V-Vocal replacement

Looking for a 3rd party tuning and timing correction program that would at a minimum give me the same functionality as V-Vocal. I'm thinking Melodyne. Budget says that I must start at the bottom of the chain and upgrade my way up as expendable income becomes available. I'm hoping that some of you have experience in both V-Vocal and the entry level versions of Melodyne and can give me an accurate comparison of the two programs as far as functionality is concerned.

I have an older version of Melodyne, the UNO (?) version, I think.  it does not work inside sonar (well, except with rewire, but I never really got that to work well), so it is stand alone only.  I would have to export the wave files, import them into melodyne, edit, export from melodyne then import back into sonar.  it was not a pretty sight.

however, the good thing about it was that it was much better at correction than V-vocal.  there were fewer artifacts left behind and it sounded much more "natural" to my ears than v-vocal.

however, I only used melodyne for a few months and gave up because of the tediousness of the process.  it might be better if I had Editor - the plugin version, but I have not upgraded simply because v-vocal does what I need it to do from inside sonar.  I've been using v-vocal for all of my vocal editing.  if the artifacts are too bad with any of the edits I do, then I use that as an indication that I need to retrack the vocal instead of trying to fix it anyway.

I, too, have an older version of Melodyne, called Cre8. I don't use it much anymore because it's a hassle, but the great thing about it is you can edit up to 8 tracks at a time. Very handy when you're working with big multi-part vocal productions. But mostly I use V-Vocal for its convenience.

Therein lies the quandary: which do I give up, convenience or quality? My answer, more and more, is neither. Instead, I often elect to either eschew pitch correction altogether, or to use it very selectively.

Over the past two years I've become dubious about the benefits of pitch correction. I no longer just assume that a vocal track needs it. Instead of looking at lines on a grid, I first listen intently to determine if the pitch inaccuracies actually detract from the song or not. Most of the time, and often to my surprise, they do not.

BTW, I use Melodyne. I'm on the SingleTrack/DNA/Editor version.

It's all I've ever used for pitch correction.

It's all I'll ever use for pitch correction.

The last thing I want to hear is Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Mark Knopfler, Tom Petty, etc... singing perfectly

Amen to that!

Melodyne editor here. 

I mainly use it on vocals and it does a superb job. Transparent.

The other day, I decided to try something new. Since Melodyne editor is polyphonic, I loaded a mandolin track into it. Just curious what editor would do. I used auto correct and did not manually move any notes. I must say I was impressed with the results. Nice job on fixing some slightly out of tune strings. ( A mandolin has 8 strings)  

I think that because music is all digital nowadays, it requires the perfection of something like melodyne. It's all perfect. Back in the day, with tape, it all washed out and blended into it's own lovely distortion and anomolies. Now, if it ain't perfect, it sticks out like  sore thumb.

codamedia


The last thing I want to hear is Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Mark Knopfler, Tom Petty, etc... singing
 
 

Fixed in the edit.

Reaper does have pitch correction, unsure if its the level you are after but it isn't bad.

One thought, do you have a copy of Pro Tools 8 or know someone who does? It came with a basic version of Melodyne, at least mine did. Could be a starting. :)

Edit, sorry didn't see this was an old thread that was bumped...

Eyes


Reaper does have pitch correction, unsure if its the level you are after but it isn't bad.

One thought, do you have a copy of Pro Tools 8 or know someone who does? It came with a basic version of Melodyne, at least mine did. Could be a starting. :)

Edit, sorry didn't see this was an old thread that was bumped...

Yes, Reaper has ReaTune and it works but the interface is nowhere near as nice as Melodyne.  Melodyne is the defacto standard for tuning programs AFAIC.