I have really enjoyed the demo version of Melodyne and would like to buy the 'assistant' version since it has the features i want.   Unfortunately the $199 price tag on most web sites incl Amazon, etc is beyond my budget for now. 

Do they tend to run seasonal sales or anything like that?  Is there a legit site where i can buy it cheaper?

I'll help ya hope, ol pal.  Really the way Melodyne as done it now with what they call the "singletrack" version or whatever means that unless you're wanting to track everything in Melodyne all you really NEED is assistant.  As a standalone it will not only pitch and formant correct...it will copy and paste allowing you to make instant harmonies.  I used to use the plugin inside Sonar and Uno on the desktop and found that I used Uno way more.  Now my Editor is standalone on the desktop as well (which is really just the assistant in standalone mode) and it's all I need.  Save your pennies and wait for a sale cwestmont, ol pal.  It's worth it!

i would buy it if i could get it to run as a plug in without crashing. 

I am starting to see that most people run DNA in standalone as the plug is really unstable unless you have a Cray super computer.

I've been running the demo in standalone mode and yes I've seen plenty of crashes, too.  I was guessing that was a function of a slightly unpolished demo but apparently not.  Of course, I am conditioned by Sonar to expect crashes whenever I process audio (slightly off-topic but true) so i was/am prepared to tolerate it.  It crashes less often than my voice does. 

I run the Editor in standalone mode on the desktop all the time and have never had one single crash.  How exactly are you trying to use it? 

I run the editor inside Music Creator as a plug in the FX bin of a track.

I think the crashes are related directly to a number of factors.

The first being how "loaded" the processor is. In my old lappy I experienced a number of crashes with Melodyne (MD) when I would have a CPU heavy project running AND then try to MD a 4 minute vocal track all at once. MD has to make huge calculations to fix a track and pull the notes into tune.  If the processor chokes on the numbers, the plug will crash and in my case it took Music Creator down with it. A complete restart of the program was needed and then all the data and edits were lost since the last save.

Another big factor in crashes (I believe) is the size of the track and how much auto correction you apply to it.

When I work in MD, I have learned to save, and save often.....after every edit, or every few measures.

I now run it in a new custom built i5 750 DAW.... no crapware installed, just music software. I have had a few crashes but not as many. I also contacted support to ask about the crashes and another unrelated issue.

I decided to try something different, and it seems to work very well..... I no longer use the auto correction and pitch drift tool to 100%. I will now only drag the slide to 50% on pitch correction and maybe 25% on drift. Calculation is faster and I have not had a crash with it since I started doing that...and the tuning is still more then sufficient to get a good vocal track or fix a few bad guitar notes. I rarely use the poly mode.

At times, if there is only one small area that has a bum note, I will only MD a very small vocal/guitar clip and fix it manually. No need to scan the whole track for a few notes. Doing that, I have never had a crash.... I then bounce the track with FX to a new track.... listen to it, if it's right, I delete MD and the old track.

The initial problem I had was distortion in the bounced track on certain notes that MD had "fixed". When I started reducing the auto-correct levels to 50% that problem went away. Also reducing the overall track volume levels helped as well and could have been a contributing factor in the distortion, BUT, the distortion was not occurring on the musical peaks...... so it wasn't totally levels related. Something in MD was causing it and reducing the auto-correction to around 50% seems to have solved it. 

Hope this helps you.

So far I am using it only on very short audio clips (literally 10 seconds or so) as I am just trying to learn the program.  The ease-of-use is fantastic, by the way, and the manual is well-written.  I am heavily tweaking the vocal samples, pushing stuff around a lot to see what it can do.  Very impressive.

The irony is it crashes when i save the work!  It does not crash gracefully either -- it hangs the audio subsystem and I have to reboot the entire machine.  Perversely, the file gets saved successfully, so at least it is not a total loss. 

This may not be the fault of melodyne at all -- as i wrote earlier, Sonar hangs regularly on me when I process audio FX.  I suspect the EMU 0404 may be at fault.   Since audio processing is a small part of what I use Sonar for, I have just adjusted my workflow accordingly. 

Anyway, this has been getting off off topic -- I think I can similarly workaround melodyne, but I want to buy it for the right price. 

Any buying advice is well appreciated. 

I think I bought it at a store. The best thing is to wait for a $50 off coupon when they have a big sale.... That's what I did.... Actually.... here's what I did.

I took my Sam Ash discount coupon to SA and bought a mic. They gave me the discount, and I asked for the melodyne program as well. but they were out of stock.
So... I asked the sales guy to make me a copy of the sales discount coupon I had just used, since he told me he needed to keep the original.
I left SA with my new mic (discounted $50) and went across the street to Guitar Center. They had ONE copy of Melodyne in stock. I told them I wanted it and asked if they would honor a competitor's discount coupon IF I bought it from them. The sales guy checked with his manager, came back and said "Sure!" so I used the coupon in 2 stores and got double the cash off the price.

It never hurts to ask.

Mucho thankos to yorolpal! I'm running x1d and was having a devil of a time getting v-vocal to work at all. Yes, I tried many of the fixes and patches recommended in this forum. Filed a bug but I don't expect CW to fix this, especially given that it is likely code they inherited from Roland and probably can't really get to work well in all circumstances. Sonar X1d Producer Expanded (Win 7, 64-bit) is great software, so I'm not about to tube it just because of v-vocal. I rather expect v-vocal to be dropped from X2 or to at least continue to be problematic. So, I bit the bullet and got "Melodyne Assistant" for about $170 via AudioDeluxe. I run it standalone on an entire vocal track (mono) exported from Sonar, then import back to Sonar. Not a single problem doing it this way. BTW, I'm running in 64-bit and using ASIO4ALL. There's a little learning curve, but man, what great results! It lacks the vibrato support available in v-vocal, but there are ways to improvise within the tool if need be. (I didn't need to add vibrato, so that's a non-issue for me.) Again, thanks to yorolpal. Your comments are accurate and very helpful. Melodyne Assistant is a fabulous solution for tweaking vocal tracks!

Glad to hear ya got it workin ol pal:-)