V-Vocal coloring vocals

Are you highlighting the vocal part in v-vocal you are editing? and are you 1000% sure your not editing the entire clip

Hi CJ!  I'm not sure what you mean about highlighting in V-Vocal.  I just move a note and it highlights that vertical section automatically.
 
I suppose I cannot be 1000% sure about anything.  Is there some implicit editing of an entire clip when you just move a few notes?
 

cho_drummer


use melodyne...
in all seriousness, though DO use melodyne.

Any tuning programme is going to colour the sound, its using an algorhythm to process the effect. what bit rate did you record and what sample rate? really if you're doing pitch or time shifting go for 24bit and at least 48k probably higher if you're system will handle it, gives you more headroom for that kind of processing.
Also, if you're finding this problem when you only want to alter things slightly, just split the portion you want to use and V-Vocal that part!

melodyne (well the plug in version at least) still has an effect on the tone of the vocal, albeit slight...

just a point, back to our regularly scheduled program...8)

cheers

Wiz

Much appreciated advice Robin, and it will definitely come in handy in when editing vocals.

But I am talking about unedited portions of a V-Vocal clip.  For example:  right-click a clip, select "Create V-Vocal Clip" and stop right there.  The clip (in my experience) has already been polluted at this point.  It's very subtle coloring, but my ears can definitely hear something unnatural and a bit hollow (possible phasing??).  Especially in breaths, F's and S sounds.

itllcometogether


Much appreciated advice Robin, and it will definitely come in handy in when editing vocals.

But I am talking about unedited portions of a V-Vocal clip.  For example:  right-click a clip, select "Create V-Vocal Clip" and stop right there.  The clip (in my experience) has already been polluted at this point.  It's very subtle coloring, but my ears can definitely hear something unnatural and a bit hollow (possible phasing??).  Especially in breaths, F's and S sounds.

Yes yes - we've reported this many times along with the periodic crashing problems associated with VV. I wish Cakewalk would chime in here already. Maybe they don't because it's not their product. Call Roland
 
The argument about background noise has merit but I don't have that problem with Auto-tune. If AT can deal with a little background noise (actually, it's amazing how forgiving AT is of background noise) then VV should be able to handle it too. Actually, it used to. This nonsense crept in along the way and hasn't been fixed yet. We shouldn't have to record in an anachoic chamber just so VV can track properly. And yes, I know, it imparts some unpleasantness even on portions of the audio that aren't being fixed.
 
VV has it's strengths though and I wish it would work as expected because if it did I'd use it more often. I used it a lot when it first was introduced. The thing I don't particularly like about AT is that you have to play the section of music you want to process first (it encodes the music during playback). This is all real-time work. With VV, the encoding happens in seconds. You can encode a one minute audio clip in a few short seconds and begin work. That makes a big difference when you have many tracks of audio to deal with. I rarely, if ever, use AT in automatic mode. It almost never produces 100% perfect results that way. AT's user interface is a little clunky compared to VV. I like the way you can scale VV to the screen size. The workspace is a lot easier to see and navigate around in compared to AT.
 
I'd consider Melodyne if I didn't already have AT. It's not like I make a living pitch-correcting vocal tracks. It's just a tool for occasional work. I guess if I was doing hip hop or urban R&B, it would be another story. Every rap or R&B song released in the past two years has AT all over it. Everyone sounds like a robot. I guess robots really have taken over planet earth

Cakewalk did chime in (me). At first I thought it was something in the process of using the plugin hence my post. Since then i have reported back the results to the product team.

Unfortunately, I can't give you a play by play on the next steps as I am not involved in them, I am a sales guy (duck). I can tell you that the right people are aware of this thread and what you have reported.

Robin

But I am talking about unedited portions of a V-Vocal clip.

Caveat: I have almost no experience with V-Vocal, but... if you know in advance that you only want to fix that one syllable, maybe you could split it out of the rest of the clip before applying V-Vocal...? Just a thought for this particular situation.

Tom Riggs

That Color you hear could be a phasing if there is background noise on the track...It could also the the on-line processing algorithm. If you create a vvocal clip and make no changes to it and then bounce it to a clip does it sound altered in anyway?

Thank you all for the on-target feedback!  Tom's question was very helpful and I've been experimenting.  It is looking like an issue with V-Vocal's realtime processing ability.  When I bounce a V-Vocaled clip and A/B, the phasey stuff is much less apparent.
 
Perhaps this is related to other Sonar settings, like latency, or dithering?  Any other ideas are welcome.  Thanks again!

Great experiment bitflipper!  Can I spoil the surprise?  Assuming you had the same surprise as me:  the untouched, bounced V-Vocal clip is far from identical to the original clip!

This is a seriously dirty plug in.  With all the time, money, and equipment we all put into getting the best possible vocal recording, this pollution is not acceptable. 

I do love the tool, and I sincerely hope Cakewalk and Roland take this seriously.

Glad to see others noticing change of sound with Virtual Vocal. A quote from this site says
Perfect vocals – on pitch and in time.

I get anything but perfect vocals. Even tiny corrections of pitch make the vocals sound horrible. They get this synthetic colouration that is very noticeable and renders it unusable for serious work.
I'm not talking about a half tone correction, I would never even try that.

Not to mention the audio to midi function, that produces a result that has absolutely nothing to do with the simple file I try to convert.

This area of sonar is way behind the ballpark , and needs a serious overhall in terms of user interface and achievable results

I really like V-Vocal and I've been using it for a few years with great results.  But it has rendered many vocal clips unusable with phasey artifacts.

Don't get me wrong; the phasing is very slight, not as if it sounds like Mr Roboto.  But I did some blind listening tests and I could tell 100% of the time when V-Vocal was active vs bypassed on certain clips.  And this was even with zero correction applied.

sotbee


I get anything but perfect vocals. Even tiny corrections of pitch make the vocals sound horrible. They get this synthetic colouration that is very noticeable and renders it unusable for serious work.

Your description makes me wonder if you're leaving the "Formant" knob at its (extremely high) default.  By default, pitch adjustments also result in formant adjustments, which can make things sound "synthetic" or "chipmunky."  If you reset the "formant follows pitch" knob to zero (or something small like 2 or 3), you'll get more realistic results.

In the screenshots I posted above, the formant control was set to zero. No pitch, time or dynamics corrections were applied. I just created the V-Vocal clip and immediately bounced it.

Hi all,i'm sorry to  hear your bad experiences with V Vocal....
It's  incredible weapon for fix my Vox,bass and sax tracks (wonderful for time aligne).
I follow the cake team advices and i ever cut in short clip the track,fix with VV and than bounce to clip.The result is awesome with any click or pitch proplem.
It's only my esperience with VV.

Greetings

Roberto

RTGraham

bitflipper


In the screenshots I posted above, the formant control was set to zero. No pitch, time or dynamics corrections were applied. I just created the V-Vocal clip and immediately bounced it.

Understood.  There's no question that the encoding-and-playback process alone subtly alters the waveform, even without editing any pitches, time, or formants.  Though I haven't tested it, I suspect that the same is true of Melodyne and AutoTune (and I would be surprised if it weren't).  The specific "symptoms" that sotbee described seemed to be related not just to the encoding process, but to the formant control as well, so I thought it might be useful to point it out.

I have not actually performed a scientific test on Melodyne, but having moved from V-Vocal for JUST THE REASONS mentioned here, and being very happy with Melodyne,  I'd be VERY surprised if Melodyne does anything to the signal if no processing is done - you certainly can't hear it.