June 28
Synchro Arts VocALign AS [continued]

Harmonic alignment
With the plugin properly installed, it appears, as expected, in the Pro Tools AudioSuite menu. Select the plugin, and the VocALign window pops up. The main work area comprises two horizontal, blank panes. The top pane is labeled Guide, and the bottom pane is labeled Dub. The Guide area displays the waveform used as the alignment master; the Dub area shows the waveform to be aligned.

A Capture button at the bottom of the window imports the Guide or Dub audio. Highlight a region of a track in the Pro Tools Edit window; click anywhere on the Guide or Dub pane to activate it; and hit the Capture button. An "Analyzing: VocALign" message appears for a second, and then the waveform shows up in the selected pane. It's important to remember to select the Guide or Dub pane before importing a region. For example, I had a region highlighted as my Guide; I imported it and then went on to select the Dub. With the Dub highlighted, I hit Capture, but having forgotten to select the Dub pane, my Guide region was overwritten. I had to begin the entire Capture process over again. An Undo Last Capture command would be a nice feature.

VocALign works by pushing, stretching and moving the Dub waveform to match the peaks, valleys and start time of the Guide waveform. There are five different levels of processing: Low, Normal, High, Maximum Compression and Maximum Expansion. The Low setting is the least dramatic, making very little change to the Dub other than aligning its start time. It provides the best fidelity. Normal is the plugin's default. It's perfect for most situations where a modest amount of wave shaping is needed. High really molds and kneads the Dub. It's great for a waveform that's way out of sync with the Guide, but beware of artifacts using this setting—little hiccups that sound like waveforms spliced together at odd angles (not acceptable on a solo instrument but probably okay buried in the mix). Use Maximum Compression and Expansion when a signal needs to be especially squashed or pulled to match the Guide's duration.

Processed audio can be auditioned in the typical fashion using the ubiquitous Preview button or visually via an alignment trace. A large bar to the left of the panes labeled Align generates an outline of what the Dub will look like, processed. The trace is superimposed over the Guide's waveform, making it a breeze to see how closely the effected waveform mirrors the Guide. I love this feature, since being able to decide VocALign's setting based on eyeballing saves a lot of time. Without it, you'd have to write the effected Dub to disk, over and over, in order to physically compare it to the Guide. The Preview feature is just for checking audio quality because it only plays the processed Dub (i.e., you can't hear the Guide at the same time). Currently, Pro Tools generates a strange message at the end of an audio preview: "DAE error—7456 was encountered." Don't worry; it doesn't appear to cause a problem. Simply hit Return and keep working.

Once everything is set, hit the Process button to send the effected dub back to your Pro Tools session. The new waveform can be sent to any track desired, and a pull-down menu above the panes lists all the current session's available tracks. Open up a new track; use an existing track; or pipe the processed region right back to the same track it originally came from. Just be careful not to overwrite anything important. (Although, thanks to Pro Tools' nondestructive architecture, this is almost impossible.)

All lined up
VocALign AS is an awesome tool, but don't expect miracles. It works best on short regions that have neatly separated, defined audio chunks (i.e., not a lot of overlapping sounds where the beat divisions are swallowed by sustained notes). Early on, I learned that asking VocALign AS to try to process a region that was too long, with too many phrases, was ineffective. Over time, the processed region drifts, putting the first few phrases in time but leaving the last few in never-never land. Feeding the plugin smaller, bite-sized spoonfuls, a few phrases at a time, yields the best results.

Once open, VocALign AS's window can stay on the screen while you are flying audio back and forth. This makes trying a variety of settings and different regions a snap, perfect for fast-paced ADR sessions. However, assigning the plugin a window-shade option would make it even more convenient. Snapping the window into a single compact bar without losing your settings or captured regions is smart and space-efficient, a must for single-screen setups.

VocALign AS wields a wealth of editing power. I can personally attest to its usefulness: It saved me hours of having to retrack and manually align several tracks on a project I was mixing. For example, I was able to fix the timing in one section of an otherwise excellent lead-vocal track by applying the timing of an old scratch track with great timing but bad intonation. (Too bad it doesn't fix intonation as well.) VocALign AS's possibilities are quite impressive, by no means limited only to dialog replacement, but for ADR and other such applications, it's definitely the cat's meow. Check it out—for only $495.

Synchro Arts Limited, 13 Links Road, Epsom Surrey KT17 3PP, UK; 44/1372/ 811-934; fax 44-1372-817-976; http://www.synchroarts.co.uk.

Erik Hawkins is a musician/producer working in Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit him at http://www.erikhawkins.com for more equipment chitchat and tips on what's hot for the project studio.

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Reprinted with permission from Mix Magazine, May 2000. Copyright © 2000, Intertec Publishing, a Primedia Company All Rights Reserved.