How to use VocAlign in Ableton Live

VocAlign works in Ableton Live through its realtime VST3 workflow. That setup differs from the clip-based workflow available in DAWs that host ARA.

Synchro Arts documents the same difference in its Ableton material. This guide covers the standard Live route and the capture step that takes most of the time.

The short version

1. Put VocAlign on the Dub track, the take you want tightened.
2. Set its Sidechain input to the Guide track, the take everything should follow.
3. Set a loop over the section, click Capture, and play the section through.
4. VocAlign processes the Dub and outputs the aligned version.
5. Print it with Resample or Freeze and Flatten if you want it as audio.

Step 3 is the part to plan for. You have to play the audio through in realtime, every time.

With VocAlign 7 the routing is simpler: it captures the takes without the sidechain setup and lets you set the Guide and Dubs for a whole stack inside VocAlign. In Live the takes still have to be played in once, in realtime, and printing the result still renders the track's vocal chain unless you move the clip to a clean track first and back afterwards. The steps below follow the VocAlign 6 route, which is the one Synchro Arts documents in detail for Live.

Step 1: VocAlign goes on the Dub

Drop VocAlign onto the track you want to move, not the one you want it to follow. The Guide track stays untouched.

If you are aligning a double to a lead, the double is the Dub. If you are tightening a stack, each stacked part is a Dub and the lead is the Guide for all of them.

Step 2: Route the Guide into the sidechain

VocAlign needs to hear the Guide. In Live that happens through the plug-in's own sidechain, not Live's device sidechain: click the arrow beside Sidechain in the top bar of the VocAlign window and pick your Guide track.

You get two routing choices, and the difference matters:

• Send creates a new send on the Guide track.
• Output listens to the Guide track's final output.

If you choose Output and the Guide track has effects on it, bypass them during capture. Otherwise VocAlign analyses the processed Guide rather than the unprocessed performance, which can change the alignment result.

Step 3: Capture, in realtime

Set your loop brace over the section you want to align. Click the orange Capture button under Dub to arm VocAlign, then press play.

You will hear the audio as it goes. Grey waveforms draw in behind the display as the audio is captured. When the pass finishes, VocAlign processes the Dub with the selected preset and draws the aligned result as a new waveform in the Output section.

This is the cost of the standard Live setup. In an ARA host the plug-in reads the file off disk and the result is there immediately. In Live it has to listen to the part play, at the speed the part plays.

Step 4: Align several dubs in one pass

Shift-clicking Capture lets one pass cover several dubs in the standard Live workflow.

Put a VocAlign instance on each Dub track and set each one's sidechain to the same Guide. Then hold Shift while clicking Capture. That primes every armed instance at once. Go back to the start of the section and press play, and all of them capture on the same pass.

One realtime pass covers the whole stack. A new take or revision still needs another pass.

Step 5: Print the result when you need audio

VocAlign is sitting in the chain, processing live. If you want the aligned take as audio, whether to comp it, move it, or hand the session to someone else, you need to print it.

One direct route is to record the Dub track's output onto a new audio track. Freeze and Flatten may also fit the session, but it changes the source track. Keep the original take until you have checked the printed result.

Why it works this way

Nothing above is VocAlign being awkward. In the standard Live plug-in setup, a plug-in receives audio as it plays, so realtime capture is how it sees a whole part. Any alignment or pitch tool has the same constraint there.

We wrote up which DAWs support ARA and which don't if you want the full picture, and what Live's missing ARA support actually costs for the Ableton-specific version.

Where the time actually goes

A single capture pass is manageable. Recut the double and you capture again. Change the preset and you may capture again. Comp a better take in and you capture again. On a session with several vocal parts, those passes stack up faster than the editing does. The shift-click trick above is the only thing in the standard workflow that reduces the count.

That repetition is the reason we are building null.audio ALIGN. It drives the same VocAlign licence you already own from a Max for Live device, and returns the aligned result to Arrangement View. Your existing VocAlign licence remains the alignment editor, now connected to a faster, clip-based Ableton workflow: you set the Guide and the Dub, and VocAlign opens with both already in it. The ALIGN guide walks through it step by step.