In X2 in the take lanes V-Vocal doesn't mute the underlying clip, so there is definitely a phasey sound unless you manually mute the original clip.  I use V-Vocal for quick small adjustments, and if you learn what kind of adjustments to avoid it's pretty transparent.  For anything serious I have Melodyne.

John

Man, let me tell you... V-Vocal isn't a "pro tool" for me... It is full of "you can't do this, you can't do that"... Waves is better, Melodyne is waaaay better, auto-tune too... Cubase does the task as a breeze... I started using it in Sonar 8.5 I soon gave up... Weak stuff imho.

Peace.

stig109


Is it me or does V Vocal make the vocal sound as if it's going through a very subtle phaser, even before any correction has taken place?
 
I have Melodyne also and this is totally transparent, yet V Vocal, although quite a nice bit of kit, colours the sound.
 
Anybody else found this? Listen to the upper Khz of the vocal, they sound suppressed yet fluid just like a phaser effect, bypass V Vocal and you're back to normal.
 
Bizarre!

I've also heard this phasey effect before at times, though I was working in V-Vocal a lot last night (Sonar X-2, using take lanes) and didn't notice it happening at all. When creating a V-Vocal clip, the previous clips were all automatically muted, as they should be.
 
Makes me wonder if it is caused by something else, like input echo turned on, or cutting and pasting vocal clips ?
In fact, when I added the new Breverb prochannel reverb to my Vocal track, then I heard the phasey effect.
 
I'm only using V-Vocal for slight touch-up of intonation problems, not extensive pitch corrections, and shorter clips only.
 
 
 

The phasey sound usually happens from applying correction to unpitched sounds, like sibilants or breath intakes...V-Vocal can't figure out how to pitch-correct something with no pitch.

I never do wholesale correction of vocals. I use the pencil tool and fix only the melodic pitches that need to be fixed, and that works very well. Also, don't forget about also using formant to compensate. For example, if you have to dip a note somewhat, raise the formant a bit. This can make the difference between not hearing the effect, and hearing the effect.

BUT I also have to say...there have been times when I wanted a more "electronica" vocal and used V-Vocal ONLY on the unpitched sounds

Even more interestingly, I was working on a song recently where a held note on the vocal sounded "off." I looked at the note in V-Vocal, and it was dead on pitch. WTF? Making the note just a little bit sharp made it sound "perfect." Maybe I was trying for the vocal equivalent of stretch tuning, or just intonation...

Finally, I too use it a lot on bass.

Remember the days when there was NO pitch correction for vocalists....and did things sound inferior? The only time I like to hear absolute perfection in pitch and timing is in electronic music, because it's a distinctive quality of the genre. For all other kinds of music I think pitch and timing imperfections -within reasonable bounds - are an essential part of the enjoyment. 

Correcting vocals with compression, I understand. You need them to sit well in the mix. But correcting pitch and timing....sheesh! Whatever happened to "practice"?

When you listen to a vocalist take, and hear minor intonation and timing issues, why wouldn't you use the technology available
to quickly "touch it up", rather than trying to get the "perfect" take, which may take so much longer.
There 's a fine balance between fixing it in V-Vocal and singing it again to get it right vs. more practise, time is money.

I guess it's handy for us mediocre vocalists, but an accomplished singer could probably come to the studio and nail it in a few takes ?

stig109


Is it me or does V Vocal make the vocal sound as if it's going through a very subtle phaser, even before any correction has taken place?
 
I have Melodyne also and this is totally transparent, yet V Vocal, although quite a nice bit of kit, colours the sound.
 
Anybody else found this? Listen to the upper Khz of the vocal, they sound suppressed yet fluid just like a phaser effect, bypass V Vocal and you're back to normal.
 
Bizarre!

I have complained about this for years. No, there is no unmuted clip underneath, and no pitch correction at all is being applied. The recording is clean. Everything is right (I have follow Bitflippers sticky in regards to getting the most out of v-vocal).


V-vocal gives you lots of artefacts. Simple as that. It's just no good for transparency. It sounds pitch corrected even if it ain't. I wouldn't mind if it only did it to clips that you were correcting, but it does it to EVERYTHING even without correction being applied. I don't know what's going on if you can't hear it... It's clear as day! The only option is to work out which words you're going to correct and make them individual clips which makes it lots of frustrating and wasteful work.


V-vocal needs replacing. Majorly.

noynekker


When you listen to a vocalist take, and hear minor intonation and timing issues, why wouldn't you use the technology available
to quickly "touch it up", rather than trying to get the "perfect" take, which may take so much longer.
There 's a fine balance between fixing it in V-Vocal and singing it again to get it right vs. more practise, time is money.

I guess it's handy for us mediocre vocalists, but an accomplished singer could probably come to the studio and nail it in a few takes ?

I just think people get obsessed with it. Once they've fixed one "minor issue," they see others all over the place and set about correcting those too. My point is that in a lot of cases, these "minor issues" are a human quality which adds to the music. Can you imagine if someone took Melodyne to Kurt Cobain's infamous MTV Unplugged performance? You could have a field day. 


Back in the days when when you HAD to rent an expensive studio to produce a decent sound, vocalists nonetheless managed to get a good take down. I guess they practiced like Billy-O before they went in. 

I also think times have changed. 
Yes lots of golden oldies were off and sloppy but that was acceptable in the day. 
Now, not so much. The bar has risen.

I don't think it's that the "bar has risen," I think it's that mainstream tastes have become more sterile. I wouldn't call the golden oldies "sloppy" at all. Doubtless there were sloppy vocalists then as there are now, but the fact is that minor imperfections can add desirable character to a performance. 

Look at us now, on the one hand adding distortion and console/tape simulation to digital recordings to counter undesirable perfection in the sound and give it soul - and on the other, going nuts correcting pitch imperfections of a few cents and sliding words around to line them up perfectly with the beat, when back in the day being slightly behind or ahead of the beat was called "feel." 

I guess I'm not against pitch correction when there's a real humdinger of a bad note in there and there is absolutely no time for another take. But it's definitely abused to a large degree, and the musical feel suffers as a result. 

Apart from anything, these musicians are at some point going to have to stand in front of an audience