Fun discussion, and I've been in this place before, myself. So, here's my take. V-Vocal probably is End Of Life because of x-reason. Some products are useful far beyond the end of their lives, so we can continue to use them until something better comes along. However, I have two suggestions:
 
1) In my sessions, if I need pitch correction, it's likely because I didn't catch the bad notes or bad pitch, but my needs are routinely minimal. Melodyne works pretty well in those cases for me.
2) Another suggestion is to inform Melodyne what you sincerely believe V-Vocal does better. I'm sure if they know V-Vocal is going away, they'd do what they could to improve their own product with less worry of patent infringement (especially if CW owns/owned V-Vocal).

You'll find that you have to work within the limitations of either one. Different pitch correction programs have quantitative, not qualitative, differences.

cpkoch

RexRed
I would suggest Cakewalk developers reconsider NOT dumping V-vocal so fast. Bring V-vocal back and develop it, add Melodyne's extra features to V-vocal not the other way around. V-Vocal is a rock solid (a little buggy) foundation for wave editing.

 
In the  Community Forum, where I posted a couple of multi-track songs using Melodyne Essential, people are telling  me  that, unless one really knows all of its "ins and outs"  Melodyne can make an otherwise good recording sound terrible. I mostly agree! Your experience underscores that premise.  I started into this (call it a) hobby using Sonar X3 in Feb 2014.  Consequently V-Vocal is not here for me.  Is there a way I can get it?  I'd like to be able to play around with it just for  experimentation.   

 
Sometimes people will sell Sonar with a valid license on eBay. Not legit according to CW support, but if all you need is V-Vocal in X3 then it's probably not going to be a big issue for you.
 
I picked up an X2 upgrade (from X1) as NOS - a retailer had it left over in their store after X3 was released and sold it at a greatly reduced price. Again, I found that deal on eBay.

cpkoch
 
As I recall from responses to a message I posted last month  (or so) V-Vocal was also said to be used for the Formant Scaling that  ostensibly was necessary to make transposed tracks sound more authentic. Since V-Vocal is not part of the X3 package Formant Scaling has been erroneously retained as a feature ... however, a feature that can not be implemented unless one has access to V-Vocal.
 
 

Please do not confuse V-Vocal with other features that have been lost moving from 32bit to 64bit. Formant scaling in the Transpose dialog has nothing to do with V-Vocal. It calls a 32bit library which was not ported to 64bit SONAR. See the explanation here http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3042774

scook
Formant scaling in the Transpose dialog has nothing to do with V-Vocal. It calls a 32bit library which was not ported to 64bit SONAR.

The library was created by Prosoniq, who did not upgrade it to 64 bits. Prosoniq's IP was acquired recently by Zynaptiq, but I doubt one of their priorities is upgrading 32-bit OEM libraries.

As is the usual case, nine pages of content have not budged anybody's opinion whatsoever, go figure.
 
The choices, in general terms, remain:
 
1.  Retain and use V-Vocal for vocal manipulation
2.  Retain and use some combination of V-Vocal and Melodyne, where appropriate for a given project.
3.  Retain V-Vocal but learn and rely on Melodyne.
4.  Dump V-Vocal and learn and only use Melodyne.
5.  Add many more pages to this thread, leaving no time to use either V-Vocal or Melodyne.
6.  Take singing lessons.
 
I think that about sums up the general options.
 
Bob Bone
 

robert_e_bone
The choices, in general terms, remain...
 
I think that about sums up the general options.

You forgot my favorite option: don't care about it one way or the other.

robert_e_bone
As is the usual case, nine pages of content have not budged anybody's opinion whatsoever, go figure.
 
The choices, in general terms, remain:
 
1.  Retain and use V-Vocal for vocal manipulation
2.  Retain and use some combination of V-Vocal and Melodyne, where appropriate for a given project.
3.  Retain V-Vocal but learn and rely on Melodyne.
4.  Dump V-Vocal and learn and only use Melodyne.
5.  Add many more pages to this thread, leaving no time to use either V-Vocal or Melodyne.
6.  Take singing lessons.
 
I think that about sums up the general options.
 
Bob Bone
 

That puts me firmly in the 2. camp 

 
how did miss this thread  ?

There is the pitch modulation tool that alters vibrato in melodyne editor. Ta.

Bristol_Jonesey

robert_e_bone
As is the usual case, nine pages of content have not budged anybody's opinion whatsoever, go figure.
 
The choices, in general terms, remain:
 
1.  Retain and use V-Vocal for vocal manipulation
2.  Retain and use some combination of V-Vocal and Melodyne, where appropriate for a given project.
3.  Retain V-Vocal but learn and rely on Melodyne.
4.  Dump V-Vocal and learn and only use Melodyne.
5.  Add many more pages to this thread, leaving no time to use either V-Vocal or Melodyne.
6.  Take singing lessons.
 
I think that about sums up the general options.
 
Bob Bone
 

That puts me firmly in the 2. camp 

 
I'm in the #2 "camp as well..

As a newcomer that never got to try VVocal, I am quite happy with Melodyne. In fact the realization that such a thing as melodyne exists and seeing what it can do was maybe the biggest "wth?" moment I had when I entered this brave new world of homerecording (my previous experience stopped 15 years ago with a 4-track cassette recorder).
Still after reading this thread I have to say it is unfortunate that Cakewalk was unable to keept the legacy version of VVocal available to new users - much like they still offer rather vintage softsynths.

I too used V-Vocal for many years and was reluctant to switch. IMHO if you don't take stability issues into account, V-Vocal is a more capable program than Melodyne Essential. However, Melodyne Editor is superior to V-Vocal in multiple ways; I still have V-Vocal on my system, but haven't used it once since upgrading to Melodyne Editor. One issue is that V-Vocal came "free" (well not really, there were licensing fees passed along to the consumer) while Editor is a paid upgrade (typically $150). 
 
However, this is all moot because V-Vocal is a 32-bit [not correct - see next post] DirectX plug-in, a standard which Microsoft seems to have lost all interest in years ago. Although some companies, like Cakewalk and Sony, still support DirectX many (if not most) hosts have dropped support. It is a zombie format; fortunately, Cakewalk has VST versions of the stalwart Sonitus effects in case Windows 11 or 12 or whatever can't deal with DirectX any more.
 
Roland, which owns the V-Vocal intellectual property, has no plans I know of to update the software (which has remained unchanged for IIRC around eight years). If Cakewalk bought those rights and committed the resources to re-write V-Vocal from scratch as a VST plug-in optimized for 64-bit systems, I would not be surprised if amortizing that expense would add more to the cost of Sonar than an upgrade to Melodyne Editor. Furthermore, pitch correction is not a unique feature. Consumers can choose from Antares, Waves, iZotope, Melodyne, and others. It would make little sense to spend time developing something equal to the capabilities of those programs instead of developing unique Sonar features.
 
 

I made a correction to the original post. Sorry 'bout that.

IMHO Roland always treated Cakewalk more like a mistress than a wife. When times were good it lavished Cakewalk with gifts and played the part of couple but never made an honest woman of her. In the end it become abundantly clear that Cakewalk was a fling. An enjoyable fling with some occasional affection, but alimony wasn't happening. The fact that products like R-mix were temporarily licensed like a third party always seemed kind of telling to me. Some of the perks of there affair became impractical when it was done. V-vocal was one of them. Would you really lease your love shack to your ex-mistress? V-vocal as a product is dead but some of the technology is used in other products, so I doubt selling the source code is an option.