Since version 1.0 was released a couple of years ago (see our original review for an account of the basic features), various improvements have been added, such as pitch and time quantisation, Undo (at multiple levels), the ability to deal with stereo files, and support for more platforms, including Mac OS X and Windows. Note that the original audio files remain unchanged - processing takes place in real time under guidance of a special Melody Definition file created when the original audio file is analysed by Melodyne. For most projects where the work has been started in a sequencer, files can be imported into Melodyne (either via an import routine or by dragging them into Melodyne's Arrange page), processed and then saved to be reused back in the original project. The Melodyne environment includes multitrack playback and recording, with an Arrange page, rather like a sequencer, and it also has a simple mixer that now support VST and Audio Units plug-ins in addition to its inbuilt reverb. Melodyne works only with monophonic pitched sounds (or rhythmic unpitched sounds), and these also need to be free from spill and delay-based processing such as echo or reverb for the process to track the pitches properly. However, the package does include some demo session files that are fairly well documented, and it's well worth working through these before you start 'Melodyning' in anger. Having just read the manual for v2.0, I have to say that it still isn't entirely user-friendly - some procedures seem to be talked about rather than described logically and it's not immediately obvious how the processing works at a file level. Very positive reviews followed, including our own in November 2001, though the user interface came in for some criticism, as did the manual. It seemed that you could bend audio just like chewing gum, and the processing artifacts remained amazingly small.
You could even make new melodies out of existing material, while rhythmic loops could be tempo-shifted over a wide range and freely played melodies forced to fit an existing tempo. Notes could be pitch-corrected, lengthened and dragged to completely new pitches (by more than an octave), while their phrasing and vibrato could be adjusted. We saw demos of audio recordings where the individual notes were shown as waveforms on a piano-roll-type grid depicting actual pitches and where pitch-bends and vibratos were shown by a 'bendy thread' running through the waveform. Whole musical phrases could be time-stretched and single notes could be extended seemingly indefinitely.
Melodyne attracted a lot of positive press when it was first unveiled, promising as it did the ability to modify audio in the time, pitch and formant domains with minimal processing artifacts. Version 2 of Celemony's revolutionary pitch- and tempo-shifting software includes new features, better sequencer integration and an improved interface.
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