For those who are interested in a new time stretching/transpose tool. 15 day demo with intro $99.00 pricing.

TS by IRCAM Lab

Hello Krzysztof,

Thanks for mentioning the Ircam TS.

Here is a screenshot.



Some info on the TS:

IRCAM Launches IRCAM Lab "TS" - Next Generation Time Stretching Application

The Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics and Music (IRCAM) today proudly announces the launch of IRCAM Lab “TS” as for “Transpose/Stretching”. “TS” is a very impressive time stretch, pitch shifter, remix, formant, noise tweaker that will blow creatives minds with its powerful algorithms based on the unique phase vocoder engine (SuperVP). IRCAM Lab is a new company dedicated to the development of IRCAM’s applications and plug-ins based on decades of pure research and technological innovation.

IRCAM Lab today proudly announces the launch of “TS” (Transpose/Stretching) a powerful stand alone application that revolutionises the way audio signal can be processed. Unlike other time stretching applications, “TS” uses an advanced phase vocoder engine (SuperVP) as for the analysis/synthesis functionalities of “AudioSculpt”. Phase vocoder technology provides high-quality sound processing in real-time and 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 artefacts 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 shifting tool. the application can transform an audio signal at extreme settings making it a totally new sound ! Simply drag a WAV or AIFF file into “TS” and stretch it down by 100%. That will give you a quick idea of how powerful it is. Now use the formant, transient, sinus or noise sliders to sculpt your sound and create totally original audio textures. Sound designers, DJ’s and musicians will be amazed by the unlimited 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…

IRCAM Lab “TS” also includes real time Midi remote control and a live editing export feature. That enables users to export totally original sounds created in “TS” as easily as clicking the mouse. A DJ’s dream come true !

Learn more from the product page at Plugivery (Official distributor)
TS by IRCAM Lab

Best Regards,

Nick

Will there be introductory pricing for the Windows version?

The only place I can find it actually for sale is at Don't Crack:

"IRCAM TS is available through-out September at the introductory price of ONLY $99 (MSRP $249)."

Oh, and DC's product description says:

"Bring the sound of a tube-like analog mastering chain to your workstations."

I can't find any functions like that in the demo.

Otherwise, it seems pretty nice.

A friend of mine had an IRCAM Forum subscription for awhile in the nineties, and this a lot like I remember SVP/audiosculpt.

Hello hyper.real,

Yes, I believe there will be, it would only be fair to Windows users. But it has not been given the final OK yet.

The Windows version won't be long in coming as they are on it right now.

If nothing unforeseen happens, it should be available in about 15 days.

A license purchased today will work on the Windows platform as soon as it is out.

Best Regards,

Nick

Playing around with this for about 30min now on a variety of material and first off, make sure you adjust the settings for your audio material (i.e. monophonic, polyphonic, etc) but just as importantly make sure you adjust the oversample rate as needed. I was comparing TS straight pitch shifting vs the Waves Soundshifter which I got on sale recently, and at first I was very disappointed in TS and all its artifacting, but simply upping the oversample solved this problem.

It seems in general I can make TS sound as good as SoundShifter (which IMO is the BEST pitch shifting plugin I've used), but you have to be very carful with the FO max settings as this makes a HUGE difference in the sound. I also like the ability to change the formant which I find helpful in bringing back some of those overtones that seem to be lost when pitching down more than -3 semitones.

Plus TS has awesome time stretching as well! I wish there was some way though you could make it beat related instead of multiples of the file. For example, it would be cool to tell it I have a loop at 120bpm and I'd like to make it 130bpm. Right now this is impossible which makes it frustrating to use in a musical context. Perhaps this might be possible in an update? Comparing extreme time stretching (anything over double IMO) vs the Free PaulStretch, PaulStretch wins hands down. It seems I cannot get TS to not sound glitchy when stretching that large, even on sources that do not have heavy transients. Maybe there are settings I'm missing?

BTW, I find the manual very poor. Sure, it explains in one or two sentences what each knob is suppose to do, but I must admit I'm not an audio scientist, so most of it is over my head. It would be helpful if the manual gave examples of when or why you might adjust specific parameters. I also watched the two videos I could find on youtube and both were absolutely worthless IMO. Hopefully someone at IRCAM might be willing to do a video showing what the different knobs do to actual material, and give specific examples of when and why you might adjust parameters. Its easy enough to just move knobs and hear what they do, but with a tool like this it might be helpful to hear from the actual developers of why they were included, what their purposes are, and maybe some real world examples of their use.

Of course, the biggest disadvantage is that its a stand alone app and not a plugin. Anyone know if a plugin version is in the works?

Must admit I'm still undecided on picking this up. Will have to demo it more. Anyone know exactly how long its on intro price for $99? IRCAM website says through mid October, but I believe places like Dont crack say its only through Sept 30th?

Anyone else find the implementation of their analysis graphs odd? For example the spectrogram. I find it very odd this is even included at all, as unlike izotope RX, it seems you cannot select anything in the spectrogram, nor does it seem to update at all when you actually pitch shift the file, or adjust the formant, etc. So why is it even there? Just for looks? Same with the musical data, etc. If these dont update as you make changes in the program, it really limits their usefulness IMO, but it does make the plugin look cool!

Hello LGK_Dude,

Thanks for giving your first impression of the ircam Lab TS and your helpful suggestions.

The adjustments by BPM has already been listed in the improvements as well as by increments of seconds, especially for those people working in Post who need a 30 sec spot to be shrunk to 28 sec.

It is early days for the TS and it will have a long life ahead of it where all the suggestions will be added to make it as useful and easy to use as possible.

So keep your remarks, comments and suggestions flowing in, it will help with the 'tuning'.

The DontCrack site has been updated to say the promo will run until Mid-October like the info on the ircam site.

Please keep experimenting with it and telling us what you think of the TS.

Best Regards,

Nick

I hope this valid for others too … After demoing it for a few minutes I bought TS even if I have several high quality timestretch and pitch shifting options. TS is very good sounding (after individual fine tuning) and makes creative work easy.
If somebody don't get it after demoing, he probably has no need for such an app.
What I wish for updates:
- envelopes for timestretch and pitch shift factors
- reverse playback
- jog/shuttle modes -> with MIDI cc

The 'Formant' parameter sometimes sounds more like a LPF than the usual formant effects - maybe it was dependent on my material. But maybe there can be some different formant modes?

Great program overall.

Hello nfk,

Thanks for the great testimonial. I'm replying here as I already reported ALL of the wish updates you reported ;-)

Someone above reported that the spectral visualisation doesn't refresh as you edit using TS. Well I believe it is a smart choice as the application processes audio in REAL time and I wouldn't want the visualisation to affect the quality of the processing or push the CPU to high... I mean the original audio signal remains until the edit is done right ?

It is always possible to export the edited audio and feed it back in to "TS" to see the transformed data... It is a quick process !

I also suggested that the folks at IRCAM add a "RENDER" button that would update the sonogram visualisation when needed just as if you exported and dropped the audio back in.

Hope this makes sense ;-)

Thanks - Peter

Thank you Peter,
it just came to my mind (doing often surround productions and sound design) I would like to see TS processing at least 5.0 (.1) files. It can load multichannel waves (I did accidentally) and you see already a 5.1 sonogram. But there is no way to activate more outputs than two. Rendering is also limited to stereo. Surround file processing would make TS much more advanced in comparison.
I agree with what you wrote about visualisation. I prefer audio quality and usability. If the programmers could shift the graphic processing to the GPU it would be better probably but for me it is no priority at all. Is there a way to edit the default size of the window after starting TS? The default window size looks like mice cinema on my 30" screens.

LOL ! Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to edit the window size at launch :-/ I'll report that as it could certainly be just a little bigger...

Yep multi channel processing would be great but I don't think that will be implemented in TS at this point... I believe it does load multi channel audio but only processes the main stereo audio channels.

I asked the folks at IRCAM to register and bring their contribution to the fine comments and upgrade wishes posted here at GS.

Thanks - Peter

+1

Demoed again today and was again very impressed! I think I'll end up buying it if some of these feature requests get implemented (especially bmp and seconds for time stretching).

As for updated graphs after processing, I completely understand the CPU fear doing it in real time, however programs like melda analyzer which DOES have a spectrograph, or VSL Analyzer which does have a music mode showing pitches and frequencies seem to do this just fine? If TS can't, it would be nice to have an option to choose metering/analysis be either pre or post FX, and have and option for "real time" or "refresh" that you would click to see the results after processing.

It would be cool to see a variation of this software as a plugin, similar to how Waves has their realtime SoundShifter plugin. Is this a consideration or will TS strictly be a separate app?

For my particular situation, this is the best time stretch software I've heard.
I'm often needing to slightly shift the length of a final stereo mix.
I threw several very demanding tracks in and played with time stretch and shrink.
Very impressive results!
I haven't heard anything that can match it.

Well worth the price.

Yeah, we're probably going to have to get this, too.

We also have Flux/IRCAM Trax and GRM Tools Complete in our French institutional camp.

I'm guessing "bring the sound of a tube-like analog mastering chain to your workstations" must be a cut-and-paste mishap and refers to a different product.

Thank you all for the useful comments and the great testimonials. Be sure that we monitor and send the info to the folks at IRCAM.

Many new features are on the way and we should have a an upgrade shortly after the launch of the PC version within 15 days or so if all beta testing goes well.

"bring the sound of a tube-like analog mastering chain to your workstations"
Yes, it does appear that this is a strange cut and paste. Don't know where that comes from... Fixed - Thanks !

As well as the 300% stretch that should read 100% which is already pretty good right

Again thanks !

Cheers - Peter

how do i go about buying this? nothing on plugivery or dontcrack?

Perhaps here ;-)

Cheers - Peter

Is this confirmed? The copy on the product page doesn't actually say that. Thanks.

Hello undertone,

It is true.

The serial that someone buys today will work on the Windows version when it is released.

Best Regards,

Nick

Trying out the demo and the stretching and transposing are pretty good I think. There are some arcane functions which could do with more explaining.
I'm on the fence about buying it mainly because it seems to be missing some very obvious things like stretching to bpm and tempo and pitch envelope drawing. It would be great, given that the display is such a big part of the program, to be able to interact with it in a meaningful way. Importing audio with tempo information would enable envelope drawing to snap to bars and beats, and exporting the results should include tempo info too.
It would be good to allow waveform colour to be changed, as has been done with the sonogram. Those knobs and sliders are a bit too small and hard to read. It would be good to have midi control of the transport too, why not?
The basic functions seem very good, but the interface and feature set needs a rethink.

One problem I have is, after doing the MIDI CC learn thing, TS sometimes forgets my controller assignments and resets to default, even after I've used CC controllers flawless for some minutes.

Is this any different from what's in MOTU's Mach 5?

Same algos, but with real time capabilities.

rich

Hello Zyzygis,

'There are some arcane functions which could do with more explaining.'

Tell me which ones and I will try to shed some light on them.

I hear you about the BPM, pitch and time envelope we have already mentioned this to Ircam and as it is a brand new product with a long future ahead of it, your comments as well as all the others posted will help us to make the TS into the best possible product.

So keep all the suggestions coming in.

Best Regards,

Nick

Hello nkf,

I will report this back to the developers to see what they say.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Anything else that you notice don't hesitate to report it.

There is special 'TS' forum for suggestions etc. that Ircam is watching here.

Best Regards,

Nick

Hi Nick, thanks for replying to my post.
Good to hear that ircam are listening to user suggestions.
The Tape mode needs some explaining. How exactly does it affect the sound? The manual just says that it sounds like a tape machine, but this is too vague, there are many different ways tape machines can alter a signal, and each machine and tape type will have it's own sound.
I would like more information about the Error and Relax knobs too, with examples of when and how they can be useful.

The main attraction for me in this type of processing is to make small and accurate adjustments in tempo and pitch to recorded music, so editable graphic envelopes, and importing and exporting of tempo information are essential, as is a beats and bars grid allignment option in the display.
The sound design aspect is also interesting, and seems well served as it is.
I can see how this could be a great tool in post production if precise editing tools were added.
Thanks.

Hello Basstrup,

You do get with the TS the following parameters to experiment with.

1- Transient
2- Sinusoïdal
3- Noise

These components of the Audio you have loaded can be individually treated and makes it possible to mix individually the transient, sinusoïdal and noise components of the audio signal to create new textures out of the existing older one.

It is more than the usual Time-Stretch - Pitch shift, offering a great range of sound design possibilities.

Best Regards,

Nick

Is there any plan to turn this into a plugin at some point?

Although the creative possibilities are tempting, I just don't see myself breaking the creative flow of a mix session to export audio, process it (without auditioning the changes in context), and then importing the end file back into my mix session.