Waves, the people behind some highly-respected, extremely high-end audio processing effects, have turned their attention to singers. The new Vocal Bundle includes some old favorites, plus relatively new automatic tuning and pitch correction and breath removal plugins. The bundle includes:
Tune Automatic pitch correction and “melody transformation.” (also available separately for US$600 list)
DeBreath Breath removal (a description that also applies to me attempting to play soccer); this one is designed to work as transparently as possible
Renaissance Channel Channel Strip
Renaissance DeEsser “Intelligent” Sibilance Control
Doubler Emulates Double-Track Effects
Grand total: US$1000. And those of you who already have a Waves bundle can expect to see Tune LT for free. Supports most Mac/PC hosts (Pro Tools and Native alike). Copy protection via iLok dongle, as with other Waves products.
The Tune effect is the most intriguing to me, as it includes MIDI export, formant correction, and other editing tools. Pitch correction just gets more and more sophisticated, making it possible to use it for ever-subtler effects and new far-out special effects, rather than the “let’s over-correct everything” approach that gained popularity in the studio for a while.
This also vindicates something else for me: there’s a market for more software products for singers. (Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to take advantage of the brilliant sound of my Shower Pro effects processor on the velvet fog that is my voice.)