BC Voice Tweaker.
PC DirectX only
Not all professional‑quality plug‑ins are developed by large commercial organisations. Robert Bielik Consulting (RBC) sell their Voice Tweaker solely through the Internet, at the bargain price of $59 (about £37). The Voice Tweaker is intended for those who like pitch correction with a little more spice. There is a Correction section, which acts much like the automatic mode of Antares' Auto‑Tune, with control over Glide (time in milliseconds to glide to correct note) and Liveliness (amount of nuances left from original signal). A Deviation meter calibrated from +100 to 110 cents shows how much correction is being applied. Along with a drop‑down key selection, I also counted 64 different scale options in the drop‑down list, including Balinese and Gypsy. Usefully, the notes available in the current scale are shown in a graphic 1‑octave keyboard.
The basic pitch correction works well, but is not up to the standard of Auto‑Tune, producing some rather grainy background artefacts on exposed sounds like vocals. However, I doubt that most people will be buying Voice Tweaker solely for pitch correction, since it has a lot more tricks up its sleeve when it comes to sonic manipulation. The Transpose section not only lets you shift the pitch of your monophonic melody up or down in semitone intervals over a +/‑ 2 octave range, but also has formant shifting as well, to change the apparent sex of the singer. Both controls have separate Fine Tune knobs that operate over a +/‑50 cent range to fill in the gaps between the semitones. You can link the two controls for quick changes, or vary them separately for more bizarre results. There are loads of useful effects in here, from Orson Welles and Darth Vader at one extreme to instant sex changes and cartoon characters at the other.
The fun doesn't stop there, as MIDI control is also provided — you can set the pitch‑change value using a Note On command, and you can also use this to gate the sound with a user‑adjustable Attack/Release envelope if you so desire. Further control of pitch‑bend and modulation is also available, along with an LFO for vibrato purposes, offering six different switchable waveforms. With a little practice you could use this section to make your vocalist sing a completely different tune, all triggered from a sequencer or keyboard — great fun!
I suspect that many even of those who can afford Auto‑Tune for professional and transparent treatment of vocals will buy RBC's Voice Tweaker for the many other off‑the‑wall effects it can produce on both voices and instrumental sounds. A fully‑functional demo version can be downloaded from the web site — the clever restriction is that noise is added at a level of 50dB, so that you wouldn't want to use it in demo form in a real project. At the price, Voice Tweaker deserves to do very well. Martin Walker