Preferences

• • Melodyne Plugin's preferences property sheet
• • Melodyne Stand-Alone's preferences property sheet

This tour looks at Melodyne’s preferences property sheet, which governs fundamental aspects of the way the program operates.

Melodyne Plugin's preferences property sheet

In Melodyne Plugin, select Preferences from the Settings menu.

• Language: determines the language of the user interface.
• Pitch Names: determines whether notes on the pitch ruler are identified using their English, Latin or German designations.
• A =: defines the frequency of the reference pitch A4 (the A above Middle C).
• Look: allows you to select the brightness and contrast levels of the Melodyne interface.
• Maximum number of undo steps: Melodyne allows you to undo up to 100 editing steps. Here you can limit the number of possible undo steps and thereby reduce your RAM consumption. Reduce the value if you find memory running short or decide you really don’t need that many undo steps.
• The entries in the following pane are designed to help you keep your software up to date. As well as specifying how often Melodyne should check with the server to see whether a newer version of the program is available, you can instruct Melodyne to perform an immediate check. The version currently installed is also displayed.
• Audio Cache: sets the path on your hard disk of the audio buffer required by Melodyne editor when working with polyphonic material.
• Cache Size: determines the maximum size of the audio buffer.
• Extended Keyboard Support: activate this option to use keyboard shortcuts (undo, select all, copy, paste, arrow keys etc.) within Plugin. How well these function depends upon the DAW you are using; clear the option if you find Melodyne’s keyboard shortcuts are entering into conflict with your DAW.
• Detect audio after transfer: if you check this option the analysis of the audio material only begins when the transfer has been completed, thereby considerably reducing the load on the computer. Activate this option, therefore, on less powerful computers if during the transfer bottlenecks occur (indicated by clicks, dropouts, extreme slowing-down etc.).

Melodyne Stand-Alone's preferences property sheet

In Melodyne Stand-Alone, select Preferences from the Program (Mac) or File (Windows) menu to open the preferences property sheet. This has two tabs.

The Settings tab offers the same options as Plugin, and regardless of whether you make your selections in Plugin or Stand-Alone, your choices apply to both implementations of the program.

An additional feature here, however, is the Saving check box: if the option is selected, before saving the audio file you have just been editing, Melodyne copies the original file, appending ‘backup’ to its file name. This will allow you to revert to the original later, should you so desire. Clear the check box if this feature is of no interest to you.

The Audio tab contains the following additional options:

Upper pane

• Audio Device: allows you to select an audio driver or the audio hardware driven by it.
• Sample Rate: determines the sample rate used by Melodyne.
• Buffer Size: determines the size of the buffer used for audio editing. The smaller the value, the lower the latency but the greater the load on the CPU.
• Output: allows you to select the output of the audio hardware used by Melodyne Stand-Alone in case your hardware offers multiple outputs.
• Ignore buffer underruns: if Melodyne Stand-Alone is running on a slow computer where the possibility of an overload (and an ensuing click or dropout) exists, by checking this box, you inform Melodyne that you consider the former to be the lesser of the two evils – the point being that audio hardware is often very sensitive to dropouts and can even in such cases cause the entire computer to crash. Check the box if ever this happens. Such occurrences are very rare, however, and most users can safely ignore this option.

Lower pane

• Input: allows you to select the input of the audio hardware used by Melodyne Stand-Alone in case your hardware offers multiple inputs.
• Resolution: determines the bit resolution for recordings made by Melodyne Stand-Alone.
• Recording Folder: specifies the folder in which new recordings should be saved.