Antares Harmony efx and Reaper

Buster · 06-30-2010, 12:09 PM

Antares Harmony efx is the little brother to Harmony Engine EVO and does much the same thing at a lesser price with a few less bells and whistles. Antares is quite specific that its products are not compatible with Reaper and certain other DAW's.

The local music store was blowing out the program for $50 (no returns on opened software)and i decided to risk the investment. (Btw, you also need an iLok key. If you don't have one, that'll cost you another $50).

The program works partially in Reaper and I find it useful. It appears that you can only generate one harmony at a time in Reaper. Also the panning feature does not work in Reaper (all uneffected signal is full right) although when effects are applied later, they all are hard panned left which compensates somewhat.

There are 4 or 5 controls to modify the sound/texture of the voice. These all work quite well.

I was able to create a very nice double for a lead vocal and I will be using this function in the future.

On a separate track, I created a quite acceptable harmony (+3) which sounded very good after verb applied.

As with all harmonizers, things work best if the created tracks are kept well in the background with verb applied.

The overall result was more than acceptable and my client was quite pleased. Antares Harmony efx works in Reaper but to a lesser extent than in other DAW's. I would be interested in other peoples' experience. Perhaps you will have better luck in finding "work-arounds" to some of the limitations I encountered.

If you can get it for $50 and you can live with the limitations in Reaper, this software is worthwhile in my opinion.

gwok · 06-30-2010, 12:16 PM

ive run harmony in reaper - it seemed fine - though i didn't test extensivly. No offence, hoping your wrong though about limited usability.

BTW, harmony isnt really the little brother with less bell and whistles. It's a harmonizer, not a tuner. the harmony plugin is really powerful..

g

Buster · 06-30-2010, 01:34 PM

hey gwok..

I was not comparing Harmony efx with Auto-Tune but with Harmony Engine EVO. The following is a direct quote from the Antares site...

"Harmony EFX Vocal Modeling Harmony Generator - An incredibly affordable, easy-to-use tool for creating realistic (if you want it to be) vocal harmony, Harmony EFX is a streamlined version of Harmony Engine Evo, featuring the same core Evo-based harmony generating engine as its industry-leading big brother."

If you used Harmony efx with no problem in Reaper, I would be very interested in the details.

gwok · 06-30-2010, 01:40 PM

ah your so right - my bad -

i just ran the Evo engine briefy. I checked most of the features, and everything seemed to work, and there were no crashes

, though it was only 10 mins or so, so I can't say for sure untill i've really used it in a tune, and seen how it stands up over time...

g

gwok · 06-30-2010, 04:03 PM

hey buster, if i get you correctly, this might be of value. I had to mess with the audio pin matrix, and setup my outs from Harmony(i am not the Efx version though, full engine) - this allowed me to get the other voices that weren't coming through......

cosmosis · 06-30-2010, 04:32 PM

Yep, I just create one harmony at a time, muting the original one as I render them. Turn them to MONO so I can pan and process and whatnot. Basically each harmony in it's own track in Reaper.

I've tried a few other replacements, but nothing comes close.

OK, as suggested by gwok, I messed around with the pin connector, and I ot all five to make sound. Still no way of controlling pan and stuff though..

Zero_G · 06-30-2010, 05:12 PM

I also tried to use Harmony Engine EVO inside Reaper, I can also say it's awesome for creating vocal harmonies, especially if used on fixed scale intervals after Autotube!

I was just about to ask a question about it... since it's clearly written on Antares site that Reaper is not supported, I'm having the common problem of not being able to adjust pans inside the VST. The input audio is totally on left channel and only the first choir is reproduced: after some investigation (and some forum reading), I found that the VST doesn't enable panning on mono tracks.
Well, my vocal track is obviously a mono track! Unfortunately, even rendering it to a stereo one, doesn't solve the problem, because the VST still cannot understand that is not mono...

The only (partial) solution I found so far is changing the 5-channel routing of the plugin, but I still haven't figured it out how to manage it: I tried to route the two (equal) channels to VSTin1 and VSTin2 and then "compress" the 5-channels output to OUT1 and OUT2 (take a look at the attached screenshot), but I still cannot have the original input on the central (both) channel and the choir spread on left and right...

Apart for gwok's suggestion, did anyone else find a way to put the input signal on center and choir on th sides?
Thanks in advance...

Buster · 06-30-2010, 05:14 PM

ya gotta love this forum. gwok and cosmosis led me to the answers i needed to get full access to the various features of harmony efx. thanks so much guys. now i would say that the software is worth every one of the $50 cost.

for the record:
- duplicate the lead vocal track (or whatever) (w/o verb or other "time" fx)and add harmony efx as an fx to that track
- click on the fx box for that track
- right click on harmony efx
- click on "Build Multichannel Routing for Output of Selected Fx"
- click on "Yes"

you will get each harmony as a separate track and can add verb, panning, etc to taste.

Yay! A great new tool for a relatively cheap price.
.

Zero_G · 06-30-2010, 05:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buster

for the record:
- add a new track and add harmony efx as an fx to that track
- click on the fx box for that track
- right click on harmony efx
- click on "Build Multichannel Routing for Output of Selected Fx"
- click on "Yes"

Mmmh.. sounds good!
I just tried it, it's getting a little messy to manage all those tracks, but at least now I can set individual pans... thanks Buster!

Zero_G · 06-30-2010, 05:36 PM

For who is still interested, just a quick update about Harmony Engine on Reaper: I just found a configuration that sends left or right channel to VSTin1 (used as the input) and the output from VST channel 1 (original voice) to the "center", while the other 4 voices going on left and right channel... you can find it attached to this reply.

The first input column feed the voice into the VST (using the right channel is the same, but I also tried to send both channels to VSTin1 and it caused some ugly saturation). The first output column replicates the output on both stereo channels (the result is that you can hear it centered), while the others puts the 1st/3rd choirs on the right and 2nd/4th choirs on the left, but you can change the position anyway you want...

That's not as flexible as Buster's solution, but if you don't mind precise panning and you want only to add harmonized vocals while still keeping your main voice centered, I think it's an easy and straightforward solution!

BrianW · 06-30-2010, 06:36 PM

OT I know, but, on a side note in case anyone's wondering, I've been running Antares Atuotune Evo in REAPER with no issues at all. Glad I didn't see the disclaimer before I bought it!

XP pro, SP3, 32-bit, btw.

Zero_G · 07-01-2010, 02:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrianW

OT I know, but, on a side note in case anyone's wondering, I've been running Antares Atuotune Evo in REAPER with no issues at all. Glad I didn't see the disclaimer before I bought it!

XP pro, SP3, 32-bit, btw.

I have the same configuration as you and I also succeded in using Autotune EVO as an insert FX with no problems! Maybe the incompatibilities are very limited in this case...