The Death of Auto-Tune... Rumors of its demise greatly exaggerated?

A long thread on the media's new found attention to Auto-Tune over in Craig Anderton's forum (The Death of Auto Tune), with hundreds of posts from the same people, going back and forth over the same positions (it's kind of fun, like watching a whole lot of lab rats -- one of them this writer -- with chemically induced OCD running interlocking repetitive patterns in the maze), provoked me to set my own, strictly personal perspective into a sort of bullet point thumbnail.

Without further ado, as though it mattered or anyone cares (it doesn't, they don't -- why are you even reading this?):

With regard to Auto-Tune and other forms of vocal pitch-correction, I...

• consider it a form of correction (not enhancement like EQ or reverb), farther down, but on the same slippery slope as mutiple takes, punching, vocal "aligning," comping, even compression (after all, it makes up for lack of dynamic control, poor mic technique, etc)
• despise the sound of it -- whether as an artifact of clumsy correction or from its use as an effect (T-paining)
• think anyone who uses it for correction better not leave even the slightest wrenchmark, since it says to the listener: Someone either can't sing or is to lazy too bother doing a good job
• think that folks who don't understand Equal Temperament 'out-of-tuneness' should definitely study up before they start giddily dragging everything smack onto the grid
• have no problem with the general concept of correction although, informally, I share the what are we coming to response of many -- I mean, c'mon, people, it's just singing... it's almost always quicker to sing it right in a few passes or punches than it is to do a good job of pitch-wrangling it

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