Are Harmonix going to patch this?

[MaxRenn82]

Unless you want the extra harmonies for scoring purposes, I really don't know what you're missing out on. If you could sing harmony online, you still wouldn't be able to hear each other sing, so, if you and a drum-playing buddy both enjoy singing while you play, one of you can sing lead for points while the other sings along on his end as if he were singing harmony without points. Or hell, he could sing Yankee Doodle for as much as it effects the game or anyone else not in the room with him.

I dunno, fun? Seeing if you can do it? Why do we play these games anyway when you think about it?

Oh, and if you like to get achievements/trophies you'll have to be able to do the harmonies if you want 'em all.

[Elmakai]

Okay, I would like to address a few reasons why supposedly this cannot happen.

1.) It would put too much strain on the system.

This is obviously not true for several reasons. The first is GH5 does it. The second is that if a friend of mine and I were playing online but on separate consoles, and we both wanted to sing, the mics would just have to be tied to our own controllers. So my system would worry about my mic and console, and his on his.

2.) If you can't hear the other singer, then you can't harmonize.

Being that I was a music theory major at a university, and I lettered in choir (along with band, orchestra, and jazz band) my senior year in high school, I have no doubt in my mind this is completely untrue. When learning to sing 4 part harmony in choir, each part needs to be able to sing independently of the other parts before they can sing in good pitch with other parts. In other words, you don't need to hear someone singing a high note for you to sing a low note. In fact, not hearing other parts is sometimes easier than actually hearing it.

3.) (This next point hasn't been mentioned yet, but I want to address it because I know someone will bring it up to try to argue that this still isn't possible.) It would be too complicated to set up; i.e. 2 people on one console, while another would be playing online.

During local play, I can see why you would want to tie in all vocals on one controller. It makes sense. Online play though could simply have up to 3 players on the mic part, similar to 2 guitar players. When I would log on per se, I would be asked how many people will be singing from my controller. If I chose one, then 2 more spots are open. If I chose 2, then one, and so on. Online harmony play would work exactly the same, meaning that if only one person is singing then all 3 singers would be scored the same way.

I know since the mechanics of the gameplay online would have to change a little to accomplish this, so I understand that this won't be an overnight fix. But it seems that without this feature, the game is no different than a track pack for Rock Band. I can sing/drum/play guitar online already. If that were the case, The Beatles should've been DLC.

[ArothmanMusic]

I would imagine the technical infrastructure involved in connecting up to three vocalists in realtime over the net while maintaining perfect sync of the background music and have them all be able to hear each other without feedback while singing would just be nuts. You'd be relying a lot on all three vocalists having really good internet connections, as well as headsets instead of the standard mic, right?

[Pubknight]

GH5 doesn't do harmonies.
Multiple people doing vocals is not the same thing as multiple people doing vocal harmonies in a song.

[RealMessiah]

As much as I hate the vocal engine on GH5 the poster has a point. You can have 4 people playing vocals at the same time in that game. If it's possible there, why not in The Beatles?

Four players doing vocals on the same track is NOT the same thing as harmonies...

[Frederf]

Wow, soooo much misinformation. The only reason TB:RB can't do split multiplayer multi-vocals is due to how Harmonix designed the game, not any actual limitations to the method.

Myth #1: High fidelity vocal information would have to be sent over the network.

Bzzzt, wrong. All singers can be judged on the local machine and then the results of that judging (tiny data size) can be shared across the network with ease. Tug of War with 2 vocalists online in Rock Band 2 anyone?

Myth #2A: You need to be in the same room as the person you are harmonizing with.

Gosh I'm sure it's a lot easier to sing the harmony when you can hear the lead vocals. How can you sing harmony when the lead singer is across the Internet? You harmonize with the voice recording on your local disk. You don't need the real life player to harmonize with when you have original Beatles recordings at your fingertips. Think people!

Myth 2B: The hardware requires both singers to be local.

The harmony part can simply be a fully independent vocal track. The harmony part requires an A-flat so you sing an A-flat... what the lead vocals are doing is irrelevant. I'm sure when multiple singers share the same console that tricks are used to combine the vocal calculations to save hardware resources. However deciding to only use the non-independent vocal method universally is just lazy or shortsighted on Harmonix's part.

Myth #3: All singers are tied to a single controller.

Only by design, they are. Harmonix could have just as easily made 3-singers/3-controllers. Now I know some of you are going to say that it's better 3-singers/1-controller but now here's the kicker... you can have both and even more options. There's no law saying that X-singers and Y-controllers means that X and Y have to be a static number across the entire game. Why not depending on the situation Controller1 combines singers A+B while Controller2 handles singer C? The game could configure itself based on the requirements of the situation.

[trench762]

this was my only dissappointment with the game, otherwise I was pleasantly suprised, never been a huge beatles fan, but the game features some great music and fun songs. But since not many of my friends sing on RB and even less sing and like the beatles, I'll probably never get to use the feature.

[HMXThrasher]

hey guys - the vocals are controlled by one controller so that itself creates an issue for online play.

We did research this pretty thoroughly while developing the game and didn't find it technically feasible or terribly compelling (especially given that there'd be no way to hear the person you'd harmonize with).