[nineteen999]

> it can tweak an otherwise brilliant performance and make it near-perfect

That's what I'm getting at - "perfect" is something that the human voice does so infrequently on its own so when we hear the "perfect" performance, we know it's been doctored.

As a point of reference, I look back at something like the Boswell sisters. Some of their early stuff was recorded in mono direct to wax disc but they were so skilled, well rehearsed and sung as a unit so closely bonded that the resulting sound is fantastic despite the primitive technology. The three individual voices aren't even recorded to seperate tracks since multitracking wasn't invented then.

Granted you can't really draw a direct comparison between that and Robbie Williams, Cher or T-Pain, but I know which I'd rather listen to any day. There are a lot of singers I've seen live and talked to over the years who wouldn't be caught dead touching up their stuff, or letting an engineer/producer do it behind their back - even if it meant missing out on a commercial recording contract.

I do appreciate where you're coming from though. I'm a little old fashioned I guess in that sometimes the mistakes that made it through improve the performance in my mind. It reminds you that the performers are human.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Vocal perfection is about attitude and projection, not pitch.

Autotune is orthogonal to creating that perfection. If someone has it Autotune won't take it away, no matter how obviously it's used.

If someone doesn't have it, Autotune won't give it to them.

[nineteen999]

I agree with all your points. I think the obsession with completely perfect vocal performance has gone too far for my personal taste. Modern mainstream pop records have a combination of too many takes spliced together for one "perfect" take, together with minor correction of the odd note here and there and the end-to-end result is "too perfect" for my old ears. There's no mistakes or personality in many of these records and it sounds boring to me. That's all. I'm not claiming to have the only valid opinion on the matter, or that all modern music is like that, and I also know I'm also not alone in my thinking and taste.