Capstan - Wow and Flutter Removal Tool 

i really appreciate how he continually shows the before and after effects of capstone, thats exactly what i look for to know what the technology is offering for the price

Hearing these corrected recordings gives me literal goosebumps. It’s a flabbergasting technical/mathematical/aesthetic achievement. The high price is understandable for such a niche product with a small potential customer base, but the 5-day rental option allows for dozens of hours of audio to be cleaned at a reasonable cost. Thank you for existing, Celemony.

This video is INCREDIBLE!! Despite advertising a product it's very educational to learn about wow & flutter and it shows off the capabilities of modern PCs

Some very complicated mathematics behind this technology. Pretty amazing.

Wow ! That leaves my heart all a-flutter ! Many an historic performance in the magnetic tape era has been spoiled in the recording process by a warped-reel drag or an idler wheel flat spot, or tape slippage over a worn capstan. On some of these occasions you only get one take, so what you got is what you get. Now, through the miracle of modern tech, these unfortunate mechanical errors can finally be ameliorated. Just watch, though, someone is going to come up with a wow-and-flutter app that will add these defects (and more) to a perfectly clean digital recording to simulate an old tape recording, much as has been done with videos: adding grain, light flashes, scratches, noise etc. to digital videos to simulate old film.

This is amazing technology. I don't think I have a need for it but geez, just think of all the old recordings that can now be restored. Great job Celemony! Btw, I've used Melodyne for a few years now and my work just keep getting better and better.

If this and iZotope RX joined forces it would be the best tool ever!

That dude is one of the coolest dudes I've ever encountered, and I've encountered a lot of cool dudes in my lifetime.

Tried the demo. I just used it on one wow-plagued piano chord. It was perfectly amazing - amazingly perfect.

You should make a new product, just to make a new demonstration vid. This vid is a work of art as far as demonstration vids go

Thank you, now we can enjoy old 16mm logos without warped audio

The video is just genial! The product... Finally I will be able to restore legendary Hungarian pianist György Cziffra's recordings! Everything is so touching: the music selected for background, the relaxed narrator's voice... I bet he regrets about millions of old recordings lost due to the wow and flatter. . 3:13: "Ow..." Ahaha!!! As if monsieur Nitschke were really surprised by what he got.

Very impressive. Impressive technology and impressive presentation.

You guys are in a league of your own. Amazing products Celemony.

This guy looks and sounds so cool!

holy shit this is some crazy ass tech

I like how the lower curve gets greyed out when playing the original, but it's still visible thanks to a slight grey or white outline.

interesting video but, being british, I had to stand up at 5:00

Absolutely magic. Mesmerisingly fascinating.

We should use this on Leon Scott's 1853-1859 recordings, possibly to discover new ones!

For those wondering what the opening song is, it's from Roger Roger called Snapshots - The Cycle Ride. Available here: www.parrymusic.com/library.php?search_type=d&txt_search=3880&page=1

Very cool and truly impressive plugin, but I think 4.5k$ is a "bit" too much for a single standalone software program. Isn't it?

Can capstan work on a specific frequency? Say if a 19khz tone is recorded onto a tape, and variable tones recorded on lower frequencies can capstan lock on to the higher 19Khz frequency and use it as reference?

Capstan is an amazing product for sound restoration from archival sources. It's a shame that it's prohibitively expensive.

I really wish to listen to this whole song WITH the Wow and Flutter going on. lol.

I like wow and flutter. It gives the music character.

Thank you very much, I was always wondering how to implement such a reverse dynamic speed change tool. I knew it was feasible, but the intelligent detection of deviation depends a lot of the signal you get. Sometime you may relay to net humming (50 or 60 Hz) or to the FM pilot tone (15 kHz). And instruments with a fix tune like piano or flute are also good candidates. But who about human voice, fretless bass, and trombone? Autotune with speed adaption would do great harm here. Finally I wonder if there is a limit of speedloss that you can correct, worst case: The tape is stopped during recording, this will also lower the frequency range...

Have you guys thought of releasing these capstan files shown in this video?

Also it would be very useful to exclude a specific frequency range to disable solo instrument, or vocalist vibrato affection. If it is possible and if it works, of course...

Audio technology keeps blowing me away every year.

Amazing.

Wow, amazing!

Me: Wow, I really need this software to fix my audio recordings. *Clicks on "Buy Capstan" in the description* Me: Nope

I wonder if this will work in conjunction with Sonar 8.5 Producer Edition and Windows 7 64 bit. Better yet, I wonder if it's screenreader accessible. I'd love to try it one day!

Very impressive!

Looks cool.

hope it whil be made so it can run on m1 macs

Hello chrisz78, We're sorry that your initial Capstan tests weren’t successful, but be sure that we usually have happy customers who don’t share your kind of experience with the software. In fact, as shown in the video, Capstan provides some powerful features to distinguish wow and flutter from natural vibrato. If your experience differs, please feel free to send us your problematic files and ask for further assistance. Send your mail to capstan AT celemony DOT com. Thanks.

Anyone use this for dialog restoration? I'm restoring old radio programs and some of them were recorded on cheap tape machines with low batteries.

Great tool for Rega owners.

Incredible

I don't think anyone will ever admire the characteristics of any low bitrate file. I mean, there are low bitrate samplers, but the hardware is really what gives the audio the gritty character that it has. But a watery, dull sounding low-quality mp3 will more than likely never be admired for "nostalgia". On another note, I really like mp3 320. Comparing one to a 16 bit WAV is almost impossible by only doing a listening test.

0:00 The classic song please

I dont know to much about audio mastering , but I have temeraraly removed wow , and flutter from cassette tapes by rewinding and fast forwarding the tape all the way .

How could I use this on movies but keep the video?

You'd be surprised. I actually quite like 80kb/s ogg vorbis files. And I'm sure 320kb/s ogg is way better than 320kb/s mp3. Although you're right in that they're indistinguishable anyway.

i like wow and flutter.

Hello. I assume Capstan algorithms use time-stretching to leave the audio length unaffected(?) This is especially useful if an accompanying video is also affected by the same speed deviations. However, could Celemony please provide a setting that applies re-sampling to correct the 'pitch curve' instead of time-stretching? This would adjust the original length of the audio and might potentially provide better fidelity than time-stretching. It might also be useful, for example, to re-align tracks of audio recorded to different sections of audio tape (for example, for remastering mono tracks using different master tapes containing alt versions of the same studio session). This could ease problems arising from the tape stretching over time and altering the pitch and length of audio, usually rectified by chopping and aligning audio manually in the DAW. Also, perhaps a digital and tape reel track could be aligned AFTER bouncing to tape (instead of say, using the output from a second play head while recording to tape, if the tape machine has one).

Yeah!

What is the name of the last song?

I couldn't get it to work at all on the very fast flutter of a cassette tape! Even at extreme settings.

holy shit this stuff costs a bloody kidney.

In the future I guess people will like low bitrate mp3 out of nostalgia... Although I must say I very much prefer ogg Vorbis.

I don't know too much about .ogg to be honest. However, I have heard that a 128k AAC file apparently performs better than mp3 as far as data loss is concerned, so is it the same concept?

Finally

Man, GoldWave has an awesome speed adjuster that lets you speed up or slow down music while keeping the same pitch. You have to control some factors (overlap, etc, some are much more advanced) to get the PERFECT sound, or so I thought. One issue is that you sometimes (if you speed it up too fast, and the singer has the right singing style for this to happen) a fluttering effect as it has now sped up the sound which included the singers natural vibrato. It makes me wonder what would happen if you used this on that sped up-same pitch version to reduce the 'flutter.' Could you lower it artificially to make the overall sound better?

what song are you using for that clip?

Now that you've fixed WoW 'n' Flutter start working on software to fix focus. hihi ;)

agree :)

This is voodoo :)

What is the first demonstration song?

I've tried the demo version of Capstan and unfortunately, it really does NOT work if the music has vocals. Works pretty well on instrumental passages like the ones shown in the video, but any kind of vocal (singing, rapping, voice-over speech) and the detection algorithm goes haywire...

the end of lo-fi.

Well, you can add it as you like, but no one likes a distorting factor that you can't control.

@strongbutdeep innit! he pisses me off how smug he is about how bad it is

awesome software used on the archaic concept of im-up-to-date-see?-i-use-a-mac bs. lol. o wait video in 2011, ok it's forgiven. making sure a mac is used to sell every piece of music software is so .... 2011

Celemony. Ugh, the product is too expensive. 4 GRAND? You know, everyone in the world does not work in a ARCHIVING STUDIO!!!!

wow nad flutter nots supossed tyo be that bad anyway, theres something wrong with his deck

That's messed up man

so insanely expensive. There must be a more profitable price point allowing everyone to use it

This software isn't all it's cracked up to be, playing around with it, it really can't lock in properly. I have a source with a very consistent wow, but it even with the vibrato setting turn down, it won't lock in properly to the consistent wow consistently. They really should give this the ability to lock in to a pattern and stick to that pattern despite the audio it detects that it thinks goes off the pattern. It is getting there, for much of the audio it certainly follows the wow, but without a way to set it to lock in to that it's useless. If it could lock in to the pattern, then we'd have something.

he is german not french

its funny how much time i spend getting that sound and this guy is talking about it like its a pest

Its heartbreakingly ironic that the audio for the voice over on this video is SO poorly done The irony would be funny but this company is advertising audio that fixes audio problems ?!?!

0.00- 0.13 dirty fake. (fake example)

GOD SAVE OUR QUEEN IS REPULSIVE BIN IT. Great software mind.

Then you just saved yourself $4,000...phew.

No way, didn't work. Made it even worse. Sorry, but that's crap!

you have a fake record - Studer - precission and awesome professional studio tape recorder. At 15 inch per second wow and fluter = 0,05%! Professional Cassete Deck Tascam 112 - wow and fluter = 0,04%! Your software - is good, but don't denigrate the name of a good and proven analog tape machines and cassete deck!