Auto-pitch issue

But are there any solutions to this problem now? Any hacks to make the pitch apply automatically?

Issue
Audio distortion occurs when slowing down or speeding up clips with the “Maintain Audio Pitch” option enabled.
The resulting sound becomes metallic, phase‑shifted, or “robotic,” especially noticeable on speech and ambient recordings.

Steps to Reproduce
Create a new project and import any clean spoken‑voice or ambient sound file (e.g. WAV, MP3).

Place the clip on the timeline.

Right‑click the clip → Speed/Duration...

Set Speed to 80 % (or 120 %) and enable the checkbox Maintain Audio Pitch.

Confirm and play the result on the timeline or after rendering.

Expected Result

Pitch should remain natural and consistent with the original voice, without noticeable artifacts or distortion.

Actual Result
The processed audio sounds metallic / robotic.

In certain cases, speech exhibits phasing or flanging artifacts.

The distortion is clearly audible even on moderate speed changes (±5-20 %).

When “Maintain Audio Pitch” is disabled, the same clip sounds clean (but at shifted pitch).

Adobe Premiere Pro Version
25.5.0 (Build 13)

Operating System
Windows 11 Pro 64‑bit (Version 24H2) (problem with any version)

GPU Driver Version (Windows only)
NVIDIA RTX A5000 — Driver 560.94 (Studio) (problem with any drivers)

Video Format
MP4 (H.264, 48 kHz AAC audio)

Comparative Information
Reproducible on all projects, including brand‑new ones.

Occurs on both timeline playback and exported files.

Problem started after upgrading from version 24.x to 25.0.

Toggling between CUDA / Software / OpenCL acceleration has no effect.

The issue disappears if “Maintain Audio Pitch” is unchecked.

Summary
It appears that the current pitch‑preservation algorithm introduces audible distortion when resampling audio for speed changes. The behavior is consistent and easily reproducible on speech, suggesting an internal bug in Premiere Pro’s time‑stretch engine.

P.S.

There are dozens of similar threads on the Adobe forum, and the problem itself is already 10 years old. It just became critical in version 25. Previously, there were workarounds like making the audio mono or adding a transition, which fixed the problem. Now, nothing helps, so the problem has become critical. I can't believe Adobe hasn't noticed such a minor issue for a decade. They should at least create a plugin that would automatically apply the acceleration percentage to the manual pitch plugin. The manual pitch plugin works perfectly, and the problem only occurs with automatic pitch correction.