Recording - February 2016 - 26

PLUG-IN OUTLET
Synchro Arts ReVoice Pro 3.1
by Greg Ogan

26

Synchro Arts is the plug-in company that created VocAlign, a plug-in
that's in the arsenal of almost every engineer and producer I know.
VocAlign has been a necessary part of my vocal editing process since I
started assisting at studios in the early 2000s. As a producer and engineer
who's constantly dealing with large loads of vocals and who has tried a
few editing and tuning programs, I was excited to dig into ReVoice Pro 3.1
and see what this software can do.
To sum up: this plug-in is powerful and deep-so much so that there's a learning curve. Don't let that sway you, though, because in my opinion, it's worth it!

The interface and basic usage
At first glance, the ReVoice Pro interface is
very sleek, simple, and familiar. It loads with
three empty tracks by default. There's a timeline at the top, and track controls on the left,
with the obvious track name, mute, solo, gain,
and pan controls. On the bottom there are a
few global controls like DAW sync, loop playback option, playhead position, zoom control,

The program
ReVoice Pro is a standalone program where you import and edit the
pitch, time, and level of individual or multiple files. This can be done via
file drag and drop, or when working in a DAW, you can use the ReVoice
Pro Link plug-in to transfer audio to the standalone program. You're also
given a quick audio processing plug-in and a quick audio doubler plug-in,
but more on those later. ReVoice Pro works on AIFF and WAV files, at resolutions of 16 to 32 bits and sample rates of 44.1 to 192 kHz.
ReVoice Pro combines many functions of many different vocal/voice editing
plug-ins and puts them all in one place. This eliminates tons of processing
steps, enabling users to easily manipulate audio to a great degree while
maintaining very high audio quality.
Once you import a file, you can warp the audio to change timing, pitch,
and level with a great degree of detail. That would be great in itself, but
where this software really shines is with its Audio Performance Transfer
(APT) processes. With an APT process, you can take a guide track, analyze the features of it (such as timing, pitch, vibrato, and level), and apply
those qualities to a dub track. The degree of control, and how well (and
how fast) the audio is processed, is what makes this software so useful.
It has many uses in the audio post world, but almost all of my work is in music.
For my editing/mixing, I use Pro Tools, and I'll be referring to my experiences
using ReVoice Pro on large numbers of pop vocals in the Pro Tools workflow.

and enable monitor to DAW-with that last,
you can choose whether you're monitoring
through your DAW or another audio interface.
Getting audio into the environment is very simple. If you're running ReVoice Pro in standalone
mode, you can simply drag and drop or (depending on your DAW) copy and paste regions onto a
track. If you're linked to a DAW, you use the
appropriate Link plug-in-it's AudioSuite format in
Pro Tools. It's only a few clicks to select a region,
choose a destination track, and hit Capture, and
the audio copies into the program.
If you are using the warp functions to edit a
performance such as a lead vocal, you only need
to import one track. In order to use the APT functions, you need to import multiple tracks that will
become guides and targets. From here things can
become confusing, and this is where the learning
curve kicked in for me; this is powerful editing
software that demands the attention I would give
to learning a new but simple DAW. There are
new, unique functions, new terminology, various

RECORDING February 2016
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2016
