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Why RePitch and VocAlign Ultra are an Essential Vocal Editing Combination


If you’re an engineer or producer who regularly works with editing vocal stacks, this article is for you. While it’s always been commonplace to layer multiple vocal tracks together, in many contemporary genres of music, it’s a necessity for those layers to be tightly tuned and time-aligned with each other, so the end product sounds professional and radio-ready. However with tight time and budget constraints often in play, what can be a laborious manual process often puts a real strain on costs and your nerves!

VocAlign Ultra – Our Advanced Timing and Pitch Plugin

VocAlign Ultra is our most advanced audio alignment plugin which is capable of matching the timing and pitch of multiple vocal (or instrument) layers to a single reference signal, which is usually a lead vocal. Engineers and producers already save countless hours on vocal editing tasks by using VocAlign as they no longer have to align their vocal stacks by hand which as we’ve already said, can be a long and tedious job.

Learn more about VocAlign Ultra


RePitch – Our New Super-Natural Vocal Pitch Editing Plug-in

Also, released earlier this year, our RePitch vocal editing plugin enables both automatic and manual tuning to be applied quickly and easily to your audio with very natural and transparent results. Based on technology from our flagship Revoice Pro software, RePitch meets the challenge of quickly producing tuned vocals that don’t sound processed or doctored. 

Learn more about RePitch

Why are VocAlign and RePitch a winning duo?

So for VocAlign Ultra to work its magic, you first need a lead or ‘guide’ vocal which has your desired pitch and timing and can act as a reference for all your other vocal layers or ‘dubs’. Before RePitch, editing a vocal with other pitch editors meant that your tuning and timing ‘commits’ weren’t automatically aligned to your doubles and harmonies. That process would then have to be repeated each time you wanted to adjust something in your guide, slowing down your workflow and stifling creativity. 


Not any more.


Thanks to our new SynchroLink technology, VocAlign Ultra can use audio loaded into RePitch as the guide track. This means once the two plug-ins are connected, you can not only instantly transfer the pitch and timing from your newly edited lead vocal in RePitch to all your doubles in VocAlign Ultra, but you can keep making changes for as long as you want which can be auditioned right away without extra editing. 

What is SynchroLink?

 SynchroLink is our propriority technology which enables RePitch to talk to VocAlign, meaning your whole vocal stack can be instantly aligned to your newly tuned lead from RePitch – saving hours of manual work. This is also great for revisiting the tuning of a vocal 'commit' – using this connection means you can re-edit the tuning at any time, rest assured that your backing vocals will always follow the timing of the lead.  Learn more here


This means if you’re working with large vocal stacks, your window of opportunity to make tuning or timing changes to the lead and almost instantly hear how that change sounds with all your doubles following is open throughout the mixing process. So you can experiment and explore new creative options without the drag factor of all the manual editing that would be needed just to audition. Now you just make the change in RePitch, watch VocAlign update your dubs and listen, it’s that simple. 


Side note: we joined Grammy Award-winning mixer Craig Bauer on Production Expert's latest podcast episode, where we discuss the RePitch and the connection to VocAlign Ultra – listen here.


This functionality was previously only available in Revoice Pro which works as a standalone application but with VocAlign and RePitch working together via SynchroLink, this unique workflow is now available via plugins inside your DAW for the first time.  


Let’s see VocAlign Ultra and RePitch in action:



It’s worth noting that while the basic functionality is very similar, how you connect VocAlign and RePitch together and then how your dubs get updated does differ depending on your DAW so we recommend you check out the RePitch manual for information. 

The VocAlign Ultra + RePitch Bundle

Conclusion

So to conclude, for the first time inside your DAW, it’s possible to easily and quickly make tuning and timing changes to a lead vocal which are then automatically transferred to all your vocal doubles, whether there’s two or twenty. Then if you want to revert back or try something else that’s no problem, changes can be made in just a couple of mouse clicks, meaning you always retain complete creative freedom and flexibility, right up until the last minute.


Don’t waste time with manual editing when RePitch and VocAlign Ultra can do the hard work for you, fine tuning vocal stacks has never been easier, faster or more intuitive! 

Try VocAlign Ultra free for 14 days Try RePitch free for 14 days

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