Melodyne Integration in X3

I must say that for me, one of the best new features in X3 is the Melodyne integration.
Having never really used a tuner in anger, I've spent the last few days playing with it tuning backups and lead vocals. Our vocalist is really pretty amazing, no one that has seen the band live would ever accuse her of being pitchy, but recording is an entirely different matter, +10 or -20 cents really makes a difference.
A couple tips:
1. Tuning is an art, your ear is your most important tool if you're going for transparency.
2. Turn off snap to note as your first step (pitch grid), especially if your vocalist has a wide vibrato. You might want to set the pitch of the fixed note a little flat or a little sharp depending on how much variation is natural for your vocalist. Depending on what you're going for, minor imperfections (+- a few cents) can add to the feel of the song.
3. The pitch drift tool is your friend, look at the squiggly lines and listen. If it rises or falls more than you want, tweak that first.
4. Don't overdo it, a little flat or a little sharp is ok if the note is generally in the range you want. Again, use your ear and look at the modulation curve. Centering the mod curve appears to work much better than absolute values.
5. Be careful when splitting notes, you could inadvertently end up with TPain or Brittney. However, if that's what you're looking for, go for it.
6. The amplitude tool is pretty handy if your singer over-enunciates in places.
7. No one should ever know you 'fixed' the vocals unless you're going for that effect.
8. You get around 1/2 to 2 steps before things start sounding artificial, portamento is a bit more forgiving. I've gone a couple steps with Melodyne but let your ear be the judge.
9. It may be a pain but don't bother with snap to scale or auto. If you want it to sound really good, you're going to have to tweak every note manually (loop city).
 
I've gotten great results using this new tool, if your vocalist doesn't notice, you've probably nailed it. :)
 
Thanks to the Sonar coders, the Melodyne integration is really great. Much better than VTune in every way.
IMO the X3 upgrade was worth every penny, it's also worth the investment to upgrade to the editor version of Melodyne, you'll get the email with the discount coupon when you first register it. NOTE: You have to assign a region FX before you get the real registration screen.
 
P.S. If you want TPain, snap to grid and set the mod and pitch drift to 0.
 
 

@TomHelvey
Thanks for all the tips.

As for turning a screaming guitar to midi...
One of the things about distortion effects is that they wildly enhance overtones. This can make it hard for melodyne to distinguish between another primary tone in the signal or an overtone of a primary tone. You can clean this up, but it's a lot of work.
 
The best way to deal with this is to send a clean signal to a track (of course you want to hear your effects while you're playing to interact with them, so use a pre send from your amp or track (depending on whether your using amp effects or plugin effects.)
 
Then do what you want in melodyne with the clean track.
 
Then "re-amp" by putting the processed clean track back into your amp and recording that track or using your plug-in effects on the track.
 
This assumes you know what you want on the way in. If you are dealing with an existing track, just be aware that a polyphonic guitar track with heavy distortion can be a handful in melodyne, either for "adjustment" or for audio to midi.