Dega

CakeAlexS

Sanderxpander
I have three Twitter followers by the way.

I have 4!!!! ;)

Twitter is a Fad . . . only amateur texters use it . . .

Some thought Myspace would be gone by now, I still have a few hundred followers there too. It ain't dead yet...
 
Amateur texters have three Twitter followers... Sounds about right.
 
I was also the most played artist on indieland.com and overnight it disappeared and remember amiestreet.com? One of my songs that i tuned on that dead "amateur" v-vocal had 65 thousand listens.
 
So be snarky, whatever.... 
 
A  good artist doesn't need a hundred different scales built into a program to do all the work for them, all they need is a good ear to know where to place the note.

RexRed

Dega

CakeAlexS

Sanderxpander
I have three Twitter followers by the way.

I have 4!!!! ;)

Twitter is a Fad . . . only amateur texters use it . . .

Some thought Myspace would be gone by now, I still have a few hundred followers there too. It ain't dead yet...
 
Amateur texters have three Twitter followers... Sounds about right.
 
I was also the most played artist on indieland.com and overnight it disappeared and remember amiestreet.com? One of my songs that i tuned on that dead "amateur" v-vocal had 65 thousand listens.
 
So be snarky, whatever.... 
 
A  good artist doesn't need a hundred different scales built into a program to do all the work for them, all they need is a good ear to know where to place the note.
 
 
 

 
 
 
________________________________
 
So, why not take this opportunity to let you fellow cake forum folks have a listen?

I would like to talk about the "industry standard". I remember selling computers at Sears. I was quite good at selling them.
 
In all the time I worked there I sold quite a few PC computers but never sold one of the Apple computers we carried.
 
Yet i had people coming in and telling me that Pro-tools was the industry standard. BUT, I stuck with Cakewalk instead. Now today i am VERY proficient at Cakewalk while Protools users are at a total loss and have quite a learning curve to understand Cakewalk and I hear the Apple updates to Protools are not so hot these days.
 
I have had people tell me that the Iphone is the "industry standard" but I would rather have an android phone. Why? because it is less proprietary and i can't stand the way the itunes app works. Yet the itunes app is supposedly the "industry standard"...
 
The Android phones are now outselling the iphone and Google Play is now outselling Itunes.
 
I am also proficient at Windows troubleshooting because I did not listen to Apple users who told me that Apple computers were the "industry standard". All great apps work on Apple computers they said, right? Perhaps that was the case once, but I follow my own instinct. Everyone has a "smart phone" usurping their creative content making time. but I'll take my PC any day over one of those err, smart phone fads... You can make your jokes all you want, fan boys and twerkers. Are Apple computers a fad? Maybe not, but it sure as heck seems that way.
 
Once I went to buy some earbuds and looked at a pair of Apple's earbuds. They were fifty bucks!, and on the outside of the package (a white box) they came in, guess what? Apple did not even provide their users with the frequency response to the earbuds. Every single other brand that Bestbuy sold provided the frequency response and has done so for many years. Apparently it only matters the white box and the actual performance of the earbuds is of no concern whatsoever.
 
Guess how much I paid for my ear buds? 5 dollars (plus 5 dollars shipping), Quite a deal if you order more than one pair.... and guess what brand they are? Panasonic. Best earbuds I have ever owned. Now talk to me about fads and industry standards and then explain to me why you are HERE on THIS forum and not on the protools forum...
 
:)
 
V-vocal lives....

RexRed
I usually have two or three V-vocal waves in my lead vocal. I do not mix these down before mastering. For that bounce to clips is just more re-sampling of my wave.  I don't need to normalize prior to v-vocal unless my wave clips in v-vocal. I don't need to manually use the process of gain DB on any waves because i use V-vocal for all gain tweaks. So in essence i can use v-vocal to completely sculpt my wave and do it all in only one re-sampling of my wave. I am not really an audio purest but this particular ideal appeals greatly to me.

Not quite accurate from a technical standpoint. No re-sampling occurs during processing with V-Vocal or Melodyne; the sample rate remains unchanged (nor does either one oversample as part of its DSP processing, as far as I know). However, DSP processes are applied. Any DSP process, whether in Melodyne or V-Vocal, manipulates the wave; when you switch over to, for example, the Formant window in V-Vocal you are applying a separate DSP process that does its own alteration of the wave that's independent of the DSP applied in the Pitch window. 

Sanderxpander
I'm still wondering what stretching/timing option V-Vocal has that Melodyne doesn't. Could anyone enlighten me? I've never missed anything in Melodyne and I didn't like V-Vocal switching its view when I went to the timing tools.

Agreed that Melodyne's stretching tools are extremely well-implemented. 
 
But again, I don't see why any of this matters because both V-Vocal and Melodyne are available to the user. I tried to steer this thread in a more applications-oriented direction regarding which tool excelled at which functions so people wouldn't have to find out each program's "sweet spot" through trial and error, but that didn't seem to go anywhere. Maybe that's because you have to be equally proficient at both programs in order to give an informed opinion, and it seems quite a few people have gravitated to one of the two options and chosen to become proficient in their program of choice.

CakeAlexS
Yup... It's dead Jim.

That reminds me, an earlier mention of DirectX needs a little comment. My understanding is that VV uses the DirectX plug-in format, which has been on life support ever since Microsoft seemed to lose interest. Cakewalk, Sony, and Magix still support DirectX while Steinberg and others do not; DirectX is what I call a "zombie format" because it's dead, yet it still lives on. Without ongoing support from Microsoft, it's anyone's guess at what point DirectX will break...or it could live forever in its zombie state. But generally, given equivalent options, I'll avoid unsupported products because I've seen too many instances of loading older projects and not being able to insert a particular plug-in because it was never updated. 

Sanderxpander
I'm still wondering what stretching/timing option V-Vocal has that Melodyne doesn't. Could anyone enlighten me? I've never missed anything in Melodyne and I didn't like V-Vocal switching its view when I went to the timing tools.

 Try spending some time in V-vocal and you will figure it out. I am not that proficient in Melodyne but (i think) In order to stretch large swathes of waves you have to first select the select tool (which takes time) then select the waves (which takes time) then MAYBE you are able to stretch the waves. And I am not sure that melodyne would use the same stretching algorithm anyway. It is similar to the way Apple's mouse worked for years versus the PC's mouse. When you would move a mouse on an Apple computer it would just move. But when you move a mouse on a Windows PC it speeds up and slows down providing for a more dynamic, accurate user friendly experience. This is the way v-vocal stretches waves, I am not sure if I can explain that any better than that. I THINK, Apple has since improved their mouse movement algorithms. You just have to try it yourself to understand. V-vocal does not just stretch everything the same, it stretches things closer at a different rate than things farther way. This lends itself to stretching vocal waves VERY well. I am so hooked on V-vocal's stretching algorithms. I am not certain that this stretching is even possible in Melodyne I am assuming their stretching tool is not that smart. Just as their pitch algorithm is too harsh also. Since the notes are all broken up in Melodyne it seems they have lost their interrelationship to each other.
 
IN V-vocal i simply click the timing mode and stretch away and all other superfluous parameters like pitch and formant are "hidden" and out of the way... This saves tons of time when you like to align your notes to the beat manually in order to preserve the inherent groove timing. This allows the notes to interact with each other in a straight forward and dynamic way without having to jump through hoops each time. I have yet to be able to accomplish this in such a user friendly way in Melodyne, until i can do this there is no point in me putting my waves in Melodyne and then having to re-sample them again in V-vocal to accomplish this task. Besides that, Melodyne's pitch algorithm sucking the life out of my tracks, this provides a pitch stumbling-block also. Maybe there is a way to correct this problem but i have deadlines and have not been able to spend several days trying to learn the ins and outs of Melodyne when v-vocal accomplishes what i need right out of the box.

Sanderxpander
I agree that one should use whichever tools suit best, but I believe part of this "complaint" stems from simply not knowing Melodyne well enough.

 
True, but I think it also stems from comparing the Essential version of Melodyne with V-Vocal. The Editor version is a much closer comparison, with the main difference being that it's an optional at extra cost upgrade. I can see why someone would see that as a step backward, but when Cakewalk was a part of Roland, I assume they could get more a "sweetheart" deal for V-Vocal which is not possible for a product from a third party that costs more than the X3 upgrade itself.
 

The things I know are "missing" in Melodyne are the custom vibrato tool (although honestly it always sounded artificial to me in V-Vocal) and the ability to pencil-draw pitch.

 
Yes, those are also the only ones I've found to be missing. I do miss the pencil sometimes, although more often than not, it created an artificial enough effect I couldn't use it. Where it really was great was for drawing in formant changes, although you can do the same thing with Melodyne with a bit more effort and the sound quality seems a bit more natural. However I'm working on a solution for the vibrato tool  - stay tuned (pun intended).

I've had Melodyne Editor for about 2 years.
 
It took me about a year to figure out what it does not do very well.
 
You just got to give it time for it to sink in.

Never used V-Vocal.
 
Long time Melodyne Plugin user... still wondering how Celemony managed to screw up Editor.

What's wrong with Editor? I don't see any inherent huge differences between it and older versions of the plugin? Except for the positive (ARA, DNA, etc.).

Right, well I'm sorry to hear that. All I can say is I don't share your experiences.

It might have gotten a larger user base if they had ever sold it as a product in its own right. But I suppose they felt it was a unique selling point of Sonar. And it had a version of ARA avant le lettre, which would've been tricky to implement universally.

I think it's funny he had to throw in that him commenting was a coincidence.  I actually don't think this guy is Mike this time.  I think the whole sample drift thing is a bit overblown anyway.  It's like rejecting a Ferarri because you hate the floor mats.  All software has quirks but for most of us the positive outweighs the bad.  Having to compensate for the occasional <200 sample draft is minor considering the tasks that can be achieved with no other software that I am aware of.

dubdisciple

RexRed

Try spending some time in V-vocal and you will figure it out.

It's statements like this that ruin any valid point you may have.  Someone asks you a question and you tell them to go look for the answer.  Obviously if they were determined to use Vvocal they would have done so.  Your statement also assumes that they have not already.  Has it crossed your mind that they used Vvocal just as much of not more than you but simply came to different conclusions?  The general public, for whatever reason, simply did not embrace Vvocal.  i still have it and use it occasionally.  There are things I feel it does better than the version of melodyne  bundled with Sonar.  However, once you upgrade to Editor, it's not even close. The polyphonic capabilities alone are a simple "game over" in that contest.  The funny thing is it's not a contest because Roland chose to bow out and complaining to cakewalk about it is silly.  Even if you could convince all the people who had years to love Vvocal and chosae not  to finally embrace it, it would still be a zombie product.  Granted, dead products have gotten new life, but it's rare.  The 303 was a bit of a flop until techno embraced it.  Even the mighty 808 and 909 were modest sellers used mostly in the then small hip-hop and EDM markets.  Despite retro units selling for several times original values in later years, Roland chose to release completely new products with samples rather than re-issue the dead product.  We HAVE spent time with Vvocal.  Some of us liked.  Others did not.  It crashed on me a lot (ironically it got more stable in X3) but I still used it now and then.  I'm still trying to figure out the point of ranting about discontinued products.  It's not coming back no matter how many temper tantrums are thrown.  Even if tha tdid work, you would be better off ranting at Roland since it would be their decision to ressurect it.

Extremely rational argument.  One that sums things up very well.  Needless to say I agree with you.