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Best Pitch Shifter VST Plugins 2024

Pitch shifter plugins are audio processing tools used in the world of digital audio production and music technology. They are designed to alter the pitch or tuning of audio signals without affecting the tempo or duration of the audio. These plugins are commonly used in various musical genres, sound design, and audio post-production to achieve creative and practical effects.

Pitch shifter plugins work by modifying the frequency of the audio signal, allowing users to raise or lower the pitch of individual notes or entire tracks. This capability makes them invaluable for tasks such as pitch correction, harmonization, and creating unique musical textures. They can also be used to correct tuning issues in vocal or instrumental recordings, making them a crucial tool for many producers and engineers.

In addition to pitch correction and traditional musical applications, pitch shifter plugins are frequently employed in experimental and electronic music, as well as in sound design for video games, film, and television. These plugins come in various forms, from simple pitch shifters to more sophisticated tools with additional features like formant preservation, modulation, and real-time processing.

These are frequently used by sound designers in cinema and television projects. Many fictional characters have pitch-shifted voices, such as Smaug from The Hobbit and Steppenwolf from Zack Snyder’s Justice League. As a result, pitch changers are a common feature in film and television productions. Of course, it can be used in a variety of musical styles, particularly contemporary electronic music.

Pitch-shifting plugins offer a diverse variety of features and functions. They can be used to create subtle harmonic diversity as well as more aggressive processing techniques. This post will present a few pitch shifting algorithms that range from basic to feature-rich, with a wide range of modulation plugins on the market.

Celemony Melodyne 5 Essential

Melodyne is a vocal editing program for professionals. It’s the most powerful editing tool for producing pitch-perfect pop vocals while remaining as undetectable as possible. Melodyne, on the other hand, is certainly overkill if you’re only looking for creative pitch changing effects. Melodyne, on the other hand, will cover all the basics if you need to accurately alter vocal or instrument performances, as well as do some fun shifting.

Consider an autotune that allows you to adjust the key of a melody or a vocal in real time. You can use melodyne to move from Cminor to a completely different major scale. It analyzes your audio and divides it into editable notes for you.

The Melodyne 5 Pitch Shifter VST has been methodically built over years of being on the pitch correction plugins, with incredibly clean algorithms and a straightforward workflow. Melodyne analyzes your audio and provides you with a pitch map that you may change using a simple and comprehensive interface. Add in the various articulation options, such as vibrato, glide, and so on. You may also fully alter the melody of any song. It’s ideal for pitching vocals or instruments. Melodyne 5 is one of the best pitch shifter VST plugins you’ll ever use, whether it’s to correct a flat note or fully modify the tune.

Melodyne pitch shifting mechanism is remarkably straightforward while providing a wealth of acoustic manipulation options like auto tune. Once you go past an octave in either direction, your results will start to feel less and less natural, as they do with all pitch shifter plugins. However, you won’t be able to hear melodyne itself whether you’re making little tweaks or total alterations. What you want from a pitch-shifting plugin is for it to accomplish its work without making you aware of it. This is the Best Pitch Shifter Plugins in 2022.

Soundtoys Little AlterBoy

The Little AlterBoy from Soundtoys was created to create dramatic vocal modifications from pristine, monophonic inputs. This plugin can change pitch, offer a nasal voice bottom, generate a monotone robotic affect, and act as a real-time auto-tune. Soundtoys even included a drive knob that uses the same technique as Decapitator, another of their plugins. As a result, you’ll have a dynamic and entertaining plugin with serious capabilities.

Little AlterBoy can also change the gender of your voice utilizing formant shifting and MIDI pitch control, among other things. Despite its vast capabilities, the auto tuning plugin remains as user-friendly as possible. The user interface has very few controls, but the sound is fantastic for audio input.

The creative pitch shifting plugin first portion has two knobs: pitch and formant. The pitch knob adjusts the pitch of your vocals by up to one octave. Similarly, the formant control modifies the sound of your voice. The pitch and formant knobs can be ganged together using the Link button between these two parameters. When you want the most natural results.

The plugin has three different modes of operation. The first is Transpose, which is the pitch-shifting option by default. Then there’s Quantize, which adjusts the pitch of the voice to the closest match. It produces the well-known auto-tuned pop vocal effect. Finally, the robot option reduces the vocal pitch to a single note.

You may use the mix knob to produce a lovely double-tracking impression by setting the pitch to any interval above or below the main theme. It can be used as a vocal harmonizer, an octaver for guitars and other instruments, and so on. The plugin, however, cannot be given a scale or key.

AlterBoy offers a variety of voice alterations. It has simple controls and is therefore a user-friendly plugin. It has high-quality pitch shifting, auto-tune voice effects, and monophonic tuning. It also allows you to use a MIDI keyboard to control your voice, which is a really useful feature. In general, it’s a fantastic addition to any music producer’s toolkit. This is the Best Pitch Shifter Plugin in 2022.

Devious Machines Pitch Monster

With this flexible plugin, you may create harmonies in stacks or pitch-shift beyond recognition. Pitch Monster, despite its simple interface, lives up to its name with functionality that go beyond what you’d expect from similar plugins. Furthermore, because to its granular pitch-shifting engine, Pitch Monster typically sounds better than other pitch-shifting plugins when comparing the same features for stereo enhancement.

Pitch can be changed up to six octaves from the original key with this plugin. Pitch Monster is an unequaled tool for sound design because of its versatility. It can also produce eight-voice harmony, with each vocal capable of generating eight unison voices. In total, there are sixty-four voices.

Granular, Formant, and Vocode are three pitch-shifting engines included in the plugin. The Granular Engine is ideal for any type of music, and the granular size can be adjusted. The last two engines, on the other hand, are more suited for single singing. Vocode flattens vibration, whereas Formant adjusts the pitch of the vowel and consonant individually for sound quality.

Normal, Midi, and Chord are the three performance styles available in Pitch Monster. The regular mode is only a pitch shifter, however the Midi mode lets you to manipulate the pitch using a midi input and optional glide. Chord mode, on the other hand, allows you to play multiple notes at the same time. You can also save up to eight chords using the Chord Memory feature. Automation can be used to play the chords. This tool is great for making fake harmonies during a live performance.

You can’t go wrong with this plugin if you require a pitch shifter frequently. It also has a Midi mode that can help with vocal pitch adjustment to some extent. Furthermore, the plugin’s harmony engine and chord memory features set it apart in this regard.

Pitch Monster, on the other hand, may be overkill and costly if you only require a simple pitch-shifting plugin. Aside than that, the plugin’s features are excellent. This is the Best Pitch Shifter VST Plugin in 2022.

Boz Digital Labs ProVocative

Boz Digital Labs’ ProVocative is a lightweight micro pitch shifter that gives you complete control. It has a simple user interface with three main and three supporting parameters. Pitch modulation is measured in cents and ranges between one and twenty. When you select this option, ProVocative divides the signal into two modulations of the quantity you choose.

The highest pitch defaults to the right, whereas the lowest defaults to the left. The Width knob, on the other hand, can be used to modify their placements. Similarly, the wet and dry knobs make it simple to build parallel mixes, giving you a wider and richer sound. To add lag to the wet signal, there is a built-in delay with customizable time. It enables you to add a second, pitched voice to your sound for a fuller tone. You could also recognize it as Ken Townsend, an engineer at Abbey Road Studios, who created the renowned doubling effect.

A high-pass and low-pass filter may be found in the middle of the user interface. You can change the range of wet frequencies with these filters. Furthermore, when employing the pitch-shifter on bassy instruments, they’re critical for avoiding phase cancellation. Similarly, to avoid unexpected clashing, you might want to avoid altering the high frequencies on vocals.

This plugin was created by Boz Digital to provide you a software version of the popular 80s vocal treatment technique of adding thickness and width to your voice recordings. With a configurable delay time that gives you the widening effect if set to a low time discrepancy, this plugin does credit to the iconic effect. You may get the slapback delay sound by setting it to a higher time margin.

Because this pitch shifting technology uses a 64-bit floating-point signal route, you can rest assured that there will be no clipping at the output. Because latency is a problem with similar plugins, Boz Digital Labs made sure that this one doesn’t put too much strain on your CPU. As a result, you get zero-latency performance, which is great for studio and live applications.

In the days of the huge hardware computers, using pitch shifters and delays came with a slew of sub-effects. This plugin ensures that the intended effects are achieved without the annoyance of time-related artifacts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Pitch Shifter?

Any plugin that can adjust the pitch of a signal up or down is known as a pitch shifter. Because of how it manipulates the waveform, it will not only boost or drop the instrument’s tone, but also modify the timbre of the signal.

These plugins are widely used in modern music production, including pop, hip hop, EDM, and other genres. They’re used on vocals, instruments, and just about anything else you can imagine of that sounds great or thrilling.

How does a Pitch Shifter VST work?

It simply chops up the recorded waveform into dozens and hundreds of little fragments behind the scenes. The waveform is extended when you pitch down. The waveform shortens when you pitch up. With realtime pitch shifters, all of this happens quickly, with no change in the duration of the recorded signal. This is what differentiates these plugins from manual pitch changing. By time extending or consolidating a clip, you can adjust the pitch of any signal while also changing the length of the audio.

Changing semitones, cents, and formant should all be possible with most pitch shifter VSTs. Semitones, commonly known as half-steps in music theory, allow you to adjust the pitch of a signal by a specified interval. Pitch shifters typically range from -12 to +12 semitones, with 12 denoting a complete octave up or down. Cents are the little frequencies in between semitones that will assist you set the right pitch to keep in sync with the music. Last but not least, formant imitates the human vocal tract.

What are some common uses for pitch shifter plugins?

Pitch shifter plugins are used for various purposes, including pitch correction, harmonization, creating unique musical textures, sound design, and correcting tuning issues in vocal or instrumental recordings.

Do pitch shifter plugins affect the quality of the audio?

The impact on audio quality can vary depending on the quality of the plugin and how it is used. High-quality pitch shifter plugins are designed to minimize artifacts and maintain audio fidelity.

Can pitch shifter plugins be used for pitch correction?

Yes, pitch shifter plugins are commonly used for pitch correction in vocal recordings. They can help fix out-of-tune notes and improve the overall pitch accuracy of a performance.