SynchroArts Revoice Pro 4: The Ultimate Vocal Processing Tool?

SynchroArts have become something of a specialist in the art of vocal processing – and when it comes specifically to vocal time alignment and pitch manipulation, they are the first name on every serious engineer’s lips. Headliner endeavours to discover what all the fuss is about…

While this review is focused on Revoice Pro 4, it’s first worth mentioning the two other products in the SynchroArts range, as one of them may well be perfectly suited to your specific needs.

VocAlign Project 5 is relatively inexpensive and includes some of the alignment algorithms from Revoice Pro, but with far fewer parameters. If you’re an ADR engineer this is a tool that’ll save both you and your talent endless retakes and hours of frustrating studio coaching, leaving you more time to match and get the consistent sound you’re looking for. While this is a basic version with limited parameters, it also works with aligning sound effects, and produces very natural and pleasing results. It also served as a good place for me to start as I delved deeper into the SynchroArts family.

The second, or mid-range standalone product is VocAlign Ultra, which also features pitch alignment alongside its time matching capabilities. While all three products in the SynchroArts range offer ARA2 integration with specific DAWs – which is handy if you’re a Logic user like myself – the ability to align multiple tracks at the same time here is hugely beneficial, allowing engineers and producers to tidy up in post production. VocAlign Ultra also comes with a wealth of presets, SmartAlign intelligent processing, as well as waveform and pitch displays.

The Main Event

One of the things that drew me to Revoice Pro 4 (RVP4) was the possibility of being able to take a songwriting idea and manipulate its melody, perhaps double track it and create backing vocal harmonies quickly and easily, something that has traditionally been a time-consuming process requiring further recording. So what if you could alter the melody line and phrasing of the original vocal and have the corresponding harmonies adjust themselves in the correct key, in real time? Now we’re talking!

RVP4 is a standalone product that uses plugins to assist the moving of audio out of and back into your DAW. The ADA2 plugin gives you the closest integration, allowing you to import multiple channels of audio directly into RVP4 and play back the results of editing and rendering in your DAW, without having to drag and drop the resulting audio files back in.

If you’re dealing with new tracks that you’ve generated, they’ll need to be moved from RVP4 to anywhere on your DAW’s new tracks timeline – simply right click and select Move, then in the case of Logic Pro, select move to recorded position. When you’re happy with your handiwork, you can then simply bounce the ARA linked edited tracks in place - job done - a useful saving on time and energy over the alternative drag and drop method.

APT Algorithms

At the heart of RVP4 is the algorithms menu, which is accessed by simply right clicking the bar below the first track. This menu gives a number of different processing options, but the first is APT (Audio Performance Transfer) – with a further comprehensive selection of options for aligning not just vocals, but all manner of instrumentation.

The idea here is that the first track or lead vocal is the ‘Guide’ track, from which all others are correctly time aligned. New tracks are created using the ‘Dub’ track as the source for pitch, which can be corrected if necessary and simultaneously time aligned to the Guide track. What RVP4 can do here is deal with multiple vocal harmonies with just a single operation. For example, if you have a lead vocal with four harmony parts, you simply select the number of Dub tracks in the ‘Number of Processes’ check box, and hit ‘New Process’. All four harmonies are then duplicated in the correct order with time and pitch correction applied. What’s more, the new tracks are returned to your DAW in the correct order via the ARA plugin.

To help manage the replacement track, there’s a handy groups arrangement box and with one click you’re able to monitor between processed and unprocessed trans, as well as other functions. There are a number of processes in this menu, from double tracking to volume levelling, all available in just a few mouse clicks. It’s also quite easy to copy and paste a lead vocal to create your own harmony sections – quicker than setting up a mic and recording them from scratch. This is done using the Warp option.

Warp Factor

By selecting a particular track, expanding it to full screen and pressing the ‘W’ key, the track displays additional information known as the Warp Screen. On this screen there seems to be no limit to the amount of editing you can do to correct individual pitchy notes, as well as minor timing errors. There’s also some additional options including Level, available by pressing the ’S’ key, which is really useful for de-essing or reducing plosives. In fact there’s so much detail here, it soon becomes apparent that there’s almost nothing on this screen that can’t be edited. Breath removal, transient adjustment – pretty much anything can be performed either manually or set up as a user preset and saved.

When you select one or multiple waveforms or warp events, this becomes a processable Warp Region. Pressing the ‘P’ key opens the Warp menu, in which you can define parameters and their ranges for your processes or to create presets. I found myself polishing a performance which I’d originally thought was excellent, but the Warp screen revealed a few pitchy notes along with a number of unusual vibrato timings. One feature here lets you select vibrato start and end points and it maintains their timing, should you edit or extend the audio within. The ease of tidying and time aligning with RVP4 just took the quality of everything I’ve been doing for the last few years to a whole new level!

Conclusion

I’m not aware of any direct competitor to RVP4, and certainly not aware of anything that has the same capabilities. Upon playing a track back that I’d edited to an individual whose original performance had been a bit of a struggle, he commented, “Wow, that recording we did was better than I thought it was at the time!” At no point did he hear anything that led him to believe it had been pitch and time corrected, which I think speaks volumes.

Now I will add that there is a vast amount of as yet untapped potential in RVP4 on my part. It took me over a week to really get comfortable with it, and every time I have a moment to play around I’m discovering new features and capabilities, too numerous to go into detail in this review.

RVP4 is available on all major formats for both Mac and PC and ARA integration is available with the majority of DAWs. As with all software I look at, there’s a trial version available for you to get to grips with at your own pace, and this one is definitely worth devoting a little time to. What RVP4 can’t do wouldn’t fill a postage stamp!