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?  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
 
 

I can't point to a specific goal but for about two months now I have been singing, recording and producing, each week, one or two of the top hit songs of the 50's and 60's.  I've been posting the songs on a YouTube channel I created ...  http://www.YouTube.com/user/cpkoch  
 
I am not a instrumentalist so I use backing tracks I buy from one of a few online sources.  Because my range (unless my underwear is very tight) is such that sometimes I can't reach the higher registers I usually need to transpose the backing tracks.  Consequently I often need to bring the key down two or three half-steps or sometimes up a few. It feel more comfortable vocally speaking.When I do that, however,  I get some weird sounding  and unwanted tones ... especially in the back-up vocals and in the bass parts.  Hence I am looking for an easy way to correct the modified backing track.  I found that, before I bought Sonar when I was using Audacity or WavePad, if I created modified backing tracks an octave apart and mixed them the weird tones seemed to be ameliorated (love that word).  
 
Anyhow ... that's the story about why I'd like a to use Formant Scaling feature.
 
Why spend the $150?  I guess that I am just a sucker for a deal that get's me an upgrade for less that half price. Moreover I had but a few minutes to act before that deal went south so to speak!  It turns out however, I probably don't need it. I'd rather have vodka in my martini than have the drums thing and plugins that accompany Producer.
 
As an aside, I mistakenly thought that I was getting Melodyne Editor with the Producer upgrade which would have made the deal worhwhile just for that upgrade. Unfortunately, after the fact, realized that I was stuck with Melodyne Essential.          

Anderton
 
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.

I appreciate your giving me a work around; but, I am not far enough on the learning curve to appreciate what you are telling me Craig. As an example of what I would like to do, the backing track, You Raise Me Up,  http://syzygy-llc.com/Songs/You%20Raise%20Me%20Up.wav is what I am currently trying to transpose.    I trying to transpose it to the key of Bb. Not being at all adept at reading music, I think it is now in the key of F.
 
Will the technique you suggest fulfill my need?  If so I will give it a go!
 
 

If all you are doing is transposing a stereo wave file, then there are lots of Wave editing software apps that can do this.  
I use Wave lab as an example. Elements is only $98. I'm not sure but other, even freeware like Wavosaur might also do this.     http://www.wavosaur.com/
 
The further from the original you go, the more contaminated the track becomes. Your talking a whole 4th there. That might be on the outer edge of possiblity for the math it takes to do this smoothly.
You see if a song goes up a 4th, the bass is now a guitar, the kick drum a tom etc. You go down to a 4th
Bass notes might be subsonic etc.
Have you ever explored the option of using MIDI files? One thing Sonar excells at is making the most of a midi file.
 
 
I say this as I use backing tracks I make myself and a some of them will start out as a free downloaded midi file. I build from there, But I do play guitar which is something ( thank goodness) a midi file will suck at. But I have been asked to transpose CD backing tracks for others, and best results were with Wave Lab, but only a few steps up or down. Like in your case up to G  or down to say E is a easy one but up as far as A might go wierd, Bb possibly for sure.

Transposing an entire piece of music is never going to sound right if you go more than one or two semitones, for the reasons stated above. Without trying to sound like an ass, I honestly suggest choosing different tracks that are nearer to your own vocal range. You would have more possibilities if you played an instrument yourself or had a friend who does.

rbowser

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

I'm not sure that's the correct analysis Randy.
 
Back in version 6/7 & 8, I could, and did have many track & clips with V-Vocal on them - all live, none bounced, and they never caused a problem.
 
But this weekend, I tried to apply VV to a single short, clean, free of bleed clip with good levels** and every time I tried it, Sonar would crash to the desktop.
 
** This was on a project originally created in an earlier version of Sonar, though I'm not sure which version!
 
The solution was to copy the clip to a new, blank project, do my V-Vocal work in there, render it, then copy it back.
 
If anyone else attempts to try this, make sure your new project has the same tempo map & time sig as your original project, otherwise it will get screwed!

Bristol_Jonesey...I'm not sure that's the correct analysis Randy..
 
Back in version 6/7 & 8, I could, and did have many track & clips with V-Vocal on them - all live, none bounced, and they never caused a problem...

Hi, Bristol - Well, I can only really speak to my own experience.  I was hypothesizing that crashes happened when users had multiple V-Vocals without bouncing because of old posts where people would basically say, "Hey-How come I can't run a million instances of VV without Sonar crashing??" - coupled with the fact that I've never had a crash attributable  to VV, and that I always bounce as soon as I've done my edit.  You had the opposite experience, never bouncing, but never crashing.
 
Who knows why there crashes?  I really don't.  I don't understand not correcting an audio clip by bouncing though.  I want my archived projects to have basic things like the correct notes and good pitch in place, not out of tune bits that I could have corrected permanently.  That's my logic for always bouncing - I'm just editing the audio to what it should have been in the first place.
 
RB

cpkoch

Anderton
 
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.

I appreciate your giving me a work around; but, I am not far enough on the learning curve to appreciate what you are telling me Craig. As an example of what I would like to do, the backing track, You Raise Me Up,  http://syzygy-llc.com/Songs/You%20Raise%20Me%20Up.wav is what I am currently trying to transpose.    I trying to transpose it to the key of Bb. Not being at all adept at reading music, I think it is now in the key of F.
 
Will the technique you suggest fulfill my need?  If so I will give it a go!

Going from F to Bb is five semitones - that's a lot, and even a formant shift wouldn't help much (if at all). The iZotope algorithm is about as good at it gets and handles formants well, so you best bet for now is to use the Process > Transpose function on a copy (just in case) and transpose up 5 semitones. But the quality will be iffy at best. You'll really can't go much more than a couple semitones either way with the sound quality getting dicey.
 
The technique I suggested is very effective with small shifts, but no way it would help you with a five semitone change.
 
I always start off writing songs in MIDI. That way I can change the tempo and key easily until I find what's "just right." Then I start adding the audio parts.
 
I also suggest going back to Producer. You'll find over time it has lots of hidden gems that justify the price. Melodyne Essential can do a lot - listen to my latest YouTube video, where I recorded only ONE vocal track. All the harmonies and doubled parts were derived from that single track with Melodyne Essential.

rbowser

Bristol_Jonesey...I'm not sure that's the correct analysis Randy..
 
Back in version 6/7 & 8, I could, and did have many track & clips with V-Vocal on them - all live, none bounced, and they never caused a problem...

Hi, Bristol - Well, I can only really speak to my own experience.  I was hypothesizing that crashes happened when users had multiple V-Vocals without bouncing because of old posts where people would basically say, "Hey-How come I can't run a million instances of VV without Sonar crashing??" - coupled with the fact that I've never had a crash attributable  to VV, and that I always bounce as soon as I've done my edit.  You had the opposite experience, never bouncing, but never crashing.
 
Who knows why there crashes?  I really don't.  I don't understand not correcting an audio clip by bouncing though.  I want my archived projects to have basic things like the correct notes and good pitch in place, not out of tune bits that I could have corrected permanently.  That's my logic for always bouncing - I'm just editing the audio to what it should have been in the first place.
 
RB

Hey RB, I'm definitely not disagreeing with you from a workflow POV, I'm just really curious what causes V-Vocal to crash in some projects and not others. It never let me down once running Sonar 6PE, and that was some time ago.
But with every release, it seems to get a bit flakier, especially when opening an old project in a newer version.
 
This is guaranteed crash city for me.

V-Vocal hasn't been patched or updated in a long time. It drifts further away from the OS with each passing year.

If you REALLY want to back out of your X3 purchase, perhaps you could send a Private Message to Noel Bothwick and Ryan Munnis, and perhaps they could work with you on something like that.
 
Additionally, there are THOUSANDS of completely freely downloadable midi files out there, which you might be able to use for your purposes - or at least as a starting point.
 
You can fine tune the midi all day long with any version of Sonar, and possibly replace some tracks with actual instruments, if they are available.
 
Here, for example, is one version of that You Raise Me Up song you reference:
 
http://www.free-midi.org/song/josh_groban-you_raise_me_up.html
 
This option wouldn't cost you anything, though for commercial use you may need to purchase a version (this depends on who created the midi file and their choice to allow unrestricted use or not).  Even then, it is usually only a couple of dollars to obtain commercial playing rights for one midi song, if needed.
 
Bob Bone