How to Install AutoTalent in Ardour and Audacity using Ubuntu?

Although I am not a strong fan of auto-tuning plug-ins; I received some inquiries how to implement auto-tuning feature in open source recording software such as Audacity and Ardour. Actually the maker of the real Autotune plugin is Antares Audio Technologies but this will work only for DAW in Windows operating system and Mac.

In Linux, you should find equivalent plugins to Antares AutoTune that would reasonably work. Then I found “AutoTalent” by Tom Baran; this works very similar to Autotune and is an open source software (free).

This software will only work in Linux. Bear in mind that there are limitations with the use of auto-tuning plug-ins like Autotalent, such as the following:

1.) It works best in monophonic sound sources. Monophonic sound sources comes from one melody line or a single instrument. For example, a single vocal recording is a monophonic track since there is only a single instrument out of it (a single voice).

However a recording featuring an entire choir (which consists of several singers and harmony) or a rock band performing are polyphonic in nature because there are already several sound sources mixed together (coming from different musical instruments). In this case, the autotalent plugin won’t properly perform the pitch correction accurately.

Thus in any multi-track project; this plugin is best applied to each monophonic sound source in a multi-track project. It is not recommended to apply the plugin to the output of the mixdown because it is already polyphonic. For your guidance, below is an example how you can implement autotalent plugin in your multitrack project (supposing there are 3 mono tracks to be pitched corrected):

2.) There is an acceptable latency of 40ms at a 48KHz sampling rate in your mixing session. In otherwords, there is some lag.

3.) This won’t work in Audacity installed in Windows except if the source code is purposely compiled to work with it. However bear in mind that Autotalent is tested to work only in Linux.

Installation of Autotalent in Ardour

Step1.) Download the package in the official Autotalent page.

There can be a lot of download links, so scroll down until you can see “Where can I get it?” section. Depending whether you are using 64-bit or 32-bit version of your Ubuntu operating system; click the appropriate tar.gz download link.

This tutorial will be using the 32-bit version (the same steps are applicable also to 64-bit version). As of September 2011, the latest released version is 0.2. After downloading the tar.gz file, it will be have a filename like: autotalent-0.2_Linux32.tar.gz

Step2.) Right click on the folder and click “Extract here”. The folder will be extracted and it will contain the following content:

This folder will most likely be found in your Ubuntu downloads folder:

/home/yourusername/Downloads/autotalent-0.2_Linux32

Step3.) Verify the correct path of your LADSPA (Linux Audio Developer Simple Plugin) installed plugins. If you have no idea what is LADSPA or if it is not installed; you can start installing LADSPA here. Most likely the path to your LADSPA folder can be found in:

/usr/lib/ladspa

If that folder does not exist, then most likely you have not yet installed LADSPA.

Step4.) Go to Applications – Accessories – Terminal. In the command prompt, login as root by issuing this command:

sudo -s -H

Then type your Ubuntu password.

Step5.) Copy autotalent.so from inside this folder:
/home/yourusername/Downloads/autotalent-0.2_Linux32

TO inside the LADSPA directory:
/usr/lib/ladspa

This is the actual command you would type in the terminal:

cp /home/yourusername/Downloads/autotalent-0.1_Linux32/autotalent.so /usr/lib/ladspa

Step4.) Go to inside your LADSPA directory: /usr/lib/ladspa and confirm that you have autotalent.so correctly copied. It should be found along with other LADSPA plugins:

Step5.) Go to Applications – Sound & Video and then launch Ardour.
Step6.) Finally you can add, use and install the plugin to your Ardour workstation. If you observed any incompatibilities, system freeze and crash, you can report it to the plugin author or the Ardour support forum.

Installation of Autotalent in Audacity

Make sure you comply with the following requirements:

a.) Install LADSPA plugin to Ubuntu.

b.) Follow Step1 to Step4 above, that will copy the Autotalent to the LADSPA directoy.

c.) Launch Audacity and open monophonic wav file to be pitch corrected with Autotalent.

d.) Go to Effects – Plugin 1 to 15 then select AutoTalent.

Important: If version 0.2 won’t work in 32-bit Ubuntu, you can install the older version which is version 0.1. To configure the effect settings, supposing you have a bass line D-Bm-G-A and then you need to make sure that it hits the correct pitch of the notes D-B-G-A. You can configure Autotalent as:

This will ensure that pitch correction are implemented on the affected notes.

Content last updated on July 5, 2012