correction is really about. I just tried a demo version this week and I was amazed.

Not worth at all.
If you are serious don't buy it. Try first if you can, and see for yourself.
Doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

See my previous review:

See my previous review +
I think I spoke too soon.

1st. It works great in real time. When I tried to create a file with it, I has pops and clicks. eg. In Cubase VST Score, export audio to create a file with just the corrected track. I called a friend who has the software and Cubase VST. He said his was perfect. I asked about exporting and he said no problem. Then he called me back and said he had the same problem. He had never exported to create a corrected track, so he tried it and...pops and clicks.
2nd. ...so I sent a help request to Antares. No response.
3rd. I sent a second help request. No response!!!
4th. I called them on the phone. The help tech said, and I quote "never heard of this problem, could be anything, sorry!"
I got the feeling I was interupting his Latte break.

My solution is to create a bus loop and bring the audio back into VST, so I can record it in reltime. What a pain!!!

Been multi-track recording music since 1984. Keyboardist/vocalist/poducer.
Using version 3.0 (Direct X) with Cubase VST Score for the PC.

Just got the plugin a few days ago and have been using it on a project involving female pop vocals.

Using Pentium 4, 2Ghz, with 2 gig of ram, on Windows ME os.

Use a MOTU 2408 as a digital interface into Studio Master Board monitored on Mackie 824's and Toa ME-265a's

Comprehensive interface that is well laid out.

Installed easily. Uses challenge/response copy protection. This made me a little nervous about buying it, but it installed without a hitch. There is a MIDI input feature that I won't be using so I can't comment on that.

Here's how easy it was for me.
1. Installed the software (5 mins)
2. Challenge/response (5 mins-I have dialup access)
3. Launch VST (I have the auto load last song initiated)
4. Activate the send effect option and choose the plugin
5. Assign to a couple of tracks - hit play

The preset setting corrected the audio just fine, but I made some changes. Then I set the retune to zero and...instant Cher from the Believe album title track (just for fun, obviously it's passe now).

I also took the vibrato out of a song and replaced it using the vibrato options.

The GUI part of the program with the waveform display wasn't immediately clear to me, so I'll read the manual.

The sound is excellent. On the vocal tracks I was processing, the singer was never off more than +-33 cents and usually a lot less than that so the pitch shifting doesn't really have to alter the sound all that much. If a vocalist is off by 50 cents or more you probably need a better vocalist.

Just for fun I recorded a vocal patch single note from an XV-88 which I had detuned about 33 cents flat and recorded it into VST. After about 10 seconds I moved the pitch bend back and forth adding about 10 cents + and minus to the sound. Ran the track through the plugin and presto pitch correction right on the money. I also listened to the sound quality of the even tone prior to pitch bending after correction. The tibre was changed ever so slightly when compared to the original note at the correct pitch, but there are half a dozen reason why this could have happened and I would still rate the quality excellent.

It's a stereo plugin. I have heard that it's somewhat CPU intensive, but it didn't even rgister on the VST performance meter with 38 tracks playing and other plugins activated. Of course I'm using a pretty fast PC.

It's worth every penny.
Listen to your V. tracks, do they loose pitch at the ends of phrases?
I read the Keyboard magazine review on the plugin, and they have never steered me wrong.
I love that it actually works. I have some high quality plugins that are less than stellar. With this plugin, I know what it's suppose to do and it does it.
Haven't had it long enough to know every feature, but I like the fact that you can bypass notes in the chosen scale on the fly by clicking on them, I hope that is automatable with midi. Will need a similar feature for changing the scale in a song part way through to accomodate key changes. I don't do live work, but this would be important for that. I'll bet it does it.

I have 20 years of experience as a musician. I am
using Win98se OS with 256M RAM, 850MHz CPU. Tried Antares with many audio programs. I use a SBLive soundcard.

It is easy to install. Cosmetically good looking plugin. But the controls are not designed for novice PC musicians, they are for a bit experienced PC musicians.

The resulting output after applying the effect sounded wacky. I guess I expected too much. I could not use this plugin because of the poor output. I had to take it out.

This plugin fails to do it's job.

win2k,
1.2ghz athlon with 684mb ram, and raid0 scsi (2 x 40gb)
frontier design wavecenter/tango24 d/a/d
cakewalk's sonar.

the automatic mode is simple enought, but the graphical mode doesn't give you quite enough room to work in.

the autotune plugin is great, but every once in a while it shifts octaves on you. i've heard that the new version autotune v3 will have an octave selector to prevent this from happening in the future; however, the directX version of the plug-in has yet to be released

definitely worth the money and has no comparitor in its price range.