Waves Sync Vx

This new ARA2 plug‑in aims to make aligning doubles and backing vocal stacks a breeze.

Conceived for use in music projects, Sync Vx from Waves has been designed to automatically align the timing and match the pitch of multiple vocal takes, and to tackle everything from double‑tracked vocals to large groups of harmonies and ad‑libs. The manual mentions ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) as another potential application, though. It’s exclusively an ARA2 plug‑in, and if you’ve not used this format before it’s important to understand that placing Sync Vx in an insert slot as you would a typical VST or AU plug‑in will not work. You’ll need to look up how ARA2 plug‑ins are handled by your DAW of choice too. Sync Vx is currently officially supported in Pro Tools 2024.10, Logic Pro 11, Cubase 13/14, Nuendo 13, Reaper 7, Studio One Professional 6/7 and Cakewalk Sonar 2024.11.

Getting Started

To get started, you load the plug‑in on each track requiring alignment. The first time you open it, a setup wizard demonstrates how to define which tracks will be used as a Ref (reference) and which will Sync. It also explains how the key controls work. Up to 16 mono tracks can be processed at once, and you can designate any four of them as Ref tracks, so the plug‑in can be put to work on everything from simple vocal doubles to more complex, multi‑part arrangements.

Sync Vx’s GUI resembles a self‑contained DAW timeline, each channel of audio getting its own dedicated waveform display and per‑channel mute, solo and level controls, and there’s independent control over the amount of time‑alignment and pitch‑correction applied to each Sync. A colour‑coding system makes it nice and easy to see which Syncs are assigned to which Refs and, helpfully, the track names all mirror their DAW counterparts.

It’s possible to customise the track layout, thanks to a pair of buttons at the top. Selecting DAW will arrange the tracks in the same order as they appear in your DAW session, while clicking REF will place all Sync tracks below their associated Ref tracks. You can also click and drag tracks on the timeline to put them in any order you wish, and an ‘eye’ icon can hide tracks. I like to keep my sessions well organised, so these are all very welcome features.

Into Alignment...