Moth3r said:
Actually, there were complaints about the audio quality of the Lord of the Rings PAL discs too. I've been told about a Pro Tools plugin called Pitch 'n Time which is supposedly one of the best algorithms. This was not included in the only listening test I'm aware of; this one from 2004.

Well, PitchNTime is (or was) available as an offline plugin for Apple (back then Emagic) Logic as well, at least on the Mac. However, it's dated. Probably the best algo today is the DIRAC algorithm, which can be found in Wavelab 6 or Prosoniq TimeFactory 2. At least that's what the audio world seems to agree on, I have a licence for Wavelab but I rarely have to use time-strechting anywhere.

As for ProTools, as with the current 7.4 we have quite a few things that are outdated, and the time-strechting algos (even though they newly implemented them in 7.4) are part of that. There's a feature that would be great for multi-track drum editing that's called "Elastic Audio", which basically let's you put up markers at drumhits (or any points you'd like for that matter) and move them around freely, changing the tempo and therefor the timing (read - tightness) of the drummer. I know that some very well-known artists and producers use it, but I think it's still a bit immature. The sonic quality is degraded, and though many people won't notice that it VERY MUCH IS noticable for those of us with trained ears. The problem with Pro Tools is that DigiDesign rarely seem to licence any technology from other companies with maybe more knowhow, they always develop something themselves.

Anyway, for sources like a pitch-corrected stream where there's no NTSC source available I'd prefer to use Prosoniq TimeFactory or Wavelab, it'll do a good job under these circumstances.