Melodyne (Essentials) 5 that came with recent PT

[alexdingley]

Okay — I'm not one to normally be impressed by stuff that just comes with a larger software package... but when I decided to renew my PT subscription, and downloaded 2020.11, It now includes Celemony Melodyne Essentials 5.

Obviously, Melodyne has always been talked about as a very serious toolset, but I'd never bothered to check it out before... I was looking at the upgrade options to move from "essentials" to "editor" / etc... but I figured I'd give it a quick try, before concluding (based on my presumption that came from it being given to me with PT2020.11) that it was either useless altogether or just useless unless you buy the heavy-duty version.

HOLY CRAP! The workflow is pretty similar to that of autotune (and Logic's new built-in tuning), but the results (for me) were SO much better! I can't believe how completely seamless the nudges were in this. I've never had results like that with so little effort. I've also now tried the "audio-to-MIDI" algorithms that are now working as part of PT2020, and wow! I dragged a bass-guitar DI track to MIDI, and with a couple quick trial & error tweaks, it was damn-near perfect.

Anyway — This is all just icing on the cake: I'm really happy with getting back into PT after spending 10yrs in Logic Pro. (still love Logic for certain things, but I'm mostly tracking & mixing these days, and doing less fancy MIDI stuff)... and I'm already moving tons faster in PT than I ever did in Logic.

[digitaldrummer]

yeah, I had Melodyne 4 assistant, but I uninstalled it and let Pro Tools 2020.11 install Melodyne 5 essentials. Pretty much decided I did not need the upgrade (to assistnat) again to accomplish what I need. I can tune a vocal, create harmonies, etc. and like you said it works great. Granted, I'm not one for the T-Pain thing so I'm just fixing a few part here and there, or creating some harmonies after the singer is long gone... I haven't had a need to try audio to midi yet but it's on my list of things to try. I can see it being useful.

Also, just so you know I'm not a Waves-basher (I have Waves plugins I use a lot) but I had a horrible experience with Waves Tune, which is why I use Melodyne.

[alexdingley]

Also, just so you know I'm not a Waves-basher (I have Waves plugins I use a lot) but I had a horrible experience with Waves Tune, which is why I use Melodyne.

Y'know, it's funny — I remember the early days of plug-ins, and Waves really spent all of their good-will. They burnt a lot of people with their crappy authorizer systems, (I'm talking like circa 2001-2004)... They used to be so costly and so frustrated to deal with, that I haven't bothered to consider a Waves plug-in in over 15yrs. At this point, I'm pretty sure their stuff sounds awesome, and probably works just fine on an iLok... but I was one of those people so completely burnt back in the day, that I never looked at them again.

[vvv]

... I had a horrible experience with Waves Tune, which is why I use Melodyne.

Sounds a good story.

[digitaldrummer]

last Waves "update" I got was v9 (I think they are on 12 now). They don't require an iLok anymore. I have an authorization file (I keep it on a USB stick though so it is portable if needed). I bought the Waves SSL pack (E channel, G channel, comp) about 10 years ago? I think I paid ~ $500 and thought that was pretty good considering it was $799 usual. Now you can get the damn bundle for $99, or probably less if you get each piece for $29 each. F#@% me. But I still use that one a lot. And I like the Renaissance EQ, sometimes the reverb, and Rvox. Maybe the Scheps 1073 and channel strip but rarely use them anymore (cpu hungry and I like the UAD plugs better). But Waves Tune, which I think worked OK on older versions of Pro Tools was giving all these weird artifacts when I tried to use audiosuite to fix a "spot" that needed fixin. I could not for the life of me get it to work right. I finally sent a piece of audio (a seemingly simple vocal track) to Waves support and said "if you tell me I need to upgrade to a newer version to make this work, then I will pay to update". They reproduced the problem and told me "Tune doesn't work on all audio". WTF? if it can't tune vocals, then what DOES it do? So I switched to Melodyne. Took me a few hours to learn it then I never looked back. Now I find it easy.

[vvv]

Good story, indeed.

FWIW, I'm kinda a believer in not tuning.

And my guitar tracks prove it.

But seriously, I never did it at all but then found the free G-Snap plug, and so, at the insistence of some collaborators or when I really croak a vocal not, I'll run it over a syllable or word - usually on a doubled (because I don't even attempt harmonies) chorus.

I've never auto-tuned an instrument track - wait - I did a cuppla times tune a note in a guitar solo.