Pitch Shifter VST analysis

[Boombastix]

I did some pitch testing and here is my summary of a few pitch shifter VST, compared to Polar as well. NOT using the formant function for the ones that had it.

Material tested:
Dry mono vocal
Clean Guitar Strums
Synth Chord
Hi Hats
Noise sweep
Drum Groove

How: Changing/sweeping the pitch parameter from -12 to +12, ie +/- 1 oct.

1. kHs Pitch shifter
2. SoundToys LittleAlterBoy
3. Waves GTR Stomp

The above three were so bad it is not worth mentioning.

A. Waves PitchShifter (has 4 different algos, best chosen per material)
B. Zplane Elastique pitchV2
C. Polar (set to Smooth and Fast and it worked best)
D. Eventide Quadravox ( just using one line set to center, no delay)

Dry mono vocal - all did pretty OK
Clean Guitar Strums - Polar had quite some artifacts at + pitches. Waves has a slight flangy tone at + pitches, Zplane/Eventide had artifacts at + pitches. Prefer Waves, but Zplane/Eventide OK, Polar boarder line. Low pitches all were fine.
Synth Chord - Polar did not like chord and had plenty of artifacts, Eventide too. Waves again some metallic tone at +12, but OK-ish. Zplane less metallic, but some artifacts. Zplane marginally better than Waves.
Hi Hats - Waves very smooth at +12 and during sweeps, Polar/Zplane artifacts, and several hiccups during a sweep making it very hard to sweep up without loud glitches. Eventide, glitches by marginally better than Polar/Zplane.
Noise sweep. Zplane/Polar/Eventide extrem level of aliasing at +12. Waves, no aliasing, slight flanging, but surprisingly smooth. This is a very hard test.
Drum Groove of Kick/Perc. All did quite good here, both at +12 and -12.

Note: Polar cannot do real sweeps as it steps per semitone, it is quite noticeable when sweeping slowly up to +12.
Waves and Zplane both can sweep without stepping. +/- 1 oct.
Eventide is the only one that can sweep +/- 2 oct.

Polar has bad aliasing that is ugly for high pitches, > +3 and material with high frequencies. It has stepping. Cannot handle chords at >+1 pitches. Sounds fine at <-1 pitches. FREE in Reason 10.
Zplane also aliasing at high pitches/high frequencies, less than Polar, but in many instance too much to be usable. Handles chord reasonably well, but not always. Price $165.
Waves Can handle high pitches and high frequencies. They flangy tone is not unpleasant and not too loud. May need to try different algos. Handles chords very well too. Was on par or beat Zplane in most tests, lost to Zplane a couple of times, but only marginally. Price $29 on a Waves sale. The ONLY pitcher that can handle +1 oct and high frequencies.
Eventide did OK-ish and was similar to Polar many times, but handled chords a little better, still horrible aliasing at high pitch / high frequency. To sweep/pitch down -2 oct is cool as it then sounds like a tape stop, but it doesn't slow down, but it feels like it does. The only one that can do this, unless you try to stack the others. Price $99, but was a freebie once.

Some work behind doing this, worthy of a YouTube, but I'm not doing it, not my thing. I originally expected Waves PitchShifter to be some old garbage plugin that sounds bad since nobody ever talks about it. Guess I changed my mind So it is worth repeating: The ONLY pitcher that can handle +1 oct and high frequencies.

Can be useful for many applications:
Making transitions, snare rolls that pitches up, wobbly sounds, in the Waves StudioRack it can be interesting to use it as a harmonizer in multiband mode and M/S mode, pitch sweep long echos, fake tape stops.

To conclude:
Polar - can only step by semitone. Is OK in the +3 to -12 range, but not great on chords or high frequency material.
Zplane - for the cost, I was surprised how bad it was aliasing, but handles most other stuff fairly well. Comes with a great formant shift, but then Neptune is equally great IMO. Not worth the price.
Wave - surprised about this one, $29 buckaroonies and just handled everything thrown at it.
Eventide - obviously intended to be a harmonizer so has those cool functions. OK-ish for pitch sweeps, just not too high, but still expensive for this purpose and behind Waves and Zplane in performance.

[Loque]

Interesting. Thanks for the tests.

I agree that Soundtoys is nothing special, especially if you look at the price tag...

I agree, that khs is not that great too. The buffer settings can have a big impact on artefacts, but on latency too. What did you have chosen?

I don't like Waves at all and Zplane is a joke. So i may finally try to get familiar with the confusing Polar...

[Boombastix]

Interesting. Thanks for the tests.

I agree that Soundtoys is nothing special, especially if you look at the price tag...

I agree, that khs is not that great too. The buffer settings can have a big impact on artefacts, but on latency too. What did you have chosen?

I don't like Waves at all and Zplane is a joke. So i may finally try to get familiar with the confusing Polar...

For kHs you need to set it somewhat low, and just dial it in for the sound. But it is pretty horrible on its own, works in Multipass when you hide it inside many other FX, but on its own... nah...

[MattLeschuck]

I use pitch shifting a lot doing game sound design professionally. What i have found is each pitch shifter can sound good or bad depending on the source material. Sometimes KHS's pitch shifter will sound cleaner than Izotopes RX's, and vice versa. So i generally try multiple when pitching material to see what comes out the cleanest. I will say KHS's does require some user input to find its sweet spot. Its much better in non real time.

Soundtoys Alterboy has a known bug that causes what sounds like phasing issues on stereo sources. I emailed the dev about this a while back it and they were aware of it. I pretty much find it useless unfortunately.