The Formant tool is not part of Melodyne Essential, the version bundled with SONAR X3 Studio and Producer. Here is a chart comparing the different editions of Melodyne http://www.celemony.com/en/melodyne/functions

Well, I hope Cake responds to your very specific needs. Annnnnd, it sounds like you're very generous at the bar so invite me when you buy that round of drinks! :-)

Thanks ...wicked
 
Generosity is my middle name as long as it costs me next to nothing; however, you're on for one ... in that  round of drinks.  

scook...The Formant tool is not part of Melodyne Essential...

Yeah, and that's really too bad.  Pitch shift without Formant correction is like - I don't know, like not having a volume knob, like an EQ that only stays flat, like a day without sunshine - A Bloody Mary without the Vodka or Gin, that's better. 
 
Cpkoch, I'm sorry you don't have V-Vocal available - It had issues, the main one being a phasing sound it would add, and so Melodyne is much better at shifting pitches - But at least it had other tools, like a good Formant shifting tool, volume shift, and time shift, all in the one interface.  It's a step backwards to no longer have it available in Sonar. 
 
I don't think you've ever said why this quest for Formant shifting is so important to you though - What exactly do you need it for?  You can see I agree it's an essential part of convincing pitch shifting, and Cakewalk has done users a disservice by no longer having a Formant shifting tool, but I've never used any kind of shifting more than sparingly.  Why do you need it so much that you paid $150 for the upgrade because you thought you'd be getting it?
 
Randy
 
 

Sounds to me like you should spend the money upgrading Melodyne rather than Sonar.

rbowser
I'm sorry you don't have V-Vocal available - It had issues, the main one being a phasing sound it would add, and so Melodyne is much better at shifting pitches - But at least it had other tools, like a good Formant shifting tool, volume shift, and time shift, all in the one interface.  It's a step backwards to no longer have it available in Sonar. 

Unfortunately it was a tech support nightmare and as far as i know, all development on it ceased a long time ago. A lot of the crash reports Cakewalk received had V-Vocal's fingerprints in there somewhere. Melodyne is still being actively developed so I'm not surprised Cakewalk went down that path, although to get all the V-Vocal features, you do have to upgrade. The consolation is that the upgraded Melodyne can do all the functions V-Vocal did, only more and better.
 

rbowser
I don't think you've ever said why this quest for Formant shifting is so important to you though - What exactly do you need it for?

If needed for background vocals, and you just want to a bit of the "sped up" or "slowed down" effect and don't need to do precise formant shifts and corrections, there's a highly inelegant but effective workaround.
 
1. Create a premix of the song that starts at the beginning. Mute all other tracks.
2. Open the premix in the Loop Construction window.
3. From the Clip drop-down menu, enable Stretch On/Off.
4. Move the Threshold slider all the way to the left (0%) so all the markers disappear. This is very important.
5. The two right-most fields adjust semitones and cents respectively. Do not enable the Pitch button! That will just confuse things. Cents will adjust +/-49 cents which should be enough. If not, for example if you need to make the pitch 70 cents sharp, set semitones to 1 and cents to -30.
6. Render the clip, and it will reflect the pitch/speed changes you made.
7. After adjusting the pitch, create a track and record your new clip (e.g., background vocals) while monitoring the premix.
8. If you started recording anyplace other than the beginning, slip edit the new clip to the beginning, bounce the clip to itself to add this extra length, then open the newly recorded clip in the Loop Construction window.
9. Repeat step 3, but this time, adjust pitch equal and oppositely. For example if the premix was -36 cents, set cents for the new clip to +36.
10. Bounce the new clip to itself, and now it will be at the correct pitch and tempo but with a different formant and character. You may need to trim the end, as Sonar will still think this is a loop and repeat part of the beginning. You can now delete the premix.

Anderton
Unfortunately it was a tech support nightmare and as far as i know, all development on it ceased a long time ago. A lot of the crash reports Cakewalk received had V-Vocal's fingerprints in there somewhere. Melodyne is still being actively developed so I'm not surprised Cakewalk went down that path, although to get all the V-Vocal features, you do have to upgrade. The consolation is that the upgraded Melodyne can do all the functions V-Vocal did, only more and better.

Not to mention it was based on technology licensed from Roland which apparently was not part of the sale to Gibson.

Anderton...Unfortunately it was a tech support nightmare...A lot of the crash reports Cakewalk received had V-Vocal's fingerprints in there somewhere...

I think a lot of those crashes happened to users who insisted on have large numbers of V-Vocal instances in a project, having the plugin do its thing in real time, instead of rendering the results of each instance to an audio clip. 
 
I've never, literally never had V-Vocal cause a crash.  My habit is to use it on a small clip of a few seconds duration, and once I'm happy with the results, I bounce the results to clip.  V-Vocal is gone, the edit is in place, and later if I need to revert to the original, it's conveniently parked there in the track, muted, ready to be un-muted again.
 
I think rendering the edits from Melodyne is probably the best approach also, instead of trying to have it do its work in real time, don't you think, Craig?
 
Randy

>  insisted on have large numbers of V-Vocal instances
 
 There are some very specific conditions that make it crash which I think are difficult to reproduce so I'm not surprised the viewpoint is bi-polar. I've seen crashes straight within seconds of inserting it as a plugin. But then I've also seen it behave itself for days. In all cases just one plugin. I just don't bother with it any more Melodyne is far superior.