And we strive for..... what ?

Autotune devices have been around for a few years and like any piece of
hardware it can be used wisely or misused. As such it's a completely
neutral device. On recordings it's used extensively in country, urban
R&B and pop music areas. Interestingly enough, although it's use is
supposed to be non-detectable, producers have resorted to using
autotune as an effect unto itself (Cher's "Do You Believe").
Non-professional singers who learn to sing by copying current
commercial releases have actually started to incorporate the pitch jump
at the start of an "autotuned" note into their natural singing
style.

I think we see proof that the recording industry is all about money and not quality. 95% of the mass market music sounds so over processed and electronic that I can not listen to it anyway. The small lables with "real" musicians are about high quality music and high quality reproduction. That's the stuff I enjoy anyway, so no big deal. If todays "artists" want to enhance themselves both physically and electronicly so be it. Their fans are using Mp3 and walkmans to listen through so no harm done.

Not trying to start anything as I have no idea of what as close to the original means in home systems or amplified music of any type. I can only assume that your tastes in music are of limited scope (In which case I guess I would have to agree pretty much)...or that you don't have much knowledge of the behind the scene action that takes place in recordings and even live events. I think that if you strip away the enhancements layer by layer and go acappella so to speak, we would find that a good many of the popular artist would not be so popular. I do get your point and understand were your at on this as I have wrestled with this in my mind many times. As of late I have be trying to come to some consensus in my mind on how multichannel music should sound...at home in my room. Should it sound like it does when I go out and listen to it up on the stage? OR, should it sound like I have them live in my room which puts me more in the middle of things type of perspective. There are recordings that give both views of the picture, I find that I like both somewhat, which is more "Original" would depend on my imaginary needs for that time and place in my mind I guess? Which brings me to my point

Dave

Something similar to this has been used since the mid 1980's (it went by another name then "syn-something").

A guy I know (one of the first few operators of the unit) worked with Frank Zappa and Michael Jackson, to name a few. It was used both live and in studio.

I got to play around with it once and somehow it could alter pitch while maintaining the original time signature/tempo of the music.

Dekay,
I just finished a couple of books on Zappa. The device is called a synclavier. He loved it, he said, because he could type notes in and push a button to immediately play it back.

Part of the love, I take it from the books, is that he had a terrible time getting orchestras (I'm not talking about his bands here; they were another story) to rehearse sufficiently and then do a good job playing his pieces. He noted the primary limitations of the synclavier as being that it cannot improvise (of course) and cannot reproduce emotion absent a level of complexity of the data inputted that was debilitatingly time-consuming--I'm sure folks could argue about the latter forever. I'm no expert; this is just what I've read in the last two days.