If you’re looking for pitch- and speed-independent warping and other sonic effects, and Max 5 is your modular patching tool of choice, a new tool is now available to add to your arsenal. elastic~ is an object similar that allows high-quality audio warping. The developer claims it uses the “same algorhythm as software giants Cubase, Ableton Live, and Kontakt.” I’m personally still quite happy with granular tools in software like Reaktor — and have recently gotten interested in exploring implementations in the free and open source SuperCollider, but of course there are great advantages to working in Max, and the implementation here seems unusually elegant and easy to use.
The developer writes:
With elastic~ it’s easy to tempo match loops together (either to each other or a global tempo); create a sampler that doesn’t change the speed of your sample as you change pitch; correct out of tune samples; create harmonizers; and just generally loop and bend and warp and stretch and……
The software is the creation of Simon Adcock and Joe Jarlett.
Product price is GBP20 — though thanks to the US Dollar surging against the Sterling, that’s not so bad. If you grab this and make stuff with it, let us know. Got an external you prefer, or other tool (a la SuperCollider) for audio warping, let us know that, too. (Warping audio is a personal and intimate process. I can’t imagine you’d share it with just any tool.)
Update: The engine in question is Elastique — quite nice, in fact, to have this “ported” effectively to Max/MSP! (And check out how many places it’s used — fascinating.)