In the new Cubase 15, the PitchShifter has a latency of 256 ms.
Is this supposed to be the way?
The kHz Pitch Shifter has only 20ms latency.
279 ms in my system 
yes the latency is huge, confirmed on several videos. It is not for live input for sure.
Will this get fixed soon? What’s the usecase for a Pitch Shifter with over 200ms latency?
I think the big question to ask here is why would you need a pitch shifter plugin in Cubase in the first place? There are several ways to pitch audio in the software already from “dumb” pitch shifting to VariAudio. And the plugin is not available on the versions that don’t have Vari Audio either.
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Thx a lot. Seems like Steinberg gets lost more and more in details. There seems a lack in quality testing during development. How else could one explain this in version 15.0.5 ?
Why having practically useless features after all?
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PitchShifter isn’t designed for live input use. We prioritized sound quality over latency when choosing the algorithm.
There are many creative ways to use a pitch shifter, and the option to edit the left and right channels individually adds even more flexibility.
You can use it to add harmonies or texture to vocal and instrument recordings,
to preview your project in a different key,
for sound design when combined with Modulators,
or to split the signal and create a wider stereo image—
and much more.
We showed it to a variety of producers during development, and literally everyone was impressed by the sound quality.
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Thx.
The quality is very good, indeed.
But is the high latency really necessary or is it just an excuse ?
Thanks for that background and info!
Given that, I might consider using VariAudio to make micro changes in vocals, but use Pitch Shifter when I want to move it up a fourth or a fifth.
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Some Industrial and electronic music uses pitch shifting on the vocals. I pitch shift for some of the songs on Razed In Black. Fine for recordings because I can scooch for timing after. But I havent yet found a vst with low latency to be able to use live. Pedals for live are what most industrial artists use. If any pitch shifting vsts with low enough latency become available, you have one sale in me and many other Gothic industrial artists for sure.
Hi and welcome to the forum @razedinblack !
There are a lot of options out there - it depends on what kind of sound you have in mind and/or the amount of pitch shifting you want to apply and also how to deal with formants. Each plugin comes with different fortes and weaknesses.
If it was to be suitable for live input you’d need a latency <10ms, better below 2ms.
For a developer that means if you can’t get the sound quality with such low latency then you can fully focus on the sound quality. It doesn’t matter whether the plugin has 20ms or 200ms of latency as both are equally insufficient for live usage.
However, it would be nice of Steinberg to communicate clearly that a plugin is not appropriate for live input usage.
It reminds me of VocalChain in this regard. Also plenty of misunderstandings regarding the proper usage with this one.
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Using a higher sample rate, more CPU/GPU-power with state of the art algorithms for pitch-shifting via FFT would solve the issue, right?
I am looking forward to your pitch shifting plugin. Please let us know when it is ready.
It’s a very challenging task, indeed.
Maybe FFT is not the best approach for realtime?
How about some nonlinear neural networks?
I am not an expert on this, but there might be better ways than FFT.
Nature does nonlinear frequency shifts on light with certain materials in realtime. So, in principle, it should work.
Maybe modulate the low sound frequencies oif sound onto a laserbeam, do the frequency-shift and than transform back…in hardware…sure. This should work out mathematically with a corresponding model, right?
As I said: Let us know when it is ready.
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“I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this result, which this margin is too small to contain.”
Just wait for another 300 years or so.
Real time pitch shifters rarely use FFT (or DTFT), but they have a very different objective than the pitch shifter being discussed in this thread.
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As soon as I tried this plugin, it was obvious to me that this was the designed intent and was very glad to gain this tool. Very cool, high value addition that is going to come in very handy.
Perhaps in the future, it would be a good idea to have in-built information/tutorials on stock plugins, as not everyone has the engineering background to understand these things (physics of sound and real-time processing limitations).
Same old story: No proper documentation which results in misunderstandings, frustration, negative criticism. Noone needs that. It’s high time that Steinberg throws this tradition overboard for good.
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