Vocalign Ultra and Revoice Pro from Synchro Arts both allow for vocals or dialogue to be time aligned. In audio post-production, this is great when matching ADR to location dialogue recordings, but what are the differences between these two pieces of software and how can each one be used in post-production?

Vocalign Ultra

Firstly, Vocalign Ultra is Synchroarts’ most advanced version of Vocalign to date. It allows dialogue to very quickly and easily be matched in both timing and, if required, pitch. Vocalign Ultra operates as a plug-in within your DAW. This means that if speed is of the essence and you just want great time alignment of dialogue lines, Vocalign Ultra is a good choice. It haș a simple interface and can be switched to a more advanced view if required. This provides a few more options for both timing and pitch matching. For dialogue or voice over, the Match Pitch function is a handy option when you need to match the intonation of one recording to another.

Revoice Pro

Revoice Pro, on the other hand, operates as a standalone application. Audio is sent to it from your DAW, processed within Revoice Pro and sent back to your DAW. Most DAWs, with the exception of Pro Tools, now offer ARA2 functionality. When using Revoice Pro in conjunction with Logic Pro, Nuendo, Reaper or others which support the Audio Random Access extension, any adjustments you make in Revoice Pro find their way back into your DAW instantaneously.

If you need some more advanced pitch controls above those offered by Vocalign Ultra, Revoice Pro is a good option as it provides a comprehensive pitch editor. This type of pitch editing is common in music production where vocals need to be tuned but perhaps a little less commonly used in post-production. Nevertheless, it lets you get creative with sound design and is a great choice for pitch manipulation of speech. Additionally, any areas within the recording which are un-pitched will be highlighted in light blue. This allows you to ignore parts such as breaths, esses and harsh consonants which perhaps you may not want to tune. Un-pitched areas can be adjusted in level independently of the pitched sections of dialogue. This can be useful for de-essing.

When working with groups of voices, or perhaps crowd chants, the Process Groups feature in Revoice Pro is a huge time saver because you can make adjustments to a number of tracks simultaneously, with a single set of controls.

Should you need to create a doubling effect, Revoice Pro has an option for this too. I demonstrate this, along with many of the other features I’ve just mentioned in the video below.

Summary

In summary, I’d say that if you want to quickly and easily time align and perhaps pitch match dialogue lines, Vocalign Ultra is a superb piece of software. It gets results quickly and is significantly faster than manually time compressing and expanding dialogue, as might be the case, for example, if you were to use Elastic Audio in Pro Tools. When you need more extensive pitch correction tools, the ability to create doubles, to process groups of tracks simultaneously and also to save your work and continue with it another time, Revoice Pro is the one to go for.