IRCAM Lab has introduced TS (Transpose/Stretching) – a standalone OS X app for ‘radical’ audio transposition and stretching.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
Unlike other time stretching applications, “TS” uses an advanced phase vocoder engine (SuperVP) as well as the analysis/synthesis functionalities of “AudioSculpt”, providing high-quality sound processing in real-time. This technology offers amazing results even when used to transpose or stretch audio waveforms radically.
It is able to transpose and/or pitch a WAV or AIFF audio file with extremely accurate results and minimal artifacts making it possible to process professional recordings with transparent results. A life saver for audio engineers and broadcast technicians!
But “TS” is much more than a simple time stretching tool. the application can transform an audio signal to extreme settings transforming it into a totally new sound! Simply drag a WAV or AIFF file into “TS” and stretch it down at 300%. That will give you a quick idea of how powerful it is. Now try the formant, transient, sinus or noise sliders to sculpt your sound and you create totally original audio textures.
Sound designers, DJ’s and musicians will be amazed by the possibilities offered by “TS” to create totally new sounds. From a basic drum loop to pianos, voices or any other audio signal, “TS” can make something totally wild and original out of it…
You will be able to adapt the length of your compositions with ease to fit the needs of your project. If your song has to end more quickly or be extended for any reason, it is a click of a button away. and you will hear it immediately. Film and advertising work with their demands for different lengths of material will be instantaneously available to deliver the new time format.
Features:
- Sound source Waveform visualisation
- Spectral information shown on screen
- Transposition in percentage and scale format
- Powerful Time Stretching
- A unique Shape Preservation mode for voice transformation
- Transient shaping
- Harmonic and Inharmonic signals Remix options
- Midi remote control option
- Real time recording directly into the application
- Offline bounce (WAV|AIFF, 16|24|32 bit)
IRCAM Lab TS is available for US $99 through the end of Sept; after that, it is priced at $249. A demo version is also available.
If you’ve used TS, leave a comment and let us know what you think of it!
Not bad. I spent about 30mins with it and it’s pretty interesting. The stretching and audio algo’s are definitely smoother than Ableton. However, the exclusion of any sort of tempo setting to get bars/beats, makes it a little more difficult to use. Also, I must mention the requirement of AIFF or WAV files…while I certainly understand the benefit of having lossless files for best possible stretching. I find it hard to believe that WAV and AIFF are the only formats supported by the app. I have to think they’ll be supporting more in the future, but just don’t have the code ready at this time of release. To me it’s a huge omission to not support MP3, MP4, FLAC, etc and I frankly question the decision to release it early, if that’s truly the case. If you’re marketing to DJ’s and Musicians, rather than just broadcast audio, I would suggest, Ircam, you support a few more of the readily available file formats than WAV/AIFF. But, technology-wise, pretty interesting. I’d say $99 might be worth it if you’re going to get a lot of mileage out of stretching the audio to the extremes. However, $249? No-can-do. I remember I could do damn near the same thing in Logic 9.
Seriously, who uses lossy audio in music production, other than consumers, and what’s the trouble of converting a track, if needed?
However, tempo-based stretching with bars and so on is a serious problem in all of the existing standalone time-an-pitch-and-formant-stretching tools, indeed
FLAC isn’t a lossy compression and that’s not so much my argument as much as it’s just support for additional formats. I’m of the opinion that quite a few producers will actually use lossy compressed audio when they like the sound of a piece, even if it’s in a lossy format.