bobguitkillerleft


I haven't used V Vocal yet,but it does disturb me that obviously I could use it on lead guitar parts,BUT DON'T.

I spent a long time learning how to bend strings up to pitch,and also use vibrato as well as I can,to think someone who can't play leads very well,can use V Vocal,just occurred to me and has made me horrified.
Bob

Hehe, yeah, I don't recommend it in auto mode on guitar leads at all.  My own leads are nice and bendy.  When I have used it, it's for like that one note sort of thing, and always manually adjusting the one transient.  I prefer, of course, to get it right at the source, but there's nothing quite like discovering after tracking's over that you hit one Bb that should have been a B.  I don't think any amount of V-Vocal could fix a lead that wasn't mostly played very well to begin with.  The autofix goes nuts if you have any sort of effect on.  I can't stand it when it's used as a blanket "we'll just fix that whole thing up with a preset" type of effect.   I don't mind it when it's used to photoshop a blemish or two. 

@guitarhacker... I'm pretty sure X1 comes with V-Vocal so it's likely you DO have it. But if you have Melodyne there's no point because that is supposed to be the better program unless you just want to see what V-V does out of curiosity.

Studio and up has V-Vocal, Essentials does not.

@TKrain... Yeah, that's what I figured (haven't really gotten that far yet... so much dumb real world stuff stealing my learning/recording time). For me personally I'd like to avoid using that type of effect for my own tracks but when it comes down to it, as I do like to improvise a LOT, if I get an absolutely stellar take with a couple slightly off notes I'd be inclined to try it out. Also if I'm dealing with OTHER peoples stuff which I have to do remotely I could definitely see correction software coming into play. As I can't afford the more expensive programs it makes me feel a little more secure just knowing it is there if I need it. I'd imagine it might be a cool thing to play around with to create some wacky effects too. Then all of a sudden it becomes a creative tool as opposed to a corrective one. Anyway it is little things like that which are included in the package that made me choose Sonar over other software. They just give you so much cool stuff. On a more direct note, how have things been coming along for you, TKrain? I know you had a couple moments of frustration at the start but is all well now? You getting some nice tracks done? Cheers!

Au Contraire, mon frere, I've used it one the most distorted, chorused leads imaginable with great success.  Much depends on the guitarist's intonation, song tempo, and frequency of the note to be corrected.  But, you're right most of the time, and that's true for most pitch correction programs.

bitflipper


Don't bother using v-Vocal on lead guitars unless it's a clean DI. It gets confused by distortion and is utterly flabberwacked by chorus, delay or reverb.

Tkrain. I have the same situation with my bass. It is what it is.
If it's an important file, I melodyne it:)

Thanks for asking, Beepster.  Overall, well.  It would appear that I can't run Sonar X1 "safely" if I have opened and closed Firefox.  Not sure what the correlation is there...  To be safe, I always start my Sonar sessions from a cold start and the problems with random track noise seem to be gone. 

I actually used to be a bit of a purist when it came to VV and other pitch correction/time correction software.  Like somebody posted above... after all that hard work, I'd hate to think a duffer could do it with a plugin...   Couple things changed my mind... one was seeing that no, these programs aren't panaceas.  You can hear it when it's overused, and while I don't mind the occassional playing around with it as an effect, I wish Will-I-Am would have sang maybe at least one verse without it on the last BEP album...  I think in general, if somebody's counting on V-Vocal to consistently fix bad performances, they're going to either be sorely dissappointed, or have to do enough manual edits that they earned the fine result after all... 

The other was from a Webinar on editing... the host pointed out that very little we see or hear is "raw and unedited".  Is there much of a difference between cobbling takes and moving one note with VV?  I do a lot of photography, and it's never seemed "manipulative" to color correct, and remove a few blemishes here or there.

@TKrain... Right on, man. I'm no expert but Firefox can be a rather resource intensive program (I loved it and have for many years but it is). It's probably clogging up your RAM and sometimes runs in the background even after you've closed it. Generally on my DAW system I clear FFs cache, close it, disconnect the ethernet cable and reboot before starting an X1 session. You really want your system completely focused on the task at hand when dealing with X1 and as I said FF has a tendency to "linger". I'm curious... have you done a full system optimization for audio? There are all sorts of little things that Windows and other programs will do by default that can distract the system from getting things done. Disabling startup programs and whatever is very helpful at avoiding little burps and errors caused by programs screwing around in the background. Also I personally really like Avast as my AV but tossed Microsoft Security Essentials on the DAW system because it isn't quite as intrusive and it is still very effective. If you are using your DAW for internet usage as well I'd recommend installing AdBlockPlus and NoScript for Firefox. They just stop every potential wacky thing right in the browser so it's an extra level of security. I personally only use the internet on my audio system to download audio related programs from companies I trust like Cakewalk and do everything thing else on another computer. Just keeps things a little cleaner and safer. You can pickup pretty decent laptops for around $300 for general usage (my Acer is AWESOME and that's what I paid for it). Then your big rig can just do what it was meant to do... make beautiful tunage. Cheers!

timidi


Tkrain. I have the same situation with my bass. It is what it is.
If it's an important file, I melodyne it:)

Melodyne user here (even though I know I have V-Vocal Beepster). I have quality basses that are setup properly. But.... I've taken to using Melodyne on my bass tracks just to be 100% sure the tuning is on. Since we're taking the possibility of only being cents off it's a nice safety net after maybe working on a bass tracks for hours and not stopping the mojo to check tuning.


Of course, on my voice, I use Melodyne to the maxxxxxxxx. I'm just not a singer, and definitely not even a passable one so I need all the help I can get even if I'm just doing a vocal "for fun" (which is what most of my singing is all about, much to the consternation of My Pal Mooch).

Yeah, it's interesting... even a few cents off on the Bass makes a lot bigger difference than a few cents off on the guitar or even voice. In the rare times I get to use the church bass, it just isn't a problem. My bass here at home, though.. just needs that little massage sometimes. Lynn, yeah just my experience, VV doesn't seem to like the effects much. Since I don't want it stripping my bends, though, I prefer manually editing anyways when I do use it on a guitar. Kudos if it worked well, though!