AutoTune Advanced wants to fix bad notes without ironing the life out of a vocal

At this point in time, AutoTune is almost as common in the studio as the microphone itself. Pitch correction (which AutoTune is used for) has always had a slightly awkward job: fix the mistakes while still preferably keeping the singer's voice out of significant changes. Antares is trying to improve that balance with AutoTune Advanced, its new flagship pitch-correction plugin built around a rewritten tuning engine.

The headline feature is the new DVA vibrato engine. Instead of treating every movement away from the centre of a note as something that needs fixing, Antares says DVA can distinguish the natural vibrato and expressive pitch movement from genuine errors. That matters because aggressive correction can easily flatten the character out of a vocal. AutoTune Advanced aims to tighten the pitch without turning every performance into a straight, flat line.

Live performers also get a useful upgrade. Live Latency Mode runs below 1 ms, with support from 44.1 to 192 kHz, making real-time monitoring through AutoTune much more practical on stage or while recording. There is also a new Vibrato FX section with real-time visualization, an updated Formant Designer and redesigned scale editing built around a 78-note visual keyboard.

AutoTune can still deliver the unmistakable robotic effect when that is the goal. Take for example trap music. The more interesting part is that Antares now seems equally focused on making pitch correction less obvious. That could give the next Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift, currently singing into a microphone in their bedroom, a fighting chance.