Mix Tools
PITCHVECTOR
Real-time pitch correction that decides note by note, with a latency policy derived rather than chosen.
Free 10-day trial. The download is the whole collection, 22 plug-ins in one installer, so you can try every one; start PITCHVECTOR's trial from inside the plug-in when you are ready. Downloading does not start it, and trying one plug-in does not start the others.
- AU (macOS)
- VST3
- AAX
- macOS Universal
- Windows 64-bit
- v1.0.0
What it does
The budget is physics. We spend it where you can hear it.
A pitch shifter's lookahead is not a design preference. A PSOLA grain centred at an output position must be written into the overlap-add accumulator before the read pointer reaches it, and its content must already exist in the input by then. Both conditions together force two pitch periods of lookahead: 36 ms at 55 Hz. No arrangement of the algorithm avoids it; a design that appears to is either relocating the delay or using grains shorter than a period.
PITCHVECTOR spends that budget explicitly, in three modes, and reports it honestly to the host, where it stays constant. Latency never changes with RETUNE, MIX, CORRECTION, key, scale, or any other automatable parameter, because hosts negotiate delay compensation once and cache it.
Correction is decided per note, not per frame. A note is taken when the voice comes within TOLERANCE of a degree on a frame the detector trusts, and held through vibrato and short doubt until it is left. FLEX TUNE limits how far the voice is moved rather than switching the correction on and off, so a held note is pinned and a far excursion is reduced, never released. And the sound does not depend on the host: the output is byte-identical at host blocks from 32 to 2048 samples.
Key features
Three modes, three budgets
Low Latency for tracking and cue mixes, Normal for mixing, HQ for print: 512, 1,024 or 2,048 samples of lookahead at 48 kHz, which sets the lowest note each can shift at full quality, about 190, 94 and 47 Hz. Below that the grains shorten and the result takes on a slight granular edge rather than breaking.
Latency is constant within a mode
It changes only when the host prepares the plugin, or with MODE or QUALITY. Parameters that “want” different lookahead are implemented at fixed lookahead with an internal worst-case buffer instead. An impulse through the engine must arrive exactly when the plugin says it will, in all 45 combinations of mode, oversampling and sample rate.
A shifter that keeps the voice
Each grain is one period plus a short taper, so a shifted voice keeps its treble, and is read between samples through a windowed sinc, so no timing jitter grits the pulse train. On held notes at the defaults, the noise between the harmonics, which is what a tuner's “drive” sounds like, measures −34.8 dB against the dry vocal's −34.0.
Keep the vibrato, or pin the note
With NATURAL VIB off, the default, held notes are pinned: on the reference take they land a median 0.8 cents from their degree. Switch it on and the singer's own vibrato is kept through the correction.
Formant control independent of pitch
FORMANT, THROAT and FORMANT LOCK, so a shifted note keeps, or deliberately loses, the voice that sang it. With the lock off, the formants ride with the pitch.
MIDI note targeting
Note Target makes a held MIDI note the target; Note Lock does the same and corrects to it whatever the scale; Note Bypass suspends correction while a note is held. Overlapping notes follow the melody: the last note played wins, and releasing it falls back to one still held.
A dial that shows the correction
The centre dial leaves a 0.18 s trail behind its pointer instead of jumping from frame to frame, and the name above it stands still. It is drawn as a picture of the correction rather than a tuner: the pointer is held toward the green, which it leaves only at about 32 cents flat or 34 sharp. The number under the note stays the true reading.
The interface
Audio
Audio demos for PITCHVECTOR are not published yet.
We would rather show you nothing than show you a demo that was not recorded through this plugin.
Measured
PitchVectorTests (182 checks) and PitchVectorPluginTests (201) · the release audit's reference take at the plugin's defaults, against the dry vocal · 48 kHz
- Latency at 1x: Low Latency / Normal / HQ
- 896 / 1,792 / 3,584 samples (18.7 / 37.3 / 74.7 ms)
- Full-quality frequency floor: Low Latency / Normal / HQ
- ~190 / ~94 / ~47 Hz
- Measured delay against reported latency
- equal in all 45 mode, oversampling and sample-rate combinations
- Held notes, median distance from the degree
- 0.8 cents (dry 15.8)
- Held notes within 5 cents
- 78 % (dry 19 %)
- Time from one degree to the next
- 37.7 ms (dry 58.8 ms)
- Noise between harmonics on held notes
- −34.8 dB (dry −34.0 dB)
- Output across host block sizes from 32 to 2048
- byte-identical
- Locks or allocation on the audio thread
- none
Figures are produced by this plugin’s own test suite and benchmark, on the hardware and sample rate named above. They are not estimates.
Controls
HEADER
- VOCAL RANGE
- Auto, Soprano, Alto / Tenor, Baritone / Bass or Instrument: the voice the detector should expect.
- KEY
- Auto, which finds the key from the singing, or C to B.
- SCALE
- Chromatic, Major, three minors, two pentatonics, Blues, five modes, Whole Tone, Diminished or Custom.
- PRESET
- The factory presets, by group.
- EDIT
- Opens the panel below. The window grows downward; its width stays.
EDIT
- RETUNE
- 0–400 ms, read as SLOW at the left, MEDIUM, FAST, and INSTANT at the right. Default FAST, 0.4 ms. Hosts see milliseconds.
- FLEX TUNE
- 0–100, default 72. How far a note may be moved: a deviation inside the window is taken out completely, a larger one is moved by the window. The window is 80 cents at 0 and 8 cents at 100.
- CHARACTER
- Hard Tune, Locked, Tight, Natural or Transparent; default Tight. Morphs the correction strategy rather than scaling a set of values.
- HUMANIZE
- 0–100 %, default 5 %. How much the retune relaxes over a held note.
- TOLERANCE
- 0.25–12 st, default 0.25. How close the voice must come to a degree for the note to be taken; a note sung steadily further off is left alone.
- FORMANT LOCK
- On by default: formants hold while the pitch moves.
- NATURAL VIB
- Off by default, which pins held notes. On keeps the singer's own vibrato.
CORRECTION
- CORRECTION
- 0–100 %. How far toward the target the correction may go.
- RESPONSE SHAPE
- 0–90 %, default 31 %. How sure the detector must be of a frame before it can start a note's correction.
- TRANSITION SPEED
- How the correction travels from one note to the next: higher is smoother.
VOICE
- FORMANT
- ±12 st, independent of pitch.
- THROAT
- ±100 %: a longer or shorter throat, up to 0.42 octave of formant shift.
OUTPUT
- INPUT · OUTPUT
- ±24 dB each.
- MIX
- 0–100 %.
FOOTER
- MIDI
- Off, Note Target, Note Lock or Note Bypass.
- MODE
- Low Latency, Normal or HQ. Latency-affecting.
- QUALITY
- 1x, 2x or 4x oversampling, held so the internal rate stays near 192 kHz. Latency-affecting.
- SAVE
- Writes the current state as a user preset.
HOST AUTOMATION ONLY
- Transpose · Reference A
- Shift the whole target set by up to 12 semitones; set concert pitch.
- Tracking · Note Gate
- How readily the detector commits; below the gate, −60 dB by default, nothing is corrected.
- Stereo Link · Vibrato Preserve
- Link the channels; how much of the singer's vibrato survives while NATURAL VIB is on.
Technical details
- Formats, macOS
- AU · VST3 · AAX
- Formats, Windows
- VST3 · AAX
- Operating system
- macOS 10.15 or later · Windows 10 or later, 64-bit
- Architecture, macOS
- Universal: Apple Silicon and Intel
- Architecture, Windows
- 64-bit
- Plugin code
- Pvc1
- Version
- 1.0.0
- Sample rates
- 44.1 · 48 · 88.2 · 96 · 192 kHz
- Latency
- 896, 1,792 or 3,584 samples at 48 kHz (18.7, 37.3 or 74.7 ms) in Low Latency, Normal or HQ, plus the oversampling filter's delay at 2x and 4x. Constant within a setting.
- Factory presets
- 16
In six groups: Production (Pop Vocal, Rap, Trap, R&B, EDM), Band (Rock, Metal), Spoken (Podcast, Voiceover), Ensemble (Choir, Harmony), Character (Extreme Hard Tune, Natural Vocal) and Voice (Male Vocal, Female Vocal, Child Voice). Each names the settings it depends on, so none moved when the defaults did.
Worth knowing
- The dial is a picture of the correction, not a tuner: its pointer is held toward the green on purpose. Read the number under the note for the true deviation.
Also in these bundles
COMPLETE COLLECTION
Get PITCHVECTOR as part of COMPLETE COLLECTION, 22 plugins worth 708 for 199.
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