[skrap]

Disclaimer: I'm not a music producer, and my ear isn't that great, but I did write software for one of the major pitch-correction vendors for many years, and I think I have a better-than-average ear for it after listening to it for many years.

Pitch correction is something which is used on many, many professionally-produced tracks, and often without the knowledge or consent of the performers. Whether you can hear it or not is a stylistic choice (provided adequate skill from the production team: see [1]). But just because the pitch correction isn't in your face, T-Pain- or Cher-style, doesn't mean it isn't there. The software is better than that, and in the right hands, it just makes people sound more skilled than they are, and you can't hear it.

Producers generally are pretty quiet about where they use it to mask blemishes in the performance, probably because they don't want to embarrass anyone. But the producers we sold to would certainly say how much they used it, without naming artists or tracks.

[1] http://productionadvice.co.uk/aretha-autotune/

[algesten]

I believe I hear pitch correction whenever it's used. Do you have an example where it is used and I would struggle to hear it?

[philmcc]

I was involved in the recording and production for a top 40 producer, and can confirm that there was autotune on every single vocal track that left the studio.

Here are a few that I was in the room when the artist was recording, and can confirm pitch correction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=450p7goxZqg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8uPvX2te0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0oyglKjbFQ

[nightcracker]

It would've been much better if you posted 6 links, 3 with and 3 without autotune. See if people can figure out which is which.

[algesten]

The first one has that metallic sound that is a dead give away. First falsetto is quieter than the second one, and you can really hear as he increases the loudness of his voice, the metallic kicks in https://youtu.be/450p7goxZqg?t=1m27s

Second one has a "Cher moment" almost straight away, just after "wandering the desert a thousand days" the following "mmmm" has a glissando between two notes where we clearly hear the hard edge on what I assume is an auto tune lookahead. I don't actually know how they work, I just assume there's a lookahead for the next note approximation which makes glissandos sound funny. https://youtu.be/M8uPvX2te0I?t=31s

The last one I can't really fault for too much autotune, more a lack of it. The bridge is especially intense https://youtu.be/E0oyglKjbFQ?t=1m51s

[taco_emoji]

Say the singer loses the pitch slightly for half a second on a held note. If that fluctuation is corrected, what auditory information could be left for you to detect the modification?

[kazinator]

I believe I hear pitch correction when it's obviously used, and it's a lot. Pretty much most of the "top forty" pop pablum from the last 20 years. I believe there is pitch correction that I don't spot: the "dark matter" of pitch correction that is done less cheesily.

The worst of it sounds almost like packet loss concealment in a G.722 voice stream: the sustained part of a vocal note basically sounding synthesized.