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  1. Member
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    In the not too distant future, I'm going to be undertaking a somewhat gargantuan project to convert literally hours and hours of dialogue. The dialogue will be clean recordings of a woman speaking. I am going to be raising the pitch. I want to raise it by at least half of an octave. Yes, I realize in advance that this may be a tall order.

    I've already toyed with this in Adobe Audition. The results are... well, clearly not ideal. Sometimes it sounds natural, but sometimes it seems to dip into weird territory. Not easy to describe.

    I assume there are better options out there. I generally expect that free options are not going to give the best results. Problem is I just don't even know where to begin. I want to get the best result I can, but I also can't sit there and manually baby the process; it has to be intelligent enough to handle the dynamics of the human voice without my specific interaction.

    Anyway, suggestions welcome. Thanks.
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  2. I'm a Super Moderator johns0's Avatar
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    I think,therefore i am a hamster.
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    I gave that a whack. The result sounded like a chipmunk, which I can at least say Audition's result did not (usually). Well, it's freeware. Does a heck of a job with a lot of basic things but I never really expected it to work miracles.
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  4. I'm a Super Moderator johns0's Avatar
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    You have to set a certain setting instead of using a default value,i use it to change pitch and it works with no issues.
    I think,therefore i am a hamster.
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    It has a "change pitch" effect, wherein one can select a percentage or semi-tones. If there is more to it than that, it's not so obvious.
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    Even the best algorithms would have difficulty if the amount of change is + or - >25%. 1/2 an octave is +50%.

    Serato Pitch-n-Time plugin for ProTools is one of the best that I know of that can independently adjust pitch, tempo & formant. But you shouldn't expect miracles.

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  7. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    I 'm not sure why you would want to just raise the pitch higher, But if you want the affect of someone talking much faster, try 'Change Tempo' or 'Change Speed' in Audacity, maybe along with 'Change Pitch'. Audition probably has similar settings.
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    Originally Posted by redwudz View Post
    I 'm not sure why you would want to just raise the pitch higher, But if you want the affect of someone talking much faster, try 'Change Tempo' or 'Change Speed' in Audacity, maybe along with 'Change Pitch'. Audition probably has similar settings.
    Reason I want to raise the pitch is because the dialog in question is too low. It is meant to sound like a relatively young woman, but what it instead sounds like is a 46-year-old grandmother who smokes. (Because in fact that is the nature of the individual who provided the voice.) You would be hard-pressed to find a female voice that is naturally of a deeper register.
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  9. Can you post a sample ?
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    Originally Posted by poisondeathray View Post
    Can you post a sample ?
    Not directly. The resources in question are not yet available, and the recording I am basing my analysis on is from a live feed in an auditorium, and thus not particularly suitable for testing modifications.

    However I have been toying with clips of a similar voice. Here is a tiny excerpt.
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  11. I played with it in reaper...but got some stuck up British voice now hahaha
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    Well... wow. Although it's obviously too distorted to still be used, it is tremendously superior to what Audition spits out at the same level of modification (60% of original, it seems). I am impressed.

    Might I ask how you went about rendering that result? If I use the same method on a somewhat less extreme modification, such as maybe 75% of original, maybe the result will turn out to be acceptable. Or maybe if I go with 80 or 85% of original, the result will sound even more natural than what I get from Audition at those values.
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  13. Sure but I've never altered pitch this much before. I just thought the "British" voice was funny. I don't know what to do - I just played with the settings. I'm sure you can get better results if you fiddle with it or a real audio guru can probably point you in the right direction of how you're supposed to do it

    I used ReaPitch VST (comes with Reaper by default), 9 semitone. The shift algorithm was "elastique 3 pro" set on Preserve Formants (low pitches)

    Also a ReaEQ VST (also comes by default) and just fiddled with some pass filters. 99% of what I uploaded is from the pitch algorithm
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