Celemony has released Melodyne version 5.2. This is a maintenance release that, among other things, adds native support for Apple Silicon. Melodyne is now a universal binary, which means it contains both Intel (x86) and Apple Silicon (ARM) native code in the same install. This allows it to run natively on either architecture. Steve DeMott gives his thoughts, plus a great trick for Pro Tools users.

I have been a Melodyne user for years, preferring it to other options because of its flexibility and transparency. To my knowledge it was one of the first “manual” pitch editors that really did things right. I prefer manually tuning because it allows me to decide what constitutes a “bad” note and what is “flavor”. This is especially true in rock and blues based genres where a chromatic approach note in the vocal is, while technically not “in tune” or “in key”, wanted and even expected. If those get smoothed to the nearest in key note or tuned too tightly they lose that feel. I also love the ability to see all my vocals at once in the plugin and, not only tune them, but also time align them as needed.

One of the frustrations that seemed to appear with version 5, and continued through 5.1, was in using the Pro Tools commit trick to quickly ingest pitch data from a track. It has consistently left off the first 3-4 seconds of pitch information when I did this, requiring me to then do a real time transfer of the first few seconds of every track I wanted to tune. This seems to be fixed in this update (though not mentioned in the change log). I used Melodyne 5.2 hard all day the day it came out and I didn’t experience it leaving off the start of my tracks, like previous versions did.

The Pro Tools “commit” trick

For those of you unfamiliar with this trick, it’s a way to get around the need to do a real time transfer of pitch information into Melodyne. I hear this is unnecessary in DAWs that support ARA, but since Avid is yet to include ARA into Pro Tools we are left with this little gem that has been around for as long as I can remember. The process is simple:

First, you free up your first insert and place Melodyne in that insert slot. 

You then have to open the plugin interface to enable “Transfer” on the track you want to ingest pitch data from.

From there you need to right click/ctrl-click on the Melodyne plugin in the first slot and choose “Commit up to this insert”, which is why Melodyne needs to be in Insert A or you would commit any plugins on the track before Melodyne.

Now you have all the pitch data in Melodyne in your original track, and can simply delete the newly created commit track (it should have a .cm added to the name. This track is unneeded and is only a product of getting the pitch data into the Melodyne engine.

Et voila! You can pitch correct, align, de-ess, et al to your heart's content. When done tuning/editing/etc., you commit up to the Melodyne insert again, but this time hiding and deactivating the original to have a committed pitch corrected track to mix with.

If you have SoundFlow, you can also do this with a single click using the free Scheps Melodyne Helpers package.

And I am told this is unnecessary in DAWs that support ARA. I know I mentioned that before, I just felt like saying it again…Avid, are you listening?

Here’s the official change list from Celemony:

New Features And Improvements

• Compatibility: In version 5.2, Melodyne now runs natively on Macs with Apple Silicon processors. The Mac version is supplied in Universal Binary format with native code for processors from Intel/AMD and Apple.

• Pitch editing: The scale snap behavior for pitch systems with closely spaced alternate stages has been improved.

• The playback function: In ARA mode and when using the transfer plug-in, you can now trigger playback of the current blob selection using the shortcut Alt+Space. If you would prefer to assign a different key combination to this shortcut, you can do so from the Shortcuts page of the Preferences dialog.

• Cache: The location of Melodyne’s internal cache is now displayed in the Preferences dialog in ARA mode too, and you can alter its size.

Bug Fixes

• Pitch editing: “Monitor When Editing Blobs” now also functions reliably with the arrow keys when pitch shifting.

• Editing the tempo assignment under certain circumstances led to a crash. Fixed.

• Accidentally dragging a track to the Project Inspector tab under certain circumstances led to a crash. Fixed.

• Changing the pitch reference at high zoom levels under certain circumstances led to a crash. Fixed.

• Moving an inserted note separation under certain circumstances generated an error message. Fixed.

• Scale changes: If the “Tuning and Mode” option is active when using “Notes Follow Scale Changes”, notes are now moved correctly.

• Windows: Melodyne’s file name extension is now correctly assigned.

• Melodyne essential: The option “Highlight Notes During Playback” has been added to the Options > Note Editor submenu.

• Stand-alone mode: When the Replace Audio command has been used, local playback now correctly reflects the track selection.

• Melodyne essential: The option “Show Fades” that appeared erroneously in the Options menu has been removed.

• The Note Inspector: When algorithms without sibilant detection are in use, the Sibilant Balance parameter is now grayed out.

• Selection: When removing a note separation results in two blobs merging, the resulting blob is now also selected in ARA mode.