Autotune Navigation
Free & Paid Plugins
- Best Auto Tune Plugins
- Free Autotune
- Open Source Autotune
- Autotune Apps
- Autotune for Garageband
- Auto-Tune for FL Studio
Useful Autotune Articles
Melodyne or Auto-Tune?
- Melodyne Version Comparison
- Melodyne vs Auto–Tune
- Melodyne vs Flex Pitch
- Melodyne vs Waves Tune
- Melodyne Alternatives
Melodyne and Flex Pitch are both graphical pitch editors, with awesome functionality to tune your vocals and other audio. Melodyne has polyphonic control and in-depth parameters, in addition to impressive transparency. Flex Pitch comes free with Logic Pro and is great for editing monophonic material, even though it’s less clean than Melodyne.
So you’re wondering if Melodyne is better than Flex Pitch, and really worth the extra cash for your music production?
In this article we’re going to cover everything you need to know about Melodyne vs Flex Pitch, so you can make an informed decision.
Contents
Melodyne Review
Compatibility: Windows & Mac OS, VST, AAX and AU formats, 32/64-bit
Melodyne 5 by Celemony is easily, the most in-depth and controllable graphical pitch control tool out there. The industry standard in pitch shifting, Melodyne has found it’s way in studios and it’s used on almost 100% of vocals in the industry.
In contrast to other automatic tuning plugins and effects, Melodyne has no automation, all of your notes are laid out in a graphical grid, for a more in-depth and intuitive control.
The great thing about Melodyne is that, unless you really push it, it’ll always sound clean and transparent. You can’t hear it doing it’s thing, which is exactly what you want when you’re trying to fix mistakes.
Melodyne is just that, it allows you to make mistakes and not worry about them too much – almost like a safety net.
In addition to an incredibly powerful tuning utility, Melodyne can even work with Polyphonic material, allowing you to change the key of entire melodic lines.
For this functionality, you need the more expensive versions of Melodyne, but changing notes in piano chords, or adjusting vocal harmonies is incredibly cool and helpful.
If you’re recording a vocal ensemble and are running out of studio time, you can easily adjust mistakes in any recording, to get a usable take.
And 100% of singers in the music industry now, all use autotune for their vocals.
Lastly, there is one drawback with Melodyne.
You can’t Melodyne vocals in real time, since anything you want to Melodyne has to be scanned in to the plugin first. If you’re looking for something more instant, Auto-Tune is probably more your speed.
How Does It Sound?
Melodyne doesn’t sound like anything, which is it’s biggest strength.
Unlike compression, EQ or any other processing, pitch correction has to be as clean and natural as possible. If all you can hear is more in-tune audio, your plugin is doing what it’s meant to.
When comparing Melodyne with Flex Pitch, Auto-Tune, Little AlterBoy, or other pitch correction tools, Melodyne is super clean, transparent and natural.
Melodyne only starts to sound bad when you make extreme adjustments. Anything within an octave, with proper adjustment, will sound clean and natural.
Pros
✅ Clean and transparent tuning algorithms
✅ Separate Pitch and Noise control
✅ ARA integration makes Melodyne extremely fast and streamlines
✅ Polyphonic control
✅ Multi-Track pitch correction
Cons
❌ ARA isn’t yet compatible with all DAW’s
❌Polyphonic and Multi-Track pitch correction only available for Editor and Studio versions.
Pricing
There are 4 main versions of Melodyne.
- Melodyne Essential ($99) – very basic pitch editing & tuning.
- Melodyne Assistant ($249) – more in-depth editing, and audio to MIDI.
- Melodyne Editor ($399) – takes it a step up with polyphonic control, and tempo editing.
- Melodyne Studio ($699) – adds sound editor, multi-track and quantising options.
Flex Pitch Review
Compatibility: Logic Pro X native plugin, Mac OS only
If you’re a Logic Pro user, you’re probably well acquainted with Flex Pitch (the native vocal tuning software, that comes stock with Logic Pro).
Flex Pitch is available for every audio channel in your project, and displays the audio as individual notes on a piano roll.
This lets you edit pitch, time and the length of your audio, in much the same way as you would with a standard MIDI piano roll.
You can even control the vibrato, gain and other parameters of your audio, to give you even more control over your melodies.
All in all, if basic vocal editing is the extent of your pitch correction and adjustment needs, you’ll probably prefer Flex Pitch. Plus it doesn’t cost a bomb!
How Does It Sound?
Admittedly, Flex Pitch is not as clean and transparent as Melodyne, and with bigger adjustments can start to sound artificial and lifeless.
Some amount of noise and artefacts are also audible when working with Flex Pitch.
This is less apparent in the mix, but does serve to muddy up the rest of the frequency spectrum, if not corrected for.
We suggest doing minimal adjustments with Flex Pitch, not to introduce too much unwanted noise in your music.
Pros
✅ Comes free with Logic Pro
✅ Intuitive and easy to use
✅ Vibrato Control
✅ Pitch Drift and Formant Shift control
Cons
❌ Can lack transparency
❌ Only Monophonic
Price
Flex Pitch is a native Logic Pro X feature. It isn’t available on other platforms, DAW’s, or as an individual VST plugin.
You can get Logic Pro X on the Apple website for $199.
Melodyne vs Flex Pitch (Verdict)
Melodyne and Flex Pitch do appear to have a lot of similarities on the surface. And this is justified since they’re both graphical pitch editing environments.
Both represent your audio in a piano roll and have options to tune and adjust your melodies. If you’re a Logic user on a budget and have been hearing lots of great things about Melodyne, you might be tempted to get the cheapest version of Melodyne and go ahead.
That being said, when comparing Melodyne 5 Essential, to Flex Pitch, Melodyne actually loses. Flex Pitch has pitch drift, vibrato control etc. with quite a few options that could cover a lot of your tuning needs.
Melodyne Essential on the other hand offers basic pitch and time adjustments, as well as formant adjustments. If you want the best of what Melodyne has to offer, you’ll need to save up for the more expensive versions.
Polyphonic pitch correction as well as so many features and options, that naming them all would be impossible, can all be had with Melodyne Editor or Studio.
Transparency is also a real contributing factor here. Flex Pitch is free for all Logic users, and comes with a pretty good set of features. That being said, while it’s not a gigantic issue, Flex pitch does introduce noise into your audio when using it.
More extreme adjustments are also bound to start sounding robotic and lifeless, which is what makes Melodyne stand out. Melodyne is extremely transparent.
Melodyne is so clean and transparent in fact, that it’s hard to tell a difference in audio quality between a Melodyned and dry audio signal.
With that in mind, however, Melodyne comes into it’s own with the more expensive versions, so if money is an issue and you already have Flex Pitch, getting Melodyne Essential won’t do you much good.
If you can afford it, however, we’d use Melodyne over Flex Pitch any day, the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks and making the decision which to use, is quite easy.
Finishing Up
Melodyne and Flex Pitch are both graphical pitch editors, with awesome functionality to tune your vocals and other audio. Melodyne has polyphonic control and in-depth parameters, in addition to impressive transparency. Flex Pitch comes free with Logic Pro and is great for editing monophonic material, even though it’s less clean than Melodyne.
Whether you’re fine with just using Flex Pitch, or want some in-depth control over your audio with Melodyne, tuning vocals is an important process in modern music.
Which you choose entirely depends on what you need, and what you can afford.
Melodyne is a professional software package, and can be quite expensive, so if you already have Flex Pitch, you might find better ways to invest your money.
If you want exactly what Melodyne has to offer however, you won’t regret your purchase. It’s by far, the most powerful and versatile tuning utility out there!
Melodyne vs The Competition
With so many different options on the market, you’re probably looking at multiple different solutions to autotune, comparing them to Melodyne to see if it’s really worth it.
We tried and tested them all and wrote in-depth comparisons to help you decide which is worth it:
Toms is a music producer & DJ, born and raised in Post Soviet Latvia. Currently based in Brighton, Toms has had over 6 years of experience with all things production and in that time, he’s done a tonne of cool stuff! He’s played multiple festivals, had experience in the field with mixing & mastering and even become a freelance journalist in the music industry.
Toms currently creates music under the alias Sovereign. Producing music that’s intimate and subtle, while full of edge and energy, the young producer combines the artistic sounds of Trip Hop artists like Massive Attack, with the energy and youthfulness of producers like Flume, Jamie XX and Yaeji. You can check his stuff on Soundcloud.
