What does the scale selection actually change?

Which notes are valid targets. Chromatic mode pulls each frame to the nearest semitone, while major or natural minor restricts the targets to the notes of that scale in that key, so a note near a semitone outside the scale is moved further to reach one that belongs. That is why scale mode sounds so much more dramatic.

Why does full strength sound mechanical?

Because every frame lands exactly on its target, so any natural pitch movement is flattened into steps. A singer's vibrato and expressive slides are part of the performance, and replacing them with a staircase of exact semitones is heard immediately as machine-made.

What does the median movement figure tell me?

How far the pitch was moved in the typical case, measured in cents. A small figure means the material was already close to the target scale and the effect did little; a large one means the notes were being dragged a long way, which usually sounds obvious and is worth reconsidering.

Will it affect consonants?

No, frames without a measurable pitch pass through untouched, so breaths and consonants keep their natural character. The effect is confined to the pitched parts of the signal, which is what keeps a heavily corrected vocal from sounding as though every sound had been processed.

What sort of material works best?

A single voice with a clear melody. The engine tracks one pitch at a time, so a chord or a dense mix has to be treated as a single moving pitch, which produces unpredictable results. For a polyphonic source, correcting individual parts before mixing is the more reliable route.

Auto-Tune Effect

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Auto-Tune Effect pulls every voiced frame of a recording onto a chosen scale, as hard as the strength allows. At full strength it is the obvious, mechanical pitch snap rather than a subtle correction.

What is Auto-Tune Effect?

Choose a file, pick a key and a scale, set the retune strength, and process; the report gives the scale, the strength, and how many voiced frames were moved and by how much.

The controls and the readout:

A key selector covering all twelve pitch classes, defaulting to A.
A scale selector with three options: chromatic, major and natural minor.
A retune strength from nothing to everything, defaulting to full.
A report giving the key and scale, the strength, the number of snapped frames against the voiced total, and the median distance the pitch was moved in cents.

The engine is a continuous whole-file phase vocoder driven by a smoothed per-frame rate map, and the scale selection is what gives it its character. In chromatic mode every frame is pulled to the nearest semitone, which is a pure correction; in major or natural minor mode the targets are restricted to the notes of that scale in that key, so a note that is close to a semitone outside the scale is moved further to reach a degree that belongs. That is why choosing a scale changes the sound so much: the same performance corrected to a scale can be pulled several semitones on the notes that do not belong, which is heard as the melody being bent rather than merely tuned. The strength control then decides how completely each frame reaches its target. At full strength every frame lands exactly on a scale note and any natural movement is flattened, so a vibrato becomes a staircase and the result reads as machine-made; at sixty to eighty percent each frame moves most of the way, which is the balance that has become familiar from its use on vocals. Two behaviours are worth knowing about. Frames in which no pitch is measurable pass through untouched, so breaths and consonants keep their natural sound and the effect is confined to the pitched parts of the signal. And the median movement figure in the report is the honest summary of how much work was done: on a well-sung performance it will be small, while a setting that produces a large median means the material was being dragged a long way rather than being corrected.

What it does not do:

No chord tracking, so the scale is fixed for the whole file.
Three scales only, and no custom note sets.
No per-note editing or automation of the strength over time.
Polyphonic material is treated as one pitch rather than as separate voices.
Unvoiced frames are passed through rather than processed.
Output is sixteen bit WAV.

Use it when the effect itself is wanted, which is how it has been used on vocals for years: a hard snap at full strength for a deliberately synthetic sound, or a gentler setting to tighten a performance that already sits close to the scale. When the aim is to improve a recording without leaving a trace, the pitch correction uses the same engine at cleanup settings, and when a copy of the voice should be shifted to a harmony rather than the voice itself moved, the harmonizer is the tool for that.

How to use Auto-Tune Effect

Drop an audio file onto the panel and let it decode.
Choose the key the material is in and the scale it should be corrected to.
Set the strength, using a lower figure for a less obvious result.
Process the file and check the median movement figure in the report.

When to use Auto-Tune Effect vs related tools

Auto-Tune Effect is the tool when the pitch snap is meant to be heard, which is what separates it from its gentler sibling. Pitch Correction uses the same engine at cleanup settings and with chromatic targeting only, and Harmonizer adds a shifted copy instead of moving the original. When the question is what notes belong in the chosen key, Scale Generator and Chord Progression Builder answer it.

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