Artifacts and Distortion in my Flex Pitched Vocal

here is the link for what my voice sounded like when I put flex pitch on it to correct it. I'm using a Shure SM7B and a Focusrite Scarlett Interface and this usually happens to me whenever I do louder recordings with my voice. The gain is set correctly and there was no clipping whatsoever. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem and why it might be happening? Thanks everyone.

Yeah, those artifacts sometimes happen.

You can fix those by going to the Flex editor window and grabbing the corners of the notes where it happens and either shorten or extend very slightly.

By Flex Editor, do you mean the Flex Pitch window where the midi type notes are? I'll include a screenshot of what I'm thinking you mean, but so far that hasn't fixed it for me.

Yes, where you see the midi notes.

I just grab the corners of the notes where the artifact happens and move it slightly. Usually works.

But it's not fool-proof.

Didn’t work for me, but I did find out if you switch the setting from flex pitch to flex polyphonic it actually solves it for me!

Didn’t work for me, but I did find out if you switch the setting from flex pitch to flex polyphonic it actually solves it for me!

... but then you're turning Flex Pitch off.

Hm... it didn’t seem to change the changes I made in flex pitch. It worked the same as if I changed it to Flex Rhythmic or the other settings so I’m not sure why that was.

Hm... it didn’t seem to change the changes I made in flex pitch.

It turns Flex Pitch off, meaning you won't hear any of your Flex Pitch edits (try it). In fact it gives you an alert to that extent. It conserves your Flex Pitch edits in memory should you turn Flex Pitch back on.

If we're talking about the clicky stuff in that last long note, this usually happens when you transition between (pitch) edited notes and unedited ones. I then select all unpitched notes and change them by just 1 cent (towards "better pitch" if the client is present, actually it doesn't matter). That gets rid of the clicks.

Hm... it didn’t seem to change the changes I made in flex pitch.

It turns Flex Pitch off, meaning you won't hear any of your Flex Pitch edits (try it). In fact it gives you an alert to that extent. It conserves your Flex Pitch edits in memory should you turn Flex Pitch back on.

 

Yes, I know that. I’m saying that when I changed to polyphonic it kept some of the note changes I made and didn’t revert them back to the original. I’m not sure why that is, but it happened for me

If we're talking about the clicky stuff in that last long note, this usually happens when you transition between (pitch) edited notes and unedited ones. I then select all unpitched notes and change them by just 1 cent (towards "better pitch" if the client is present, actually it doesn't matter). That gets rid of the clicks.

I’ll definitely try that out! Thanks for the suggestion!

I’m saying that when I changed to polyphonic it kept some of the note changes I made and didn’t revert them back to the original. I’m not sure why that is, but it happened for me

 

It happened to you because it stayed in memory.

Next time you open the same project, the flex changes on that track will be gone because you are in Polyphonic mode, which only deals with time.

Ah, makes sense, thanks for explaining again!

Just found this because I was having a similar issue. The solution I found reduced or eliminated the artifacts. I bounce the audio clip in place including any volume automations I have done, but bypassing any effects plugins and leaving normalizing off (leaving the source just in case). I duplicate the original track with the effects and sends I've created and drag the newly bounced audio file onto the empty track. Seems to work. Not sure if it's just too much to process Flex Pitch on an audio file that hasn't been bounced or what, but it seems to work.

Just a note here: I think I at least found the cause of these artefacts, though apple have left us no real ability to mitigate or fix it.

I notice one vocalist really triggers these "knocking"/"warbling" effects in FP.

And the key is in their voice and formant character:

What I notice is the pitch "line" for the "knocking" word has gaps in it. When I adjust vibrato, I see high vertical steps suddenly appear in the pitch line that are WAY above those in the actual tuning. So, the error in the software here is it's analysis. It's detecting harmonics in the vocal and determining those are the fundamental. It's just a little too "dumb" to know how the human voice works, or for us to "tell" it what it's analysing. So basically - I think it's an "unnecessary" error that shouldn't exist in pro software.

 

 

What I find incredible is even when you set the PF note "control bar" to reset all, it still retains the sonic errors - what we needed was some kind of "FP mute" control to kill flex on that note, at least. But we can chop the note out and turn of flex for the region in the inspector, which means we no longer have pitch control.

Another option would have been some "smoothing" control on pitch line or reanalysis to get rid of the steps. But I doubt Apple will bother.

 

I guess one could bounce the word with a pitch corrector subtly on it and re-analyse (as you may want the control that FP offers, over a mindless autotune effect), but in the end, this all works out to be more work than FP should be in the first place. But If you're pulling your hair out on a critical vocal, that's an option I guess.

[Edit:] That doesn't really work. The high harmonics persist and reanalysis duplicates the original error. The problem is in their detection algo.

Sometimes I’ll cut out a piece of waveform as a new region and turn Flex off for that region (in the Region Inspector).

Hi,

 

So I've been dealing with the same issue some time now. If it is useful info for u guys, my idea was to turn flex pitch on and only actually edit the vocal in 100% necessary notes that autotune couldn't fix (for ex. control a vibrato note) and the add autotune to just fix common note swings. Turns out as some of you said, I can confirm it now, it is not editing the vocal what causes artifacts, it is turning Flex Pitch on what automatically just adds this weird sound to it. It sucks tbh because Flex Pitch is a very accurate way to edit vocals and go deep in details with notes. So if anybody finds a way of dealing with this or knows about a plugin/software that works in detail with each note as Flex Pitch please just let me know!

 

Thanks!

 

Claudia.

it is turning Flex Pitch on what automatically just adds this weird sound to it.

When this occurs, one thing you can try is to open the audio file in the Audio File editor, go into transient detection mode and double-check the position of the transients. Misplaced/misdetected transients can sometimes cause these artifacts you're hearing.

…So if anybody finds a way of dealing with this or knows about a plugin/software that works in detail with each note as Flex Pitch please just let me know!

 

Thanks!

 

Claudia.

Have you tried Melodyne?

IMHO, it’s by far the best tool for such work…

Hey, I can't find the transient detector mode. Could you please tell me how can I get there? I will definitely try it out. Thanks a lot!

it is turning Flex Pitch on what automatically just adds this weird sound to it.

When this occurs, one thing you can try is to open the audio file in the Audio File editor, go into transient detection mode and double-check the position of the transients. Misplaced/misdetected transients can sometimes cause these artifacts you're hearing.

 

Hey, I can't find the transient detector mode. Could you please tell me how can I get there? I will definitely try it out. Thanks a lot!

Hey, I can't find the transient detector mode. Could you please tell me how can I get there? I will definitely try it out. Thanks a lot!

In the "File" editor:

 

What I've noticed and has worked for me is that if you start playing back the faulty clip on its own without any previous material the artifacts most of the time don't appear. So as a workaround I've resorted to routing that audio track to an aux track which in turn will serve as an input to a new audio track and i'll record on it just the faulty clip, which as I stated before will play clean without any artifacts if you only play that section. So you'll end up with a clean recording of that section on a new audio track. It's less than ideal I know but at least it's a solution that has worked for me. Hope that helps

Izotope RX8 de-clicker works too. Trouble is, it can also add distortion--that has nothing to do with gain. Pros and cons to everything.