I know I'm swimming against the current here, but I'm deeply saddened by the modern trend to sync and quantize every track to the point of lifeless perfection. Imagine what that style of recording/mixing would have done to your favorite Motown songs.

Is it really a trend though? Nearly every producer or tutorial on quantizing that I ever heard always stressed to not quantize everything and if you quantize to humanize it or quantize to 80%. And to use techniques to humanize (randomizing velocity, strumming, etc.) And I frequently come across producers that say 'don't quantize at all'. Maybe it has something to do with so many people starting out at the moment.

It might be the times. Those Motown songs came from another generation. Technology helped music take different shapes and styles whether through playback mediums or production capabilities. It's all in the favor of the artist's intended way of expression

I agree with @Johannes Kast in that there are so many hobbyists and newcomers recording music on a mass scale these days (which I think is awesome for humanity that music making is more widespread and accessible than ever before) that so many of these people are resorting to shortcuts and quick fixes to make their tracks sound polished and slick rather than working hard by patiently and methodically honing their craft over the long haul. Auto-aligning and quantizing is the "path of least resistance" that the majority of today's music makers are willing to travel in the hope that someone will take notice of their music and throw some money their way. Doesn't help that society has the attention span of an amoeba. People expect something new "yesterday" and there's a widespread fear among the music industry, including the hobbyists and newcomers, that they will get overlooked if they don't crank out material faster than the next guy. It's a sad truth really. I hate that mindset but it is rampant.

At the the last label I worked with (as a producer and guitarist), the main executive producer and label owner would often play bass for artists' tracks, and he was mediocre at best. But I heard him repeatedly say that it was Ok that he was a little "loose" on his playing because the mixing engineer would fix it for him. Ugh. Talk about being lazy and missing the whole point of crafting good music. This same executive producer also told me in a phone call that we need to be careful (according to industry studies and seminars he attended) to get to the first Chorus ("hook") in songs by roughly 40-secs in order for it to be a hit. He was a retired business exec with money to throw around so everyone just went along with it. I eventually bailed as I kept seeing these type of situations play out with them (money was good but I like to sleep at night). The hope of money has a tendency to bring out the worst in us. There probably needs to be some sort of hashtag for those of us who have regrets about ever having compromised our art for the sake of money. 🤦
#icompromisedmyarttoo

Now that engineers CAN align and sync tracks perfectly, we've gotten used to hearing music that way and it has become a preference for the average listener. Similarly, now that every track can be pitch-corrected, most listeners won't tolerate any amount of perceived "pitchy-ness". I find this troubling because I don't see a way back. And I raised the issue in the first place because the posted article, above, insists that syncing harmonies is a necessary step in music production.

Regarding software generated harmonies, one I like using is Melodyne ...here is an example on the last chorus where I pitch shift for a single voice harmony [url] https://soundcloud.com/jamestoffee/2020-6-you-comfort-me [/url] The other is Antares Harmony Engine EVO (here is an example of all harmonies generated by the software for a choir [url] https://soundcloud.com/jamestoffee/2020-9-while-by-the-sheep-we-watched-at-night-version-2 [/url] One tip on recording your own harmonies live, consider yourself or tell the singer to imagine themselves as different people/characters while they sing. This helps add variety in the harmonies instead of sounding too much like one person singing multiple parts; even though it is.

Producing reggaeton and pop music the vocal sound is king always, i have used harmony efx, melodyne, vocal synth. And they all give very good results depending on what you are looking for, i would recommend efx for more mainstream genres and melodyne if you want to go for a more clean tone, this does not mean you are not able to get the same tone with Efx.
I have a question related to Vocalign, i have found that harmonies or secondary vocals mostly vocal stacks to emphazise the lead vocal, tend to sound much better at least to my ear, syncing them manually, than the syncing done in vocalign.
If you have obtained some amazing results on vocalign i would love to know the settings and a bit more about its use, its faster yes but im not convinced with the results yet.

@Bakho Sabas I have a similar tool in Sonar Platinum called VocalSync but the vocals have to be pretty close to start with, or you get a lot of weird sounds pretty quick. When I open the session for the first song I posted I realized I did you VocalSync as well as Melodyne...forgot I did that, but again when it is really close already, it helps with the fine tuning.....although I agree manually can get better quality results when the time difference is more significant.