V-Vocal plus:
 
http://www.rogerlove.com/roland/
 

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. 

I agree, Craig. But the OP seemed to say that some functions are unavailable in Melodyne, such as stretching, and in his more recent post he talks about adjusting gain/amplitude in V-Vocal, which is also available in Melodyne, again without having to switch views.

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. I couldn't care less if Melodyne is the industry standard, I simply believe it's a great product and it does exactly what I need it to better than V-Vocal ever did. 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. Technically you can pretty much get the same curves in Melodyne, it's just a different approach, centered more around keeping a natural tone than V-Vocal's "forcing the pitch where you want it to".

All of the timing tools and gain tools are available in Melodyne (as far as I'm aware, hence my question earlier) and to me work a hell of a lot easier/better.

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.

Ok, ignoring all your "assuming" about Melodyne which I can't get behind, I think your last sentence says it all. Stick with V-Vocal, since it's still available.

When it stops working, you'll be forced to spend time with Melodyne and I don't think you'll be disappointed once you have adjusted to the different UI and workflow.

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).

Sanderxpander
Ok, ignoring all your "assuming" about Melodyne which I can't get behind, I think your last sentence says it all. Stick with V-Vocal, since it's still available.

When it stops working, you'll be forced to spend time with Melodyne and I don't think you'll be disappointed once you have adjusted to the different UI and workflow.

I was in a similar position to the OP when X3 first came out. Time is of the essence, V-Vocal did what I needed to do, it didn't crash much in my system, and I knew how it worked. I tried Melodyne Essential a couple times and found it more or less equivalent with a more limited feature set, so why bother spending the time to get good at it?
 
However, during a slack period I upgraded to Melodyne Editor and started fooling around with it. After a couple days I kicked myself for not doing that earlier.

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.

mike_mccue
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.

This is where it would be really helpful to describe what V-Vocal does better, so people can take advantage of your experience and choose the right tool for the right job without having to go through their own trial and error. After all, with both available, there's no need to limit oneself to just one or the other. I keep wanting people who have significant experience with both to be more specific about what one does better than the other, maybe you could step up to the plate for that since I'm not getting much response. 

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