ProTools 11 with Antares Autotune 7
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After scouring the web looking for help to get Antares Autotune to track and tune acoustic bass and failing to find help, including from Antares tech support, my engineer and I figured it out. I want to share it in case someone else has the same problem.
I needed to tune some arco (bowed) acoustic bass (upright bass, double bass) in Pro Tools but Antares Autotune wouldn't track the bowed bass notes well enough to be usable. For most of the notes, the red tracking line only encompassed about 50%-80% of a note's waveform, and the lowest notes had zero tracking (red line) or had numerous very short red lines with gaps between as if it chopped a low note into many pieces. The tracking was unusable.
What we tried that didn't help:
- unchecking "dynamic..." as Antares recommends on its site to improve tracking in general. BUT LEAVE THIS UNCHECKED; it's that just by itself it didn't help a bit.
- selecting Autotune's "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument" didn't help; horrible results
- selecting Autotune's "Saprano" worked well for notes detected but since Saprano doesn't span the low range, this is unusable (though interesting that it tracked way better than "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument")
What finally worked:
- selecting Autotune's "Low Male" AND reducing Autotune's "Tracking" to any number between 15-30 (we settled on 21 arbitrarily). Interestingly, this Tracking setting doesn't help "Bass Instrument" or "Instrument" at all.
It seems that a higher Tracking setting, e.g., 80 (or anything above 30 or 40) caused Autotune to detect a single low bowed bass note as a series of many little notes. And reducing Tracking to 15-30 caused Autotune to correctly track (with its red line) each bowed or plucked bass note (low or high). Thank goodness!
The tracking on the acoustic bass was so good with "Low Male" and Tracking at 21 that we even tried Autotune in its automatic mode for all 3 bass tracks for the entire take. It fixed sour notes without any artifacts or tone quality we could detect. So instead of just fixing some bits of sour bowed bass, we had Autotune auto tune all the bass. It worked so well we ran it on the bass on all the tracks!
Before discovering this, we robbed/copied notes that were more in tune and/or used Pro Tools Audio Suite's feature to raise or lower the 3 bass tracks in unison based on trial and error comparing the note to pitches on an electric piano. Tedious! By the way, Antares Autotune ran on all 3 bass tracks (2 mics and a DI) well without introducing phase problems.
Overall, this was a breakthrough. Instead of fixing just tiny sections of egregiously sour bass notes, we fixed all of the bass notes on all tracks -- and quickly!
Antares tech support's suggestion of trying "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument" flopped 100%!
Antares Autotune programmers need to polish/fix the apprarently bogus "Bass Instrumnet" and "Instrument" settings. I mean, come on, "Saprano" actually tracked many bass note fine but doesn't include the bottom range. Autotune's named source type setting is stupid.
Moral: before giving up on Antares Autotune with non-voice sound sources, try each of the 5 sound types even if you think some don't make sense for a track, AND try very low and very high Tracking numbers.
I hope this helps some poor souls struggling to fix sour acoustic bass notes. We spent way too much time (and some money) figuring this out.
=======================
After scouring the web looking for help to get Antares Autotune to track and tune acoustic bass and failing to find help, including from Antares tech support, my engineer and I figured it out. I want to share it in case someone else has the same problem.
I needed to tune some arco (bowed) acoustic bass (upright bass, double bass) in Pro Tools but Antares Autotune wouldn't track the bowed bass notes well enough to be usable. For most of the notes, the red tracking line only encompassed about 50%-80% of a note's waveform, and the lowest notes had zero tracking (red line) or had numerous very short red lines with gaps between as if it chopped a low note into many pieces. The tracking was unusable.
What we tried that didn't help:
- unchecking "dynamic..." as Antares recommends on its site to improve tracking in general. BUT LEAVE THIS UNCHECKED; it's that just by itself it didn't help a bit.
- selecting Autotune's "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument" didn't help; horrible results
- selecting Autotune's "Saprano" worked well for notes detected but since Saprano doesn't span the low range, this is unusable (though interesting that it tracked way better than "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument")
What finally worked:
- selecting Autotune's "Low Male" AND reducing Autotune's "Tracking" to any number between 15-30 (we settled on 21 arbitrarily). Interestingly, this Tracking setting doesn't help "Bass Instrument" or "Instrument" at all.
It seems that a higher Tracking setting, e.g., 80 (or anything above 30 or 40) caused Autotune to detect a single low bowed bass note as a series of many little notes. And reducing Tracking to 15-30 caused Autotune to correctly track (with its red line) each bowed or plucked bass note (low or high). Thank goodness!
The tracking on the acoustic bass was so good with "Low Male" and Tracking at 21 that we even tried Autotune in its automatic mode for all 3 bass tracks for the entire take. It fixed sour notes without any artifacts or tone quality we could detect. So instead of just fixing some bits of sour bowed bass, we had Autotune auto tune all the bass. It worked so well we ran it on the bass on all the tracks!
Before discovering this, we robbed/copied notes that were more in tune and/or used Pro Tools Audio Suite's feature to raise or lower the 3 bass tracks in unison based on trial and error comparing the note to pitches on an electric piano. Tedious! By the way, Antares Autotune ran on all 3 bass tracks (2 mics and a DI) well without introducing phase problems.
Overall, this was a breakthrough. Instead of fixing just tiny sections of egregiously sour bass notes, we fixed all of the bass notes on all tracks -- and quickly!
Antares tech support's suggestion of trying "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument" flopped 100%!
Antares Autotune programmers need to polish/fix the apprarently bogus "Bass Instrumnet" and "Instrument" settings. I mean, come on, "Saprano" actually tracked many bass note fine but doesn't include the bottom range. Autotune's named source type setting is stupid.
Moral: before giving up on Antares Autotune with non-voice sound sources, try each of the 5 sound types even if you think some don't make sense for a track, AND try very low and very high Tracking numbers.
I hope this helps some poor souls struggling to fix sour acoustic bass notes. We spent way too much time (and some money) figuring this out.
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