Aligning ragged vocal phrasing in your DAW takes up time away that you could have spent mixing. We show you how the new features in Synchro Arts’ VocAlign Project 5 could be a way to get that time back.

Recording Well

As soon as a song needs harmonies, a double track, or both, there is potential for vocal phrasing to go adrift which can be especially noticeable on consonants when track counts get high. Tight overdubs are of course preferable but the vibe of the session is unlikely to survive a forensic concentration on phrasing and the performance might well suffer if the singer is thinking about phrasing more than singing.

Everyone loves those sessions where everything just falls into place, but even then it can only be at the mixing stage where the need for fixing phrasing becomes more apparent. Many styles demand perfection, but even those rooted in a more organic aesthetic can benefit from some help.

VocAlign Project 5

Synchro Arts’ VocAlign Project 5 is the latest release of the company’s venerable audio alignment plugin. It sees five improvements to its feature set that version 3 users might be very interested in. In their latest blog post here’s what Synchro Arts say about the new release:

1- Better Alignment Algorithm

VocAlign Project 3 is powered by legacy technology whereas VocAlign Project 5 boasts the very latest alignment algorithms from Synchro Arts’ award-winning flagship software, Revoice Pro. This means you can align longer and more complex vocal sections in VocAlign Project 5 with more speed and accuracy than before. This should reduce the need for any kind of manual editing, saving you even more time in the studio.

2 - New Tightness Control

Before VocAlign Project 5, previous versions of VocAlign Project always tried to align your signals as tightly as possible with no exceptions, all or nothing. With VocAlign Project 5 Synchro Arts has introduced a new tightness control so you decide how much alignment you want to apply to your vocals. If super-tight isn’t sounding right, then just loosen the setting in VocAlign Ultra and more of the original double will be retained for a more natural and transparent result.

3 - SmartAlign

Now included in all Synchro Arts’ products, their new technology SmartAlign uses the presence of audio in your Dub track, instead of the Guide, to decide when and alignment should start and end. This is a huge timesaver as there's no more need for any manual pre-editing, let SmartAlign do all the hard work for you.

4 - Align Multiple Dubs Together

VocAlign Project 3 can only align one dub track at a time. But If you use Project 5 with an ARA2 compatible DAW like Logic Pro, Studio One, Cubase Pro, or Reaper, you can align large vocal stacks containing several layers at the click of mouse. When you combine this with SmartAlign, the VocAlign Project 5 workflow becomes incredibly fast and intuitive.

5 - Fully Resizable GUI

Users of VocAlign Project 3 have often told Synchro Arts that not being able to resize the GUI is a big limitation. That all changes with VocAlign Project 5 which can be reduced down to a compact size just showing the key controls or be made full screen for detailed editing. Put simply, VocAlign Project 5 can be as big or as small as you need it to be, depending on which controls you need to see.

Our Verdict

1. In the video you can see and hear the Better Alignment Algorithm claim in action. Certainly current VocAlignProject 3 users should be able to hear the difference with the new algorithm, especially when large amounts of time stretch or contraction are applied.

2. As less of a claim and more of a feature, the new tightness control brings fine tactile control in addition to the Loose or Tight dropdown options. We like it.

3. In the video you can see and hear the SmartAlign claim in action. Along with the better algorithm which handles audio offsets, SmartAlign’s analysis of the Dub is a shift in the very MO of that algorithm, which presents a further improvement on Project 3.

4. Watch how we test the Align Multiple Dubs Together claim using Studio One in the video. Large stacks can indeed be aligned in just a few clicks which is a great improvement.

5. The GUI claim rings true with a large (or not), easy to read interface with lots of rich, usable visual feedback.

Will You Upgrade?

When it comes to tight vocals, recording well will always get you most, if not all of the way there. Even so, VocAlign Project 5 can give those final finishing nudges to near perfect stacks, or call the shots on anything that needs all the help it can get. Smart Align, the new Tightness control, and a resizable UI make VocAlign Project 5 a good proposition for new and existing users alike.

Head over to Synchro Arts to find out more.