What are some things I can do before exporting to reduce that synthy harshness between 2k and 4khz? I have found increasing breathiness and decreasing tension can help, but I still find I have to perform a lot of surgical eq moves and dynamic compression in those areas. Too much and it exaggerates other nasty resonances. Saturation helps a ton once I get the vocals into my DAW - but I would greatly like to minimize the work down the road by getting the best source tones I can.
TLDR - 2khz - 4khz on Solaria is too harsh, can I do anything to smooth out those areas within studio 2 pro?
I’ve personally had no problem with Solaria in that way - but I do tend to keep the songs in the key of C or D to get the best out of the vocals. That is with all of the breathiness, clear or any of the other parameters used selected, just a slight tweak to -2 on Tension and -.75 on the tone and it sounds great (Solaria I that is, Solaria II sucks in IMHO)
Are you hitting high notes, is that where the harshness is happening?
Just another thought - I got a copy of Smooth Operator Pro recently, and that is excellent at removing resonance and has become my Go-To mixing EQ in a short space of time:
Another thought … I always (incorrectly) assume that folks are using SV as a VST instrument. It sounds like you are using it as standalone and exporting the audio, so I can’t help you with advice on that after all.
I’ve never used SV standalone !!
those peaks are there no matter what range I have solaria operate at. I leave tension at 0 and bring breathiness to around 2. you have breathiness maxed out?
Edit: also, yes, i use it as a standalone. I didn’t like trying to click between windows to place vocals and change positions in the track.
No - I have ALL the circular controls at zero and just the tension and tone adjusted.
I guess it depends on the effect you are looking for - I tend to want a quite sweet, understated sound to play against a dance backing, but if you want something more agressive I suppose that’s when you may find the harshness developing.
As an experiment you could swipe all of the controls to zero and just adjust tone and tension to see how that changes things for you.
BTW I use the ARA bridge method and it works for me, but I sometimes export the tracks to MIDI then use the MIDI file as a dummy track to guage where the vocals lie in relation to the song.
Gotcha, I’ve played around with the knobs quite a bit. I’ve always reached pretty much straight for “powerful”, but that is where 90% of my problem is i’ve realized. Switching to “clear” and increasing the tension sounds better than “power”, imo. It also has very manageable resonances. Guess I’m switching to using other modes and sprinkling in the power mode as a turn-it-to-eleven setting.
Edit: I write melodic/symphonic metal, so I really need her to belt sometimes.
I’ve just found with Solaria that minor adjustments seem to be kinder.
Someone else on the forum advised me that NYL II needs some pretty drastic changes to get that one to sound more ‘musical’ (I choose my words carefully here, as these ears define that voice as unlistenable 
)
So I guess no easy way to get to the best version of the voice banks.