Automation for cutting out all S and T sounds? (flex pitch distorts them)

[Yabbadabbadoo]

Hey all!

So I'm editing my vocal and want to use flex pitch in certain words/phrases but for some reason flex pitch seems to be adding some weird distortion in the high frequencies on the s, sh and t sounds.

My solution to this is now to split the track and separate all the s, sh and t sounds into their own regions and turn off flex pitch on those. 

Do I have to do this by hand or is there some automatic function that can do this for me? 

And any tips on getting flex pitch not to distort the sound would be great too.

Thanks

Yab

[David Nahmani]

I've experienced the same and have resorted to the same solution. I don't know of a better or faster way to do it. 

[Yabbadabbadoo]

Thanks David!

Good to know I'm not the only one 🙂

[Alan Shields]

An alternative is to try Melodyne. It recognises sibilance and breath sounds and processes them differently to the voice sound. This gives a more natural sound to my ear.

Celmoney offer a free demo period where you can use a fully functional version for a limited amount of time (I think 30 days) before you decide if you want to buy it or not.

HTH, Alan.

[sunbrother]

I’ve toyed with the idea of a macro that would: 

a) run a de-esser with the detector listen engaged on a track so you end up with a track of only esses

b) strip silence on the new track

c) turn on Drag: No Overlap

d) use a series of drag, copy, and delete operations to make an “unvoiced” track and a “voiced” track

I imagine this approach wouldn’t take too long by hand either, relative to splitting everything manually.

Anyway, Melodyne is a lot better currently. Flex Pitch also has an observable 1.5dB aka 15% loss of information ~9k and above. 
 

Edited October 12, 2023 by sunbrother

[Yabbadabbadoo]

2 hours ago, Alan Shields said:

An alternative is to try Melodyne. It recognises sibilance and breath sounds and processes them differently to the voice sound. This gives a more natural sound to my ear.

Celmoney offer a free demo period where you can use a fully functional version for a limited amount of time (I think 30 days) before you decide if you want to buy it or not.

HTH, Alan.

Thanks!

I messed around with Melodyne when it first came out but never really got into it, maybe because of the interface.

I really like that flex is integrated into logic if you know what I mean. 

Might give Melodyne another go though is I'm not getting the results I need with flex.

[Yabbadabbadoo]

2 hours ago, sunbrother said:

I’ve toyed with the idea of a macro that would: 

a) run a de-esser with the detector listen engaged on a track so you end up with a track of only esses

b) strip silence on the new track

c) turn on Drag: No Overlap

d) use a series of drag, copy, and delete operations to make an “unvoiced” track and a “voiced” track

I imagine this approach wouldn’t take too long by hand either, relative to splitting everything manually.

Anyway, Melodyne is a lot better currently. Flex Pitch also has an observable 1.5dB aka 15% loss of information ~9k and above. 
 

Thank you!

This is above my paygrade of understanding but I'm sure it'd work. 

Yes I've noticed that the sound is less clear after using it. Could that be remedied by just using an EQ after flex and boost 9k and up by 1.5db?

[sunbrother]

Possibly. Re: the EQ, that's what I do when Flex is more convenient.

I do love how Flex is integrated into Logic too. In a perfect world I would do my first pass of tuning with Melodyne. Then, as I'm mixing the song- when/if I notice mistakes I could Flex Pitch a piece of the original vocal.

If you're really having to do a lot of tuning as part of your work, Melodyne is great because as weird as the interface looks it's tool-based so you can get very fast at it and work by ear. Flex Pitch's interface is click zone based so it's all about having to find and click a lot of tiny handles.