Melodyne 5 Studio sibilant issue

[Ozz]

I recently upgraded from Melodyne Studio 4 to Studio 5, and found an issue that I'm hoping there's a setting for that I just haven't found.

I was doing a GnR cover recently, and the "high, gritty" vocal style seems to mostly ALL show up as sibilants for me.....And unfortunately, that means I can't adjust the pitch on any but a very few notes/blobs.

I was able to find some settings where you can turn the visibility of sibilants off (in other words, they just look like normal blobs rather than having the vertical lines through them), but they are still internally tagged as sibilants, and so the pitch still isn't adjustable.

Does anyone know if there is a way to actually turn off the sibilant detection off so that it's possible to treat everything as a normal note and adjust them?

 

[bitflipper]

AFAIK sibilance detection is automatic. You can redefine the sibilant region within any given blob, but that's it. There are no adjustable parameters that I can see.

That's because Melodyne treats all unpitched material as "sibilance", including breath noises, fricatives and such. Basically, if it can't find the pitch then it's classified as "sibilance". This is actually a good thing, because if you tried to edit the pitch on such bits it just wouldn't work and you'd probably just get chipmunks.

Make sure you're not using any effects on the vocal track you're editing, as they can confuse the algorithms. Always edit completely dry and add fx later.

[Glenn Stanton]

"With the “Melodic” algorithm, however, this happens automatically, whereas with the “Percussive Pitched” algorithm, sibilant control is by default switched off. To switch it on, go to Note Assignment Mode and check “Sibilant Handling” in the Algorithm Inspector"

[marcL]

2 hours ago, bitflipper said:

AFAIK sibilance detection is automatic. You can redefine the sibilant region within any given blob, but that's it. There are no adjustable parameters that I can see.

That's because Melodyne treats all unpitched material as "sibilance", including breath noises, fricatives and such. Basically, if it can't find the pitch then it's classified as "sibilance". This is actually a good thing, because if you tried to edit the pitch on such bits it just wouldn't work and you'd probably just get chipmunks.

Make sure you're not using any effects on the vocal track you're editing, as they can confuse the algorithms. Always edit completely dry and add fx later.

IMO this is another example of developer arrogance (my detection is always absolutely correct)! ? Most of the time I don't think it is a good idea to do any "intelligent" detection/automatism without the possibility for the user to adjust the results. Another example for this is transient detection in some DAWs, without correction possibility. CbB and Reaper are here some positive examples, because the user is able to adjust transients after detection.

[Ozz]

Thanks for the responses......Glenn Stanton, YOU, sir, are a life saver! ?   Percussive Pitched mode seems to be exactly what the Dr ordered!

[bitflipper]

10 hours ago, marled said:

IMO this is another example of developer arrogance (my detection is always absolutely correct)! ? Most of the time I don't think it is a good idea to do any "intelligent" detection/automatism without the possibility for the user to adjust the results.

I totally agree with you; software should never pretend to be smarter than you. Even if sometimes it is, it's best not to assume that by default.

However, in this case Melodyne has actually taken a logical path. Melodyne's main purpose is to accurately detect pitch. It's really, really good at that. But some bits are atonal and have no pitch. The sounds of hard consonants, "S"s and "SH"s, vocal fries, breath noises and so on.

Prior to version 5, these components were simply ignored. You can, of course, still ignore them if you like. But now Melodyne identifies them so you can adjust their levels. That's a good thing. If Melodyne didn't offer that, then what could it possibly let you do with non-pitched components? Nothing. Now you can do something with them. That's not arrogance, it's perfectly reasonable. 

Melodyne is not a de-esser, it's an editor. You shouldn't allow it to make sibilance corrections on its own, any more than you'd allow it to make pitch corrections on its own - even though that's what it does best!

[marcL]

On 5/29/2021 at 6:36 AM, bitflipper said:

However, in this case Melodyne has actually taken a logical path. Melodyne's main purpose is to accurately detect pitch. It's really, really good at that. But some bits are atonal and have no pitch. The sounds of hard consonants, "S"s and "SH"s, vocal fries, breath noises and so on.

Prior to version 5, these components were simply ignored. You can, of course, still ignore them if you like. But now Melodyne identifies them so you can adjust their levels. That's a good thing. If Melodyne didn't offer that, then what could it possibly let you do with non-pitched components? Nothing. Now you can do something with them. That's not arrogance, it's perfectly reasonable.

Absolutely! ? But as with everything in this world nothing is just black and white! And this is exactly the problem with those acadamic simplifications used to design software and other things. Do you really want to say that the OP has just sung atonal noise? ? No, IMO Melodyne's algorithm to differ between noise and pitched content is just not perfect!

I like Melodyne, it can do cool and astonishing things! But one can see clearly its limits regarding note starts (transients) and note pitches in more complicated vocals or in smearing polyphonic instrument sounds (not everything is just a simple piano). By the way, if you use several programs/plugins to detect transients of the same clip, then you will see quite different results (especially if not drums/percussion)! That's what I like in Reaper where you can configure the transient detection to accommodate your material!

[bitflipper]

6 hours ago, marled said:

...Do you really want to say that the OP has just sung atonal noise? ? ...

 That's doubtful. I would be very curious to see and hear a bit of the OP's recording, though. Something's clearly amiss.

I have edited some pretty awful, er, edgy and extreme vocals, and Melodyne's almost never had a problem ferreting out the pitch component. On the rare occasions when it has had a problem it's always been because the recording wasn't clean and dry, e.g. it was distorted, noisy, or had fx added before the edit.

[charles kasler]

Hi - I know this is old...I wrote tech support for Melodyne & got this reply, FYI: 

You can manually switch the sibilant removal feature on or off, if you go to the algorithm inspector in the Note Assignment mode.

 

[sjoens]

Hi, I think post 3 covered that, but while I'm here....

One thing Melodyne seems to have trouble with is separating instrumental octaves. Quite often I get blobs containing 2 notes 1 octave apart when I need them to be separate. This in spite claims otherwise: "With vocals, but every type of instrument as well – including polyphonic ones, such as the piano and guitar."