Lol@this whole thread. Regardless of whether V-vocal is better, it's dead. Many "superior" products have bitten the dust. Not sure what the point is of ranting over a dead product except maybe an attempt to start an argument. If you think V-vocal is viable, get a team of investeors an developers together and somehow do what Roland was unable to do.

Okay, today I am going to try and ignore things that piss me off. :)
 
Even yesterday i tried to tone down my responses at best. Sorry if get a bit testy, it is the temperamental musician in me that sometimes gets the better of me. I know attitude is very important in music no matter which style of music you play. 
 
That is good news that V-vocal may get some development soon. Someone has dropped the ball on it.
 
Usually when someone is proficient in one program regarding a certain task if they try another program that basically does the same thing it should be a piece of cake (pun) to learn.
 
The idea that some vocalists are so good that they don't need V-vocal or Melodyne is fine but  I would like to meet one. Some say melodyne is the "industry standard" because these days everyone uses either a tuner, a volume leveler and timing apparatus (+formant correction) to bring out quiet parts, tune parts that are slightly off and adjusting slight timing discrepancies. WHY? Because these slight imperfections tire the listener. Though some are mostly imperceptible they are still there. A recording artist wants their listeners to listen to their song as many times as possible. I remember picking the needle up off records and replaying certain song over and over and later rewinding tape because a certain song had me captivated. Pink Floyd, Foreigner and The Police come to mind but there are many others.
 
I guess my points are, ease of use and a "complete" solution. Stretching waves are a vital part of a complete solution. The drawbacks of melodyne require that I finish editing in melodyne and then re-sample my wave in v-vocal to finish timing issues. Let's just concede that pitch can be done in both programs well. Melodyne has timing limitations inherent in the program's design.
 
Switching modes in melodyne is also a re-sample of material. Every time a waveform is re-sampled it loses detail.
This is why v-vocal is a one stop shop. I can do all of the volume, pitch, timing and formant under one re-sample of my wave.
 
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.
 
This is the main reason why using a bit of melodyne and a bit of v-vocal is not an option to me when v-vocal simply does it all and without the clunky (buggy, depending on your system), interface. Over re-sampling is death the subtle siblances, character and tone of a track.
 
The only problem i have with V-vocal is I will be working in the program and cakewalk completely freezes up. It happens rarely and is usually i think related to background tasks like the malicious software removal tool scan etc. Happens a lot on Sundays for some reason (when the NSA is spying on my PC) :).
 
Most other days of the week V-vocal is fine.
 
I just save my work unplug my usb audio interface plug it back in reopen cakewalk and go back to editing. V-vocal has never corrupted a project file on me.
 
So in on re-sampling of a wave i can "easily" correct all vocal anomalies in a vocal track. (and "some" other tracks too) I do my mastering and mix down/rendering to wave or mp3, if that process brings out a certain problem in the wave, because i do not bounce my v-vocal clips to track, i can easily go back in and tweak any portion of my vocal later till everything is good, as best my ear can tell.
 
V-vocal is a one stop, one re-sampling shop with accurate ease of use. If V-vocal has a problem or i need to repeat a part of a wave as an effect, I will clone the v-vocal take, render that clone down, I will take out a certain passage in v-vocal by lowering the volume completely, do surgery on the wave portion and go from there.
 
Why so much has to be read into what I am saying here has to do with twerking, i am certain of it. :)

When X3 came out with no VVocal, I thought it was interesting that support was not only retained for existing projects, but support was added for VVocal as a region effect. So it's not 100% abandoned, just apparently can't be updated or delivered directly.

bvideo
When X3 came out with no VVocal, I thought it was interesting that support was not only retained for existing projects, but err ooissupport was added for VVocal as a region effect. So it's not 100% abandoned, just apparently can't be updated or delivered directly.

Interesting way to look at it. In that sense DXI plugins are not % 100 abandoned either but I think there is a big difference between legacy support and active development.

I suspect the OP is just having fun with us anyway. The idea that someone comes out of the blue so passionate about a dead product is hilarious.

I never really got along well with V-Vocal so perhaps I'm missing some intricacies as to how it works, but what exactly are you missing in Melodyne's timing tools? All the stretching seems to be there, to me, as well as an attack speed tool that V-Vocal misses, not to mention you do all of it from the same view where you had to switch between views in V-Vocal.

When I'm on a job (day gig) and need a phillips screwdriver, my pliers or hammer won't get the job done. I need a screwdriver. Also grabbing a flathead, or a torx screwdriver won't work even though it's a screwdriver..... and then there are the various sizes, because the job may call for a medium sized phillips driver, a small or large one won't work even though it's a phillips. See my point?
 
 
I think so.  If I have to knock a nail in a piece of wood I shouldn't use a screw driver.
Right?       

bitflipper
 
...Was it developed in-house by Roland and then abandoned? Or was it bought from some startup?

I'm fairly certain VVocal may have started life here:
 
http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/271
http://www.roland.com/products/en/VariOS/
 
(check out the fifth image from the left in that second link)
 

CakeAlexS

Sanderxpander
I have three Twitter followers by the way.

I have 4!!!! ;)

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

SvenArne
No chance the OP could be LA2A with a new screen name taking his time setting the stage for an pro-Autotune assault? He hasn't bashed that yet!

Doesn't seem so....   He just stated he's using Essentials vs. Editor and admitted that when he tried Editor it was at v1 - that doesn't seem like something LA2A would have ever done.   Besides, VVocal isn't from Slate.   
 

RexRed
I am gong to try out melodyne 3 editor and I will get back to you on if I like it, or not.
 
I am not going to rate it on the learning curve because I am sure there is one. I am going to rate it on how well it tunes my tracks and the timing manipulation of notes, (also stability) and once learned it is it easy to use and achieve results. 
 
I am not at all pleased with melodyne essentials and as I have already said, V-vocal kicks its butt. How usable is melodyne 3 editor, i am gong to find out. I am not going to approach this new version jaded but give it a fair and hopeful try as I have always done.
 
If I am wrong about the new melodyne 3 i will concede and immediately switch. I am just looking for the best product I have only tried melodyne 1 editor and it was completely usable...  

So I am behind by two versions, maybe it has been fixed and will work well. 
 
I will get back to you all on this.

While I'm sure you're confident with many programs and plugins, many people on here had a hard time switching from V-Vocal to Melodyne from a UI point of view. For me it went in the other direction and I never really enjoyed working with V-Vocal as a result. So don't hesitate to ask if there is something specific you're trying to do and can't find how.

For some reason I have a hard time conceptually unifying GM soundsets with the demands of someone who wants to run at 88.2 :)
But that's neither here nor there.

bitflipper
Serious question for Craig...I doubt you know the answer, but I'm sure you know people who do.

 
Right on the first count, maybe not on the second one...it was developed a long time ago by Roland, and I never really had an "in" there.
 
Roland invented a technology called "Variphrase" which I believe was the basis of V-Vocal; VV was a spinoff from that technology. Regardless of the potential VV had, Auto-Tune ruled the world and it may have been a situation where it was too difficult to dislodge the long-time entrenched leader in pitch correction technology. 
 

Could V-V have been the product of some one-man shop who decided to go elsewhere?

 
I don't know, but I highly doubt it. I'm pretty sure Variphrase was genius Roland engineers doing their thing.

At least for now, anyone with X3 who had an earlier version with V-Vocal installed has the luxury of using both and not having to decide between one or the other. So I think a productive direction for this thread would be defining which tasks each does best, or equivalently.
 
For example, I think Melodyne works really well for doing Automatic Double Tracking-type effects, and I wrote an article for the Cakewalk blog about this application.
 
I wrote another article for the Cakewalk blog about using Melodyne to create harmony lines. Both these techniques work with Essential; you don't need Editor. 
 
Finally, there's a song on my YouTube channel that has all the harmony and ADT parts done with Melodyne Essential (this was before I upgraded to Editor) - there was only one recorded vocal part, everything was derived from that. I did not get equally good results when trying to do the same thing with V-Vocal.
 
 

My main man:
 

RexRed
I am gong to try out melodyne 3 editor and I will get back to you on if I like it, or not.

I for one am on the edge of my seat.