I have this weird VocAlign 6 Pro bug (?) in Cubase and I don’t know what to do to fix it. I mean, maybe I’m just doing it wrong, but I don’t think so.
So I add VocAlign 6 Pro as an extension to several vocal takes to align them, as you do with VocAlign. Everything works great so far.
Now Cubase has this option to “make extension permanent”. I saw in a YouTube tutorial that I am supposed to do this if I want to make the changes that VocAlign did permanent.
However, if I do make the “extension permanent”, the pitch of my vocal takes gets screwed up and it sounds horrible (note that I have not selected any pitch correction in VocAlign 6 Pro, just the timing correction).
If I do “render in place” instead of “make extension permanent”, the weird pitch screw-up does not happen.
Does anybody know if this is a bug or if I am using VocAlign 6 Pro wrong?
I’ve had a few times where Synchro Arts plugins (don’t recall if it was RePitch or VocAlign, or which version of whichever) messed up pitch due to somehow using the wrong sample rate in their cache files (for VocAlign 6 Pro on Windows, they are kept in \Documents\VocAlignUltraVst3\AraAudioCache). I don’t recall the specifics from the time beyond that I was probably using a 96 kHz sample rate and the sample rate in some of those files was at either 44.1 kHZ or 48 kHz, and there was a noticeable difference. I also don’t recall how I worked around it, though I suspect it may have related to manually clearing out the cache files (which VocAlign will regenerate).
I’ve also found that the cache files don’t always (or ever???) get cleaned out, and can grow pretty large, so I have to remember to clean them out manually at times.
As for your question on workflow, I generally just right click on the clips I’m affecting and bounce the results, replacing the original clips, as I view the tweaks I make with VocAlign more like editing than processing (just a whole lot less time-consuming than the old manual way of dealing with tightening timing of one part versus others). But I’d been doing that with earlier versions of VocAlign and Melodyne since before coming to Cubase (I started with 9.5, having used SONAR for over a decade and a half before that).
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Thx for your detailed answer. I just tried deleting the cache, but unfortunately it didn’t work. I reopened Vocalign and checked the sample rate of the chached files it created and they match the project’s sample rate (44.100 kHz).
This is really weird. When Vocalign is active on the tracks, there is no glitch, but as soon as I hit the “make permanent” function, it gets screwed.
EDIT: Comparing the altered and unaltered versions ofthe audio, it really does seem like there is an overall pitch difference. The ones permanently altered with vocalign sound a bit higher in pitch.
However, again, this does not happen when Vocalign is actually active on the tracks and processing, just when making the changes permanent.
It works just fine for me on Windows 11.
However I have lagging issues if I do it in certain ways.
For me I mark all the tracks I want to align in the sequencer windows, then I pick the ARA plugin from the top over the sequencer windows, not the extension option on the left side.
then I do the alignment and tweaks I want, then from the same menu I picked the ARA plugin I pick the “make changes permanent”
I’m doing it exactly the same way as you, but I do get these weird pitch errors.
Maybe the problem is somewhere else? My vocal tracks were edited with variaudio before using Vocalign. Could that lead to weid pitch artefacts?
could be. After all you are altering the data for variaudio to work with.
just try to do Flatten on your variaudio first, then try the vocalign after, and check it out
You just made me realize something. Having variaudio active does not make permanent changes to the audio file it’s altering until I bounce it / render it, right?
So if I use vocalign on a track that has variaudio active and then make permanent changes to the track, variaudio could get confused (???). It still shouldn’t in my opinion, but it may be the case?
What do you mean by “Flatten”?
yeah I might be the case. Because if you first use variaudio moving around the pitches then after move around the timing I could see variaudio be off.
You can flatten warp, variaudio etc in the windows where you do variaudio. it is on the left side all the way at the bottom (where you make hitpoints etc) it is like “makes changes permanent” for Variaudio from what I understand
so flatten, then align. hopefully that will work 
let us know !
maybe you don’t see this option in the “low zone” view? at least in the single window you get all these options on the left side. all the way on the bottom you can “flatten” all your edits
You absolute hero, “flattening” the tracks did the trick. So I guess I have to remember to always make the variaudio changes permanent before messing around with VocAlign.
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