OpenTune vs Performative Ear

OpenTune is a free, open-source vocal pitch correction tool for macOS and Windows. It regenerates vocals with a neural vocoder while preserving formants, and offers hand-drawing, note, and anchor tools for pitch editing. Automatic key detection supports Chromatic, Major, Minor, Pentatonic, Dorian, Mixolydian, and Harmonic Minor scales. Per-note EQ provides another way to adjust individual notes. The software imports WAV, FLAC, OGG, and MP3 audio and is available as a standalone executable or a VST3 plugin with ARA2 support. Its AI engine combines FCPE pitch extraction with a PC-NSF HifiGAN vocoder and ONNX Runtime inference. GPU acceleration uses DirectML on Windows and CoreML on macOS. The interface supports Chinese, English, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. OpenTune is permanently free and licensed under AGPL V3.0. On macOS, release packages use ad-hoc signing without Apple notarization, so the first launch may show a developer verification prompt.

Performative Ear is a paid pitch-correction plug-in designed for low-latency singing on Windows and macOS. Performative Ear listens to a song and sends its detected key to the pitch-correction plug-in automatically, while passing audio through unchanged without files or network use. Four correction modes are listed: Live at 1.3 ms, Crisp at 18 ms, Voice at 25 ms, and Full at 40 ms. Users can choose chromatic, major, or minor scales and toggle notes to create a custom scale. The maker lists tested support for Ableton Live 11 and 12, Cubase, FL Studio, Fender Studio Pro, Bitwig Studio, REAPER, Audacity, and GarageBand. Formats include VST3 and CLAP on Windows x64 and macOS Universal, plus Audio Unit on macOS. The price is $199 as a one-time purchase, with no free plan and a free Windows demo. One license supports three active machines.