Best vocal pitch bend to synth or midi?

[Ou_Tis]

Recent versions of Melodyne got rid of the option to export pitch bend data. VariAudio will convert audio to midi with pitch bend (tested in Cubase 10.5) but it sounds terrible so far. Perhaps I just need to fiddle with it more?

Vocalsynth 2 automatically follows pitch, but even at 100% mix it retains too much of the vocal. I'd like it to sound like a synth, not a vocal mixed with a synth. So it should discard consonants and ideally vowels too.

Maybe Waves Ovox? I'm reluctant to mess with the Waves Central installer to demo it. And they're still spamming video ads for it, so I doubt it will be $30 any time soon.

Or is the best option to loosely rely on Melodyne and draw it myself based on what sounds good?...

[enroe]

Or is the best option to loosely rely on Melodyne and draw it myself based on what sounds good?

Yes, this exactly!

[Ou_Tis]

Also tried Adaptiverb with source set to 100%, harmonic filtering 100%, track follow, ray-tracing HD, 0 for predelay, reverb, diffusion, breathiness, air, and richness (also tried 0 size), and playing with the Sustain and Simplify settings (Simplify 100% = single oscillator). It sounds much more like a synth than Vocalsynth, but the original pitch bends / melody are getting obscured much more than I'd like.

[Ah_Dziz]

Ovox is fun but the version I have doesn’t add pitchbend to the output. I’ve had the best results for this inside cubase, but always with a practiced singer.

[Ou_Tis]

Not intended to sound like a synth, but Google Magenta's Tone Transfer follows pitch impressively. The synthesized violin/saxophone/flute do still sound synth-like.

I thought Magenta was all open source, but perhaps not the SPICE pitch detection algorithm?... If it were open source, would it be easy to have it generate midi?