V-Vocal vocal tuning?

Right now I'm using Melodyne Uno for vocal tuning, but it doesn't work well INSIDE Sonar4, so I have to close the project then load the wav into Melodyne, and then back --big pain. Plus, you need to hear it WITH the background music to do a good job of tuning a vocal.

Anyone using and LIKING the vocal tuner that comes with Sonar 5? Thinking of upgrading, but only for that one feature (and not looking forward to the accompanying hardware upgrade).

Hi beemer, Hola Alberto,

The integration of V-Vocal is really hard to beat. A huge difference over the export/process/import route... in the positive direction. Imagine being able to do vocal edits where the marker in the vocal window tracks the project marker, and the Play button plays everything.

The quality is for the most part, pretty darn good. There are some issues with sibilants "phasing", but there are workarounds for this if you are sufficiently picky. Search around for threads on using V-Vocal... there are lots of shortcuts and tips for getting the most out of it.

I upgraded to Sonar 5 also because of V-Vocal. Unfortunately, I was not that happy with it. The stretch function is not really working well. It creates clicks/pops and also pitch tuning cannot be disabled if you only want to do stretching.

The problem is only present in version 5.0.1. I was told by Cakewalk Tech Support that they introduced some bugs in V-Vocal with 5.0.1 patch. They would probably fix them in the next patch. Version 5.0.0 did not have this problem. Unfortunately, my installation disk has only version 5.0.1.

As for the tuning, the quality of tuning is not even close to the quality of AutoTune. Once you use AutoTune, you would never go back to V-Vocal. V-vocal has better interface for stretching, but as I said it doesn't really function in 5.0.1 version... Tuning interface is much better in AutoTune.

Regards,
Bogdan

ORIGINAL: Dave Horch

Like most of us, I'm fairly new to V-Voc, but my early observations is that the resultant output sounds very "computerized". For grins, I flew the same vocal track out to Audition, used their Pitch Correction effect, and got very natural sounding results. It just sounded human.

I don't know if AA wrote the pitch correction code themselves, or if they lifted it from somewhere, but to me they did a very nice job with the actual audio part. The interface is very basic, not nearly as slick and graphical as V-Voc, plus you *do* have to fly the track out/in - but but but, it's the resultant *sound* that counts in the end.

I agree. Before getting Antares Auto Tune, I used Adobe Audition for all my tuning needs. It sounds very good, but sometimes is a bit time consuming to go through and tune a channel.

Adobe Audition was previously Cool Edit Pro. I suspect they developed the algorithm themselves.

Auto Tune is nice since the tuning interface is very simple and very powerful. You can adjust sensitivity for pitch tracking as well as how close you want to follow the target pitch, etc. Very good graphic interface, etc. I use Auto Tune as a Dxi plug-in within Adobe Audition which is my primary wave editor.

Bogdan

ORIGINAL: losguy

The AA pitch correction is smooth and has a pretty good GUI, but the algorithm has no formant correction. Try to move things more than a semitone (sometimes less) and you can hear formant distortion artifacts. I have AA (started back in the CoolEdit days) and while it's my total go-to wave editor, I still very much prefer V-Vocal. Set up right, I find that it's a great vocal editor.

Hey Carlos. I haven't tried V-Vocal yet but have had very good results with Melodyne Uno rewired to Sonar. My brother sent me a track that he had processed with V and I wasn't impressed. Of course I don't know exactly what he did to the track either.

Paul

ORIGINAL: Paul G
Hey Carlos. I haven't tried V-Vocal yet but have had very good results with Melodyne Uno rewired to Sonar. My brother sent me a track that he had processed with V and I wasn't impressed. Of course I don't know exactly what he did to the track either.

Paul, you may be spoiled by Melodyne, too. I may try it sometime, if I can get past the whole non-integrated aspect of it. Rewire may help... it would be hard for me to go back to flying wavs out and in like I used to do with Audition for vocal takes.

There is a bit of an art to V-Vocal. I find that I don't use it the same as others who posted... my technique is a blend of the V-Vocal video, others' recommendations, and my own findings from muddling around.

Actually, I've found that v-vocal is pretty good if treated with the right care. Just slapping down an "auto" on it (or any others that I've heard unless used extremely conservatively) does no justice.

I have a friend who just had to do some correction on a tune because of a mixprint in the "written" version of the melody line. One note in every chorus had to moved down a minor 3rd - that's a pretty good bit of correction! When using the "move the line for the pitch in question" method of v-vocal, combined with changing the formant (which defaults to what winds up sounding poor in a lot of cases) made the new melody sound SO natural that you simply COULD NOT hear that it was changed.

I think it's a great tool - I've just found so far that the save button needs to be your friend when using it, as I've had a few crashes of Sonar while using it - only when trying to stack several v-clips that were created from copies of the same original audio, intending to build up a few backup vocal tracks - not even something I need, but something I wanted to see it do - and something that, even if not natural, could almost create a strange vocoder-like choir.

ORIGINAL: losguy

ORIGINAL: Paul G
Hey Carlos. I haven't tried V-Vocal yet but have had very good results with Melodyne Uno rewired to Sonar. My brother sent me a track that he had processed with V and I wasn't impressed. Of course I don't know exactly what he did to the track either.

Paul, you may be spoiled by Melodyne, too. I may try it sometime, if I can get past the whole non-integrated aspect of it. Rewire may help... it would be hard for me to go back to flying wavs out and in like I used to do with Audition for vocal takes.

There is a bit of an art to V-Vocal. I find that I don't use it the same as others who posted... my technique is a blend of the V-Vocal video, others' recommendations, and my own findings from muddling around.

You could be right, Carlos. V-Vocal is on my list of things to check out.. Boy! is that list long! Sometimes it's just easier to use what I know. Uno was very easy to learn.

Paul

As for the tuning, the quality of tuning is not even close to the quality of AutoTune. Once you use AutoTune, you would never go back to V-Vocal. V-vocal has better interface for stretching, but as I said it doesn't really function in 5.0.1 version... Tuning interface is much better in AutoTune.

I disagree with this 180 degrees. Once I got the hang of V-Vocal, I haven't used AT a single time. For me, AT is something to drop into the FX bin on scratch tracks. When I go to work, V-Vocal is where I go.