Flex pitch vs Melodyne

Has anyone worked with both of these enough to discern any difference in sound quality between the two.

Happy to help. A lot of what I do is editing vocals (often somewhat harsher ones than not) so these two are important tools for me.

 

Here's where each beats the other.

 

Flex Pitch > Melodyne:

 

-Transfer: Logic allows you to quickly analyze your vocal track and better yet copy & move that edited region around with ease. Melodyne is forced to *hear each vocal take in order for you to manipulate it.

 

-Dual Pitch Drift: W/ Flex pitch you can drift both the left and right half of the vocal. What this means is that if you want to keep the vocal authentic and avoid getting artifacts and having it sound like it's been tuned you use the drift tool to do a lot of edits. Drift keeps the relative curves the same as you nudge parts of the vocal higher or lower. In Melodyne each "Blob" as they're called can be edited with a single drift tool. In flex pitch when you move your mouse over each vocal slice you can edit both the left half and the right half. This is somewhat tedious and slow at first because you have to use the scissors tool more often to get a good edit. In melodyne you have the ability to quickly drift ALL of your vocals and you will get a better result than in logic... however I consider this a win for flex pitch because editing vocals should be done where needed and with the most accuracy, rather than quickly applying it to the entire take.

*If you just want fast and decent, Melodyne's single drift tool wins. If you put in the time Flex Pitch is better here

 

-Tool Accessibility: to do flex pitch edits you can quickly pull up the scissors tool w/ T-5 as opposed to Melodyne where you have to right click... aim... etc to select and change tools. This is a subtle difference but it definitely speeds up the process

 

Here's where I see them tied:

 

-Sound - They both sound great.

-Formant Tool - You can change the formant for each, nothing exciting here. Can't say I personally use this tool often

-CPU - It seems like Melodyne would lose here due to the fact that you'll have to have an instance of Melodyne open on each vocal, however from just using flex pitch all the time I know that when I start to have 6-10 flex pitch tracks going my computer will behave in the same manner as though it were Melodyne. Mind you this is a fully loaded brand new iMac. Flex pitch has the potential to win here but as it is I don't see my sessions running smoother using flex pitch on the CPU front

-Gain - Increasing gain sounds great on both.

 

Here's where melodyne beats flex pitch-

 

-Tying notes together: I can't remember exactly what the parameter is called, but in Melodyne you can edit the transition between two notes. Flex pitch allows you to make these kinds of edits, but you're far more likely to get ridiculous artifacts in logic. Melodyne seems to be very smooth here.

-Reliability - Overall you will find far fewer bugs and glitches in melodyne than in flex pitch. Period. Double clicking on a section in flex pitch will bring you to the FILE section and often just send the pitch straight into the ground when you go back to the flex window. Easy undo, but still annoying. I posted here about this recently, but when I have flex pitch going my screen will often jump to a separate section of the song, interrupting my flow and costing 5-10 minutes to fix on occasion. If melodyne doesn't detect a note properly the first time you can quickly just hit transfer and re load it until it works properly. In logic this process is much more trying and difficult. I will say I use flex pitch almost exclusively, so this hasn't deterred me enough to switch, though the combination of all of these occasional glitches is frustrating.

-Harmonizing - Very easy to try out a harmony of your vocal by copying and pasting over the same area... then dragging up or down. I love using melodyne for this. Logic theoretically could do the same, however you'd have to duplicate the entire track, a hefty cost for one small harmony.

-Editing distance - I find that flex pitch does quite well, however melodyne still wins this battle. I can drop a vocal much farther in melodyne and get away with it than flex pitch. Hopefully you won't be doing too many of those, but when the occasion arises that your vocal is shot to hell and you need to resolve it melodyne handles better.

-Polyphonic edits- it's worth mentioning that you can edit polyphonic material in melodyne, but this function won't be utilized more than 3% of the time. Why bother getting a par sounding edit with melodyne than just re-record a guitar or separate vocal takes? Good for cleanup if you have no other option, waste of time otherwise.

 

Overall here's the TLDR

-Melodyne will give you great quick results... once it hears the material. It's been around way longer so is less buggier.

-Flex Pitch will be faster start to finish 90% of the time. Occasional glitch but the lesser of two evils.

 

I use flex pitch everyday. Used melodyne for years, either will handle the job.

 

Here's a flex pitch edited vocal: [soundcloud]

[/soundcloud]

 

Here's a melodyne edited vocal: [soundcloud]

[/soundcloud]

 

Hope that helps.

pinoguy321...impressive info! altho would prefer to hear the SAME melody rearranged in both apps.

 

for me, flex pitch is great; i gave up melodyne, and don't miss it. working WITHIN an arrangement, and being able to move things around in that same window is a great plus. i've often duplicated a part (say, a verse) on another track & created a harmony; doesn't seem like a 'hefty cost'. takes 2 seconds to duplicate a track and a region...

 

either way, both apps are great when they're needed.

have both, Thanks to pino for that long post.

 

I'm with fisherking. I've given up melodyne (still haven't sold my license, probably won't). The main reason is beacsue for what i do, fairly light pitch work and rhythmic edits, having the data embedded in the region wins every time. The instant analysis and not having to wait for melodyne to record it rules.

 

I do sorta think melodyne sounds better in a few instances, some negligible, some not, but the convenience wins for me (personally).

Just finished a session tonight and I have to say once again my system is put on the brink due to Flex Pitch. I can't say for certain, but this has happened before... I had maybe 7 vocal tracks, 2 guitar, 1 piano. 10 tracks equated to 10.6 GB of RAM being used. WAY too much for such a small project. For comparison my latest dance track ran 82 tracks no problem.