Is no one else embarrassed by Elastic Audio?

[midnightrambler]

I've been doing some remote but online mixing tweaks for an artist, it's been working quite well as it goes, but I always feel a pang of embarrassment whenever there's any sort of stretching involved.

We've got 4 different algorithms in PT, and frankly, they all sound sh*t. I just wanted to stretch one word on a vocal - one word! - without the pain of loading into Melodyne etc etc. "I'll just switch on Elastic, that'll save some time." Big mistake. A weird lump when using "Polyphonic". Transient smudge when using "X-Form". Goodness knows what Monophonic was trying to do, absolutely useless. And didn't bother with Rhythmic in this instance, but I've had various amounts of joyless pain with that before now. And don't get me started on the various rendered files that just decide to disappear from one day to the next.

Is really the best on offer in 2021? For shame.