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Quickstart

Welcome to OpenVoxTuner, a real-time pitch correction and harmony generation plugin for vocals. This page gets you up and running in a few minutes. OpenVoxTuner is an audio effect: you insert it on a vocal track, choose a key and scale, and it shifts the performance onto the nearest notes of that scale.

Tip

New to the plugin? Start here, then read Correction Modes to understand Auto vs. Graphic mode.

1. Insert the plugin

OpenVoxTuner ships as VST3, AU (macOS), and a Standalone application.

  1. In your DAW, add a plugin instance to your vocal channel (as an insert/effect, not a MIDI instrument).
  2. If you are not in a DAW, launch the Standalone app — it includes an internal transport (120 BPM) so you can test without a host.
  3. Play some audio into it. The Pitch Visualizer shows the sung note, the target note, and a cents tuning meter in real time.

Note

OpenVoxTuner is a pitch-correction tool for voice — for best results use a clean, monophonic vocal signal with minimal background noise.

2. Set a key and scale

The plugin corrects pitch toward the notes of a musical scale.

  1. Key — choose the tonic (0 = C, up to 11 = B).
  2. Scale — pick from 14 scale types: Chromatic, Major, Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor, Natural Minor, Major Pentatonic, Minor Pentatonic, Blues, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Locrian, and Custom (a 12-button editor where you enable individual notes).
  3. Optional: turn on Key/Scale Detection and choose a Key Source so the plugin derives the key automatically (see below).

The notes that are "allowed" by the current scale are highlighted in yellow on the vertical piano keyboard on the left of the editor.

Key detection sources

Source Description
Auto Real-time key detection from the audio input using Krumhansl–Schmuckler profiles.
OpenVoxKey A companion bridge that shares key/scale data via shared-memory IPC.
Sidechain Analyzes the accompaniment arriving on a dedicated sidechain bus.

3. Tune the core parameters

The most important controls are:

Control Range What it does
Correction Mode Modern / Transparent Character of the correction: tight & aggressive vs. gentle.
Speed 0 – 200 ms How fast the pitch glides to the target note.
Amount 0 – 100% Dry/wet blend — 100% = fully corrected, 0% = unprocessed.
Humanize 0 – 50 cents Adds subtle random variation for a more natural sound.
Vibrato Preserve 0 – 100% Retains the singer's natural vibrato through correction.
Voice Type Universal, Bass, Baritone, Tenor, Alto, Soprano Constrains the pitch-detection range to the selected voice.
Latency Mode Direct Monitoring, Low Latency, Quality, Safe Latency/quality trade-off (see table below).

Speed cheat-sheet

Speed Result
0 ms Instant correction — the classic "T-Pain" robotic effect.
~50 ms Fast but smooth — the Antares default feel.
200 ms Slow, very natural correction that barely moves the pitch.

Latency modes

Mode Latency
Direct Monitoring 10 ms
Low Latency (default) 12 ms
Quality 20 ms
Safe 30 ms

Tip

For live singing, use Direct Monitoring or Low Latency. For finished mixes, Quality or Safe give the processor more room and can sound better.

4. Choose Auto or Graphic mode

OpenVoxTuner has two ways of working:

  • Auto (Live) — scale-aware quantization in real time. Great for live performance and fast results.
  • Graphic (Curve Editor) — draw the exact pitch curve the audio should follow. Great for offline, note-by-note perfection (Melodyne-style).

You switch between them with the Mode selector. See Correction Modes and Curve Editor.

5. Add harmony (optional)

Enable the Harmony Engine to add one or more backing voices generated from your lead vocal:

  1. Turn on Harmony Enable.
  2. Choose a Harmony Type (3rd/4th/5th/octave intervals, Vocal Stack, Power Chord, Drone, Unison, and more).
  3. Pick Use Voice (pitch-shifted live vocal) or Synth (synthesized tones such as Choir or Organ).

Learn more in Harmony.

6. Try the included presets

OpenVoxTuner ships with factory plugin presets you can load as a starting point, including:

  • Natural Light — subtle correction, transparent mode.
  • Modern Pop — fast correction, bright formant.
  • Ballad Slow — slow retarget, vibrato preserved.
  • Live Vocal — balanced for live use.
  • Podcast Speech — optimized for spoken voice.

There is also an A/B + morph system so you can compare two states and continuously interpolate between them.

7. MIDI

OpenVoxTuner works with MIDI in three ways: following a MIDI note (pitch target), sending MIDI notes out, and importing a MIDI file as a pitch curve.

7.1 Tuning follows MIDI IN (MIDI target)

The "Tuning follows MIDI IN" item in the hamburger menu (bottom-left) makes an incoming held MIDI note drive the correction target: as long as you hold a note, the voice is tuned to that note's frequency instead of the nearest scale note. This is useful to force a specific harmony or to retune a voice live from a keyboard/piano-roll.

Note

While a MIDI note is actively driving the correction, a pulsing amber "FOLLOWS MIDI IN" badge appears at the top-right of the plot in both the visualizer and the Curve Editor, and the Curve Editor also shows a dashed amber line at the pitch of the held MIDI note — so you can see at a glance which target is being applied. (In the visualizer, the green output line already reflects it.)

How to get MIDI into the plugin (DAW routing). OpenVoxTuner is an audio effect (acceptsMidi()), so it has no MIDI input on a track — MIDI must be routed to its channel. In every DAW the principle is the same: put OpenVoxTuner on your vocal audio track, then send a MIDI/Instrument track to that channel.

DAW How to route MIDI to the plugin
Studio One / Fender Studio Pro Put OpenVoxTuner on the vocal Audio track. Create an Instrument (or MIDI) track with your notes or set your keyboard as its Input, then in that track's Output section route it to the channel hosting OpenVoxTuner. The channel appears in the MIDI output list once the plugin has been scanned.
Reaper Simplest. Place OpenVoxTuner on the vocal track and put your MIDI on that track (MIDI item or a second track routed via the I/O matrix "MIDI → track"). MIDI flows automatically to the FX chain.
Cubase / Nuendo Insert OpenVoxTuner on the Audio track (VST3). Create a MIDI track whose Output points to the Audio track and selects OpenVoxTuner.
Ableton Live Insert OpenVoxTuner on the vocal Audio track. Create a MIDI track whose MIDI To points to the Audio track and selects OpenVoxTuner.
FL Studio / Bitwig / Pro Tools Route the MIDI/Instrument track's output to the channel carrying OpenVoxTuner (supported via track output routing).

Note

The MIDI input bus is always declared by the plugin so hosts (especially Studio One / Fender Studio Pro) can persist the routing between sessions. In those DAWs the channel becomes a valid MIDI output destination as soon as OpenVoxTuner has been scanned.

7.2 MIDI OUT

The "MIDI Out" toggle in the hamburger menu makes the plugin emit MIDI note events so you can trigger a virtual instrument, arpeggiator, or hardware synth from the detected and corrected vocals.

  • The corrected lead note is sent on MIDI channel 1 (velocity 127).
  • Harmony voices are sent on channels 2–9 (velocity 100), one per active harmony voice (up to 8).
  • Emitted notes are scale-locked: they are always clean scale notes, independent of the "Follow Lead" toggle. Note-offs are sent whenever the detected pitch changes or when MIDI Out is disabled.

In Studio One / Fender Studio Pro, enable MIDI Out, then route the channel's MIDI Output to another instrument track or to a hardware/soft synth to hear it.

7.3 Import a MIDI file as a pitch curve (Curve Editor)

You can turn a MIDI file into an editable pitch curve in the Curve Editor:

  1. Switch to the Curve Editor tab.
  2. Drag a .mid / .midi file from the OS file explorer onto the plugin window, or choose "Import MIDI..." in the Curve Editor hamburger menu.
  3. If the file has several active channels, a dialog asks you to pick a channel and an extraction strategy (highest note / lowest note / loudest note / specific channel). The percussion channel (10) is always excluded.
  4. The MIDI notes are converted into a step-mode curve (discrete notes, no glissando) and the view auto-fits the import. You can undo with Ctrl+Z.

Learn more in Curve Editor.

Troubleshooting

  • No correction heard — make sure Bypass is off, Amount is not at 0%, and the pitch detector is receiving a clean signal (check the noise gate / input levels).
  • Robotic sound — your Speed may be too low; raise it toward 50–200 ms for a more natural result.
  • Wrong notes — check the Key and Scale settings, or enable key detection.
  • No harmony — make sure Harmony Enable is on and a Harmony Type other than "None" is selected.