Quick start
- Bounce the lead vocal and the double from your session, from the same start point.
- Load Ordinary Align on any track, or open the standalone app.
- Drop the lead on the top lane, then the double on the bottom lane.
- Press LISTEN to hear both together, and flip ORIGINAL / ALIGNED.
- Drag the aligned double back into your session, lined up with the lead.
Guide and dub
The guide is the take everything should follow — usually the lead vocal. The dub is the take that moves: a double, a harmony or a backing vocal. Only the dub is changed; the guide is never touched.
Both takes can be WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, M4A or CAF, up to two minutes each. If their sample rates differ, the dub is converted to match. For longer songs, work a section at a time.
Reading the screen
- Guide and dub lanes show both waveforms on one timeline.
- The green lines tie each syllable start in the guide to the same syllable in the dub. Leaning lines mean the dub is early or late there.
- The strip under the dub lights up green for each syllable that now lands with the guide, and amber where something isn’t in the guide at all.
- AVG OFFSET is the average timing difference between the two, in milliseconds — before and after aligning.
Listen and compare
LISTEN plays the guide and the dub together. ORIGINAL plays the dub as it was sung; ALIGNED plays it as it will be exported. Switch between them while listening — your ears decide, not the number.
Tightness, max shift, gaps
- TIGHTNESS (0 – 100%): how far the dub moves toward the guide. 0% leaves it as sung; 100% locks it to the guide. Doubles usually sit well around 85%.
- MAX SHIFT (20 – 200 ms): the furthest any syllable is allowed to move. Lower it if a part sounds pulled around.
- MATCH GAPS: off by default, so the silences between phrases stay where the singer left them. Turn it on to align those too.
Changes are applied within a moment, so you can adjust while listening.
Not in guide
When the dub has something the guide doesn’t — an ad-lib, an extra word — Ordinary Align marks it in amber as NOT IN GUIDE instead of forcing it into place.
- LEAVE AS SUNG keeps that part exactly as it was recorded.
- UNDO lets it align with the rest again.
Presets
The arrows next to the preset name step through five starting points:
- Tight Doubles — the default for unison doubles.
- Natural — 60% tightness: close, with some of the singer’s own feel left in.
- Locked — as close to the guide as it gets, gaps included.
- Loose Backing — 40% tightness, for stacks that should still sound like several people.
- Rap Ad-libs — fully tight, with room to move far.
Drag and export
Drag the dub from the bottom of the screen straight into your DAW and line its start up with the lead. Rather not drag? The … menu has Save As, Show in Finder and Open export folder. Aligned files are WAVs in ~/Music/Ordinary Audio/Ordinary Align/.
Tips
- Pick your best lead as the guide. The dub can only be as tight as the guide is good.
- Bounce both takes from the same start point so they line up when you drag the result back.
- Ad-libs belong on their own track. If they’re on the double, leave them as sung.
- New to aligning? Read how to align vocals, and how tight is too tight.