Orra Vocal User Manual

Orra Vocal is two things in one plugin. TUNE is a pitch editor: it shows every note of the vocal on a piano roll and lets you correct, move, retime and reshape each one by hand. Behind it sits a vocal chain of eight effects built for the voice: CLEAN, EQ, SAT, COMP, DOUBLE, DELAY, REVERB and OUTPUT.

• TUNE. Orra Vocal analyzes the vocal once, in the background, and draws its notes. Tune them all at once with CORRECT, or drag single notes; straighten drift, calm or deepen a vibrato, change a note's level and formant, split, merge and quantize, and shape the slides between notes with GLIDE.
• A clean sound. Notes you leave alone play exactly as recorded. Tuned notes keep the singer's tone and character, and the consonants, breaths and silences between them play as recorded.
• The chain. Every effect has its own page with large displays and meters. Because Orra Vocal knows where every word, consonant and breath is, CLEAN turns breaths and the noise between phrases down with no threshold to set and no delay.
• AUTO SETUP. The first time Orra Vocal hears a vocal, it sets up every effect for that voice, switched off: turn one on and it starts in a sensible place.
• Ways to judge by ear. Presets for each effect and for the whole chain, and on every effect page A | B, DELTA (hear only what the effect changes) and MATCH (hear it off at the same loudness).

The vocal reaches TUNE in one of two ways: through ARA, in DAWs that support it, or by TRANSFER, recording it into the plugin while the song plays. See ARA and TRANSFER.

1. Insert it

Put Orra Vocal on the vocal track as an insert effect, one per vocal track. In a DAW with ARA it reads the vocal clips on that track straight away. In other DAWs, use TRANSFER to record the vocal into it (next chapter).

2. Activate it, or start the demo

The first time you open the window, a panel covers it: Orra Vocal is not activated on this machine.

• Start 14-Day Demo unlocks every feature for 14 days. Nothing to type.
• Enter License Key opens the activation window: paste your license key and click Activate.
• Purchase Orra Vocal opens the product page.

Until it is activated or the demo is running, Orra Vocal is silent while the DAW plays. When the demo ends the panel comes back with Your 14-day demo has expired; enter a license key to carry on.

3. Let it listen

Open the TUNE tab. While a vocal is analyzed, TUNE shows ANALYZING THE VOCAL with a progress bar; a minute of vocal takes about nine seconds on a recent computer. Then its notes appear on the roll.

4. Tune

For a quick pass, click CORRECT: every note is pulled to the nearest note of the KEY. For detail, pick a tool on the toolbar and drag notes. Press play in your DAW to hear the result.

5. Switch on the effects you want

Each effect's tab has a light: click it to turn the effect on. AUTO SETUP has already set each one for this vocal, so it starts in a good place. Open the effect's page to fine-tune it.

The license panel

Click the ORRA VOCAL wordmark at the top left at any time. The panel shows the version, the license status (with the demo's days left), who it is licensed to, the activations used, and Deactivate, which frees this computer's activation so the license can be used on another one. Below are links to the website, support, this manual and Orra Audio's social pages. If the license server can't be reached, Orra Vocal stays activated offline.

To tune a vocal, Orra Vocal needs the whole recording, not only the moment that is playing. There are two ways to give it that.

ARA (the direct way)

ARA (Audio Random Access) lets a plugin read the audio clips on its track directly. In DAWs that support ARA 2, such as REAPER, Logic Pro, Studio One and Cubase, insert Orra Vocal on the vocal track the way your DAW adds an ARA plugin: Orra Vocal sees the track's clips, analyzes them, and plays them back corrected.

• Each Orra Vocal shows and edits only its own track.
• Edits belong to each copy of a recording: a duplicated track or a copied clip starts with the original's tuning and is then tuned on its own.
• The tuning is saved with the project. A reopened project analyzes the clips once more (the notes appear after a few seconds), then puts every edit back.
• A click on the ruler above the roll moves the DAW's playhead there.

TRANSFER (any DAW)

In a DAW without ARA, or whenever you prefer, record the vocal into Orra Vocal. TRANSFER appears on TUNE's toolbar when there is no ARA.

• Arm TRANSFER, then play the song over the vocal. Orra Vocal records what reaches it; while recording you hear the input itself.
• Stop or disarm: the recording becomes a take and is analyzed.
• From then on, wherever a take covers the song position, its corrected playback plays in place of the input. Elsewhere the input passes through. Where two takes overlap, the newest wins.
• CLEAR forgets every take made in this Orra Vocal.

Takes are saved as files in your Music folder, under Orra Vocal/Transfers; the project keeps a reference to them and their edits. To open the project on another computer, copy that folder too.

The window is a slate-gray faceplate with one page per tab. It can be resized from its corner. Hover over anything for a tooltip.

1. Header

The ORRA VOCAL wordmark (the license panel), then the tabs in signal order: TUNE, the chain key (CHAIN PRESETS), CLEAN, EQ, SAT, COMP, DOUBLE, DELAY, REVERB and OUTPUT. Each effect tab carries its power light: click the light to switch the effect on or off, click the name to open its page. An effect that is off dims its name. On the right: SCALE, the size of everything in the window, and the round ? key for the tooltips.

2. The TUNE page

A toolbar along the top, in symbols (each one's name is in its tooltip): the eight tools, SNAP, KEY, CORRECT and QUANTIZE (each with an arrow for its settings), MERGE, DELETE and RESET, the view keys, LEAD and OTHER TRACKS, UNDO and REDO, and TRANSFER and CLEAR when there is no ARA. Below it the roll, the notes on a piano roll with a ruler and scroll bars. Along the bottom the inspector, the selected note's values.

3. An effect page

Every effect page is built the same way. The riser along the top holds PRESETS, A | B, RESET, DELTA and MATCH. The screen in the middle holds the effect's displays: scopes, graphs and meters that move with the vocal. The cards along the bottom hold its knobs and switches, grouped by job.

4. Knobs and values

Drag a knob up or down (Shift for fine control). Double-click a knob to return it to its default. Each knob shows its value in its own unit; while you drag, the effect's displays follow.

5. Signal order

vocal in → TUNE (the corrected playback) → INPUT (OUTPUT page) → CLEAN → EQ → SAT → COMP → DOUBLE → DELAY → REVERB → OUTPUT (DE-ESS, RIDE, GAIN, WIDTH, SAFE) → out

Each sung note is a shape on the piano roll, at its pitch (up and down) and its time (across). The rows are shaded like the keys of a piano, and each note sits centered on the note it will sound as.

Selecting

• Click a note to select it; Cmd-click (Ctrl-click on Windows) adds or removes one.
• Drag across empty space to select several. Select all is in the right-click menu.
• Commands such as CORRECT, QUANTIZE and RESET work on the selected notes, or on all of them when none is selected.

Moving around

Hear a note

While the song is stopped, a clicked note plays as it will sound, and plays again at its new pitch as you drag it (on each semitone with SNAP on), so you can find the right note before pressing play. A click on empty space stops it. Turn this off in the right-click menu: Hear a note when it is clicked.

The right-click menu

Right-click the roll for every tool and command in words: TOOL, SNAP, the NOTES commands (Correct, Quantize, Merge, Split at the playhead, Delete, Reset, Select all) and VIEW (zoom, Follow the playhead, Show the other tracks, This track is the LEAD, Hear a note when it is clicked, Undo, Redo).

Pick a tool on the toolbar or in the right-click menu; what a drag does depends on it. Hold Shift during any drag for fine moves. Every tool works on all the selected notes at once.

Tips

• Tune with CORRECT first, then fix the few notes it got wrong with PITCH.
• A note that sounds out of tune but sits on its line usually drifts: try DRIFT before PITCH.
• Hard, robotic tuning comes from 0 % VIBRATO and short glides; keep some of each for a natural vocal.
• A word whose ending was split off as its own note can be joined back with MERGE.

SNAP

Where dragged notes land. OFF: freely, cent by cent. SEMI: on semitones. KEY: on the notes of the KEY. Hold Alt (Option) while dragging to flip it for one drag.

KEY

The scale used by CORRECT, SNAP KEY and a double-click with PITCH.

• Follow the vocal uses the key Orra Vocal hears in the vocal (named in the menu).
• Chromatic (all 12 notes) snaps to the nearest semitone, whatever the key. The default.
• Major and Minor list every key: pick the song's key when you know it.

The inspector along the bottom shows the selected note's values. Drag a value up or down (Shift for fine moves), or double-click it and type. With several notes selected, a change applies to each of them and they keep their differences.

GLIDE

Where two notes touch, the pitch follows the singer's own slide from one to the next (AUTO), so corrected notes join without blips or dips. With the GLIDE tool, drag the handle between two notes up for a longer, smoother slide, or down for a quicker one; this takes the robotic step out of hard-tuned notes. A glide set by hand is centered on the sung slide. Double-click the handle to go back to AUTO.

How Orra Vocal tunes

• Notes you don't touch play exactly as recorded.
• The consonants, breaths and silences between tuned notes also play as recorded: no swish between words, and hard “t” and “k” sounds stay crisp.
• A tuned note keeps the original's brightness and its loudness, and even big moves (a third, an octave) keep the singer's own voice instead of turning metallic.
• A word's opening scoop stays part of its note, so CORRECT never leaves the start of a word behind.

With Orra Vocal on several vocal tracks of a song (a lead, doubles, harmonies), each one can show the others' notes behind its own, so you can line up a double with the lead or check a harmony against it.

OTHER TRACKS

The OTHER TRACKS key shows the notes of the song's other tracks with Orra Vocal faintly behind this track's, each in its own light color, with a legend naming them. The arrow beside it opens their menu:

• Show or hide each track by name.
• Colors: for each track, one of a set of colors, the DAW's track color, or the default.
• This track is the LEAD (the same as the LEAD key).

With no other track to show, the menu says so: put Orra Vocal on another vocal track of this song. The other tracks are only shown: you edit each track in its own Orra Vocal.

LEAD

The crown key marks this track as the lead vocal. On the other tracks' Orra Vocal its notes are drawn stronger, with a solid outline, and their legend names it LEAD. Mark one lead per song.

Working with doubles

• Open the double's Orra Vocal with the lead shown behind it. Use TIME to line up the starts and ends of words with the lead's, and PITCH to land each note on the lead's.
• A double that matches the lead too closely can sound like one voice: leave a little of its own timing and vibrato, or let DOUBLE add width instead.
• For a harmony track, the lead's notes show where each harmony note sits against the melody.

Eight effects in a fixed order, each on its own tab. The corrected vocal from TUNE runs through them from left to right; an effect that is off is skipped.

Power

Click the light on an effect's tab to switch it on or off, from any page. Lit is on; an effect that is off dims its name. The power is a DAW parameter, so it can be automated.

The riser: tools on every effect page

AUTO SETUP

The first time Orra Vocal analyzes a vocal, it measures it (how loud it is sung and how much the level moves, how busy it is, its range, where its sibilants start, how loud its breaths are, its tone) and sets every effect for it, using the song's tempo for DELAY and REVERB. The effects stay switched off: turn one on and it is already in a sensible place. Each effect's preset key reads AUTO, and AUTO stays first in its list, so you can go back to it. An effect you have already changed keeps your settings; RIDE is left alone.

Effect presets

Click the preset name on the riser for the list: AUTO, the factory presets, then YOUR PRESETS. The arrows step through them all. A preset sets every control of the effect, but never its power, INPUT's level, OUTPUT's GAIN or RIDE's TARGET. A * after the name means you have changed it since.

Save as... stores what you hear as a new preset; Save, Rename and Move to the Trash act on the one loaded. Show the presets folder opens it in Finder or Explorer.

CHAIN PRESETS

The chain key between TUNE and CLEAN saves and loads the whole chain at once: every effect's settings and which effects are on. Save the chain as... stores what you hear; pick a chain to load it, and Undo the chain load right after if it was not what you wanted. The links on the key light up while a chain is loaded and unchanged. A chain never touches the tuning, INPUT's level, RIDE's TARGET or OUTPUT's GAIN.

CLEAN takes the sharp edges off a vocal: it turns down sibilants (s, sh, ch), breaths and the noise between phrases. On an analyzed vocal it already knows where each one is, so it never dulls a bright sung note and adds no delay.

The displays

An eight-band parametric EQ to shape the vocal's tone, with an analyzer behind it. Any band can also be a dynamic band that moves only when its region gets loud, and work on the mid or the side of the stereo picture only.

The cards

• BAND: the band selector 1 to 8, each number in its band's color (double-click an unused one to switch it on), and the selected band's BAND ON, BYPASS (keep it on the graph but stop it working) and SOLO (hear only this band; the others and DRIVE are skipped).
• BAND n: the selected band's MODE, ST / M / S, TYPE, SLOPE, FREQ, GAIN and Q.
• DRIVE, and ANALYZER: the graph's RANGE (±6, 12, 18 or 30 dB) and what it shows: the vocal coming in (green) and going out (blue), only going out, or nothing.

Working on the graph

Each band is a numbered dot with its curve filled in its color; the white line is the sum, the EQ you hear.

Dynamic bands (MODE: DYN)

A DYN band moves only when its region gets loud: a cut for a harsh syllable or a boomy note that leaves the rest of the vocal alone, or a lift that brings a region forward when it is sung out. GAIN becomes AMOUNT.

ATTACK, RELEASE and RATIO sit behind the arrow beside THRESH. On the graph, a DYN band's solid curve is where it is now, the dashed one the most it can do.

Mid and side bands

A band set to M works only on the middle of the stereo picture, where the lead voice sits; S only on the sides, where doubles and width live. The graph then draws two sums: what the middle hears (white) and what the sides hear (lilac). On a mono track there is no side: M works as ST and S does nothing.

Five saturation bands. Each pushes one region of the voice into a saturator and lifts it as it saturates, a more musical boost than an EQ's gain, as Orra EQ's saturation bands do.

The graph

Frequency across, DRIVE up. Each band is a hump in its color, as tall as its DRIVE, with its type under the dot; a ring round the dot glows while the band is adding something. The white curve is the boost a quiet passage gets from all the bands, in dB on the right-hand scale; loud passages get a little less. Behind them, the analyzer shows what SAT adds (gold) over the vocal going out (blue), only the vocal, or nothing.

The BAND card selects bands 1 to 5 and holds BAND ON, BYPASS and SOLO, as on the EQ. The riser's DELTA plays only what SAT adds: each band's boost and harmonics, without the dry vocal.

COMP evens out the vocal's level so quiet words and loud words sit together in the mix. It adds no latency: no lookahead, nothing to delay the track.

The displays

Starting points

• Pop and R&B leads: ratio 3:1 to 4:1, attack 5 to 20 ms, release 80 to 180 ms, 3 to 6 dB of gain reduction on the loud words.
• Rap: a firmer ratio and quicker times keep every word at the front.
• Parallel: a hard setting (8:1, fast attack) with MIX around 40 % adds density without flattening the performance.

DOUBLE thickens the vocal like a double-tracked take: copies of it, each a little late and a little out of tune, drifting slowly and spread across the stereo field. The copies are only ever late, as a real double is, so DOUBLE adds no latency.

The displays

Echoes of the vocal in time with the song. The echoes can darken, bounce left and right, and step back while the vocal sings so they bloom in the gaps.

TIME choices: 1/32, 1/16T, 1/16, 1/8T, 1/16., 1/8, 1/4T, 1/8., 1/4, 1/2T, 1/4., 1/2, 1/2., 1/1.

The displays

Starting points

• A slapback (1/32 or 1/16, no repeats, mono) thickens a rock or country vocal without sounding like an echo.
• A dotted eighth with PING and some DUCK fills the gaps of a pop vocal while keeping the words clear.
• For a “throw” on one word, automate MIX or the power for that word only.

Orra Space's five reverbs, with its tone controls and a ducker that lets the reverb bloom between phrases.

Shaping the tone

In the TONE view, LO CUT and HI CUT are points you can drag, and three more points shape the reverb with an EQ of its own: a dip at 300 Hz to clear mud, a lift in the air, whatever the song needs. The voice itself is never touched.

Starting points

• A pop vocal: PLATE, 1.5 to 2 s, 30 to 50 ms PRE, LO CUT around 200 Hz, MIX 15 to 20 %.
• Keep the words clear in a big space: raise PRE and DUCK before lowering MIX.
• A ballad: CHAMBER or HALL, 2.5 to 3.5 s, with DUCK around 20 to 30 % so the tail fills the gaps.
• If the reverb sounds harsh on the s sounds, lower HI CUT or add OUTPUT's DE-ESS, which catches the sibilance the reverb splashes.

OUTPUT looks after the vocal's level from end to end: how loud it enters the chain, a second de-esser, automatic fader riding, and what leaves. OUTPUT is on by default.

Listening

• COMPARE plays the vocal as it came into Orra Vocal (tuned, no effects) at the same loudness as the processed one: is the chain making it better, or only louder?
• MONO folds everything to mono, to check the doubles, the width and the reverb on a mono speaker.

Both are listening aids: they switch off when you leave the page and are never saved.

The displays

One way through a lead vocal, from raw take to a vocal that sits in the mix. Every step is optional.

1. Bring it in

Insert Orra Vocal on the vocal track. With ARA, open TUNE and wait for the notes; without, arm TRANSFER, play the song through, and stop.

2. Tune

Set KEY to the song's key, or leave it on Chromatic. Click CORRECT with PITCH at 100 %, then play the song and listen for notes that went to the wrong place: move them with PITCH, or put them back with RESET › Pitch. For a softer result, set PITCH lower in CORRECT's settings and run it again.

3. Fix the details

Straighten sagging long notes with DRIFT, calm a wide vibrato with VIBRATO, tighten timing with TIME or QUANTIZE, and smooth a jumpy join with GLIDE. Use LEVEL on a word that pokes out.

4. Level

On the OUTPUT page, press INPUT's SET while the vocal sings, so the chain sees the level its defaults were made for. AUTO SETUP has usually done this already.

5. Clean, shape, control

Switch on CLEAN (add some GAP if the room or headphones are audible between phrases), EQ (a low cut under the voice, a cut where it is harsh or boxy), SAT for presence and warmth, and COMP for an even level. On each page, use MATCH to check that the effect sounds better, not just louder.

6. Space

Add DOUBLE for width, then DELAY and REVERB; DUCK on both keeps the words clear and lets the echoes and the tail fill the gaps.

7. Finish

Back on OUTPUT, switch on RIDE and press its SET to even out the lines; add the late DE-ESS if the chain brought the s sounds back up. Check COMPARE and MONO, then save the chain as a CHAIN PRESET for the next song.

SCALE and the window

The SCALE box next to the ? key sets the size of everything in the window, from 100 % to 200 % in steps of 25, menus and pop-ups included. A size the screen cannot hold is grayed out. The window can also be resized from its corner (at least 1024 × 640 at 100 %). Both are saved with the session.

Tooltips & languages

The round ? key turns the hover tooltips on and off (on by default). Right-click it for the tooltip language: English, Dutch, Japanese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German or French. Control names such as CORRECT or DE-ESS stay in English, so the tips match the panel.

Saved with your session

Every effect setting and power, A and B, the tuning (every edit to every note), TRANSFER's takes (as references to their files), the tool, SNAP, KEY, CORRECT and QUANTIZE settings, TUNE's zoom and scroll, each page's view settings, and SCALE. TUNE's selection and undo history survive closing the window.

Your presets and chains are yours rather than the project's: every Orra Vocal on the computer shares them. DELTA, MATCH, SOLO, COMPARE and MONO are never saved.

Keyboard & mouse

Your DAW decides whether a plugin receives key presses, so every command in Orra Vocal is on the toolbar, a card or a right-click menu. These mouse moves work in every DAW (on Windows, Ctrl for Cmd; on a Mac, Option for Alt):

Pitch detection uses the CREPE pitch network (J. W. Kim, J. Salamon, P. Li and J. P. Bello, “CREPE: A Convolutional Representation for Pitch Estimation”, ICASSP 2018), its published weights run in Orra Audio's own code. CREPE: Copyright © 2018 Jong Wook Kim, MIT License. Pitch and formant changes use Signalsmith Stretch 1.4.0, Copyright © 2022 Geraint Luff / Signalsmith Audio Ltd., and Signalsmith Linear 0.6.4, Copyright © 2025 Signalsmith Audio, both under the MIT License:

ARA support uses the ARA Audio Random Access SDK by Celemony Software GmbH, under the Apache License 2.0 (apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0), and parts of JUCE's ARA plugin example, Copyright © Raw Material Software Limited, under the ISC License.

Trademarks

ARA Audio Random Access is a trademark of Celemony Software GmbH. VST is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. Audio Unit, Logic Pro and macOS are trademarks of Apple Inc. AAX and Pro Tools are trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. All other names belong to their owners.

Orra Vocal is a product of Orra Audio LLC. © 2026 Orra Audio LLC.

For support, updates, and documentation: orraaudio.com