While the major feature of Pro Tools 2023.3 has to be the long awaited native support for Apple Silicon, a significant sonic difference is introduced in the form of a new Elastic Audio algorithm - zplane’s elastique PRO. It sounds better and is available to all tiers including the free Pro Tools Intro. That’s worth investigating further. So how different is it?

Before looking at elastique PRO further, it should be said that it is actually one of two new elastic audio options in ProTools 2023.3. Elastique PRO and Melodyne have both been added as options for elastic audio. However Melodyne’s implementation is more limited than the other algorithms. Melodyne is available as an Elastic Audio option. It can’t participate with warp markers like the familiar elastic audio algorithms but it can be used to conform audio to tempo changes on a tick-based track. Elastique PRO however offers superior audio quality and unlike X-Form, can be used as a real time algorithm.

Elastic Audio

Elastic Audio was introduced to Pro Tools back in 2007 with Pro Tools 7.4. The original four algorithms - Polyphonic, Rhythmic, Monophonic and Varispeed are all suited to different uses. Varispeed is an outlier here as it doesn’t maintain pitch with speed but the other three focus on different types of content and within small adjustment ranges can give reasonable results, though when things fall apart they can do so very audibly. Transients can be smeared, exposed tonal material can reveal glitchy artefacts. Timestretching is always a case of managing your expectations as there is a definite limit on what can be achieved without compromising the material too much but it is an invaluable tool and often those compromises are worth it.

In the examples below we have presented examples of some drums, with a ride cymbal to add a sustained element which will highlight artefacts nicely, a solo bass guitar because in our experience elastic audio doesn’t cope well with bass and its and appropriate source to audition the monophonic algorithm and as an ultimate test a solo piano example, piano is particularly vulnerable to the artefacts which can be caused by time stretching.

We’ve chosen to only feature time stretching as opposed to time compression. Making sounds longer involves creating additional audio. We omitted time compression to keep the number of examples lower. The audio was stretched by 20%. A long way and further than I’d be comfortable trying to stretch exposed material like this but it does offer a good opportunity to really hear the differences. Lastly we’ve included a fourth option on the piano example, X-Form. The previous examples have compared like with like, all real time algorithms. But X-Form, being a rendered-only algorithm offers results which are beyond what could be achieved using the old, real time algorithms.

Have a listen and let us know what you think.

Drums

This example is timestretched by 20%, The ride cymbal offers a sustained element and the transients should reveal any smearing or flamming. It uses the rhythmic algorithm and elastique PRO. The settings are all left at the defaults.

Bass Guitar

This solo bass guitar illustrates how challenging bass material can be. It is timstretched by 20% and uses the monophonic algorithm as well as elastique PRO. Settings are at their defaults.

Lastly we’ve included a fourth option on the piano example, X-Form. The previous examples have compared like with like, all real time algorithms. But X-Form, being a rendered-only algorithm offers results which are beyond what could be achieved using the old, real time algorithms. This is timestretched by 20% and uses the Polyphonic algorithm as well as elastique PRO and X-Form. an exposed piano leaves little room for artefacts to hide and so is an excellent example.

In these examples I’ve tried to present an unvarnished take on the artefacts timestretching can introduce, For example the sessions were all running at 48K and the default settings were used throughout. This was a conscious decision and running at a higher sampling frequency and fine-tuning the settings would have improved the results but the differences between then stand for themselves.

Initially I was considering making this a poll, asking the community to choose their favourite but the results were even clearer than I expected. I know what I think, but what do you think? Will you be using Elastique PRO?

Photos Credits: Piano Bass Drums