Melodyne 5 brings big changes to the beloved pitch editing software

Celemony’s Melodyne is known widely as the main contender to Antares‘ Auto-Tune pitch correction software. When Melodyne 4 was launched four years ago, at the start of 2016, features such as tempo detection, and the introduction of ‘DNA’ instantly gave it a leg-up from its competition. Now, seemingly out of nowhere, Celemony has announced its latest version, Melodyne 5. This time with even more new feature inclusions that cut time, and bring a more natural sound to pitch correction.

Features

The first, and arguably most notable feature of Melodyne 5, is the new sibilance detector. This will automatically scan and detect sibilant notes and sounds during the transfer period. Afterwords, they will be notated with a waveform different than normal, with vertical lines down the middle.

This, on its own, is quite useful. However, it becomes even more valuable when it comes time for note stretching. With sibilant notes being detected as separate from fundamental tones, the sibilance will stay in place while you adjust the timing of only the word itself. Leaving a smoother, more natural sounding edited word. Additionally, the transferred and detected sibilant notes will have their own editing tools. Individual ‘s’ sounds can now be amplitude adjusted up and down — potentially eliminating the need for de-essing from another plugin.

Melodyne 5 from Celemony also comes with a brand new ability to apply fades to individually transferred notes, all in house. This means that after correcting the pitch or tone of an individual note, it can also now be faded in or out without the need of closing the software and adjusting in the DAW.

The intonation detector has also been given a face-lift. Notes will automatically snap to their proper pitch with a more finely-tuned system behind them. This is assisted by a brand new chord tracking tool for polyphonic editing. This analyzes input notes during the transfer process, and displays chord names and changes across the top of the sequence editor.

Celemony’s Melodyne 5 was dropped very stealthily, without any prior announcement from the company. It is available now across all four versions and prices that were available with the previous version: Essential ($99), Assistant ($299), Editor ($499), and Studio ($849). Those with previous versions of Melodyne that wish to upgrade to its fifth installment can do so at a discounted price. In addition to this, anybody who purchased Melodyne 4 software on or after March 1st, 2020, has instant, free access to upgrade their software to its respective Melodyne 5 version as soon as you log into your account. Alternatively, you can get Melodyne 5 from Plugin Boutique.