Jason Dunn
05-02-2005, 10:30 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.chronotron.com/content.php?page=products' target='_blank'>http://www.chronotron.com/content.php?page=products</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Chronotron is an improved version of the popular DSP plug-in that allows you to manipulate tempo and pitch separately, in other words, it allows you to change the tempo of the music without affecting pitch ("time scaling" or "time stretching/warping") and/or change pitch without affecting tempo ("key change" or "transpose"). Based on a phase vocoder, Chronotron is the first plug-in to deliver high quality audio in real-time at reasonable scaling ratios. This plug-in requires Win98/Me/2000/XP and Windows Media Player 9.x and/or Winamp 3.x (or greater)."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/chronotron.gif" /> <br /><br />This is something I've been seeking a very long time - a real-time pitch-shifting tool for Windows Media Player. Several years ago I was using a tool that worked with Winamp (if memory serves) but I wasn't able to find anything that worked with Windows Media Player. If you're not a musician, or an aspiring Karaoke singer, this won't be a useful tool for you. If you're like me, however, and get asked to do songs that are a bit outside your range, a tool like this is useful for pulling it back (or pushing it up) into your vocal pocket.<br /><br />Chronotron is simple enough to use: there are two sliders, key and tempo. The key slider is used to change the key of the song, up or down, measured in <a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/cents.html">cents</a>. Being the utter dunce at theory that I am, I had to look up what cents were :oops: because I'd normally think in terms of tones and semitones when moving a song up or down. The tempo slider works in a similar fashion, only it controls the percentage of tempo. If you want to slow the song down, you slide the tempo down by 10% and the tempo is slower without changing the pitch of the song. You can adjust the key by 1 cent increments, and the temp by 1% bumps, so this tool is quite precise.<br /><br />Overall, the tool works quite well. The audio gets "warbly" when you shift it, but I've yet to find a tool that doesn't do that. The audio level drops a bit as well when you shift, but turning it up compensates for that. What would make this tool even more useful would be a way for it to output the pitch-shifted song to an MP3 or WMA file but CD burning. All in all, well worth the $26 price tag if you find yourself wishing you could pitch-shift a song in order to learn it.