Believable Voice Transformation Assistance

[Pod Bod]

I am hosting a reasonably popular podcast series and am in need of new voices. I am keeping the budget down and cannot afford to hire professional voiceover actors. I thus need some kind of hardware/software device that will allow me to create BELIEVABLE voices, including gender changes. I have searched and searched and searched and searched and searched and searched again. I'm not kidding I've looked everywhere on the web. No luck. Any ideas? I just cannot believe that no one on this planet has a device that can model/create believable voices, that is without sound like a robot or some alien being. What does a vocoder do? Will it create believable voices and personalities? Can anyone recommend one? Please assist. Thanks.

[aeon]

SoundToys PurePitch can do this with ease, but it is only available for ProTools TDM systems. I have used it before to generate voices for 3D character animation.

http://www.soundtoys.com/products/PurePitch/

Eventide Harmonizers including the DSP7000, DSP7500, Orville, H7600, and H8000 series can do this via use of their UltraShifter algorithm (formant-aware pitch shifter).

http://www.eventide.com/AudioDivision/P ... izers.aspx

t.c. electronic/Helicon has some voice-processing products that do voice modelling and formant-aware shifting, but I have no experience with them, so I cannot comment on their usefulness in this application.

http://www.tc-helicon.com/

There are likely a couple of others, but this is just off the top of my head.


cheers,
Ian

[Hugo76]

Pod Bod,
I recently was looking into such progs myself.
I found the following:

Voice Cloak PlusChange Your Voice Online
http://www.blazeaudio.com/products/voicecloakplus.html

MorphVOX Pro 4.0.5
http://www.screamingbee.com/product/Mor ... px?adid=65

AV VOICE CHANGER SOFTWARE
http://www.audio4fun.com/voice-changer.htm

Tbh, when listening to the demos, I didn't find either very convincing.

[Pod Bod]

Thanks for the feedback. I've experimented with the TC Helicon software. It does not work well. I am interested in Pure Pitch but what an expense to get it to run. The software is $399 but you need a TDM system on your Mac to run it. That seems too expensive. I don't know what to do. Nothing else on the planet is realistic or convincing. Everything sounds like alien beings or robots. And I guess it should if you're going to pay $50 got it. I would prefer hardware that is going into my Mac rather than software but it just shocks me that nothing has been developed for voice alteration. Eventide is just too expensive. I like the reviews of Pure Pitch. But if they would just make it available as a plugin for Garage Band or Logic 8.

[Pod Bod]

Subject: Voice/Gender/Personality Creation

I just received the following message from TC Helicon:

Discussion Thread
Response (Nicholas) 08/11/2008 09:58 AM
Dear Richard,

In our range the VOICE PRO and the VOICEWORKS PLUS can be used for pitch shifting and Voice modeling. They can be used to modify a voice.
Be aware that with a single source, you will not be able to create extremely different voices, if you want them to sound natural.
Check the demos on our website

Regards

Customer (Richard Breese) 08/07/2008 03:33 AM
I am a podcaster and am looking for something that will allow me to create believable voices that are quite distinct and natural sounding. Can you assist?

[Pod Bod]

So does anybody have any more ideas please??

[Hugo76]

Pod Bod;
I came across the Boss VT-1 Voice Transformer here on VSE. I doubt, however it will give satisfying results, plus it's also hardware. Maybe someone else can comment on this?

I'm about to see how my V-Synth copes with this (hoping I can run the audio directly through it, not having to encode it first).
A year ago I had a Yamaha cs6x with the vocal harmonizer plug-in. I did a couple of experiments with it, and the results were actually pretty good. But again; hardware.

[Pod Bod]

Hugo 76, hardware is not a problem if it works reasonably well. Do you know how well the Boss VT works? It was recently taken off the market and the problem is you can only buy it now from spy and stealth websites. Plus they have tacked on three hundred more dollars for the unit with the result it costs over $600 now. But if it worked well, I'd consider it. I never heard of the Yamaha cs6x. Please let me know how the V-Synth works out. Thanks.

[space6oy]

It was recently taken off the market and the problem is you can only buy it now from spy and stealth websites. Plus they have tacked on three hundred more dollars for the unit with the result it costs over $600 now.

you can grab a VT-1 on ebay for less than $400 anytime...
i landed one on there brand new for $200. yet another piece of gear the idiots put RCA jacks on for its line outs instead of 1/4". it's more or less a pitch shifter and a tuneable vocoder. neat that you can mix the effect & normal signals, add reverb and save a few presets though. might work well for what you're talking about doing since you can switch back & forth from one to another.

[Pod Bod]

Spaceboy, can you send me some voice samples? You know just talk into it. Then change the gender to a woman/man, kid, etc. I'd like to hear how realistic the voices sound. Some people claim that thing works great others say it's kind of a ripoff. If you can, send to: reb555@mac.com

[space6oy]

sure thing. i'm out of town tonight but will try to throw that together tomorrow.

[crystalmsc]

I never heard of the Yamaha cs6x.

I believe that Hugo is talking about the PLG-100VH Vocal Harmony Option for the CS6x, which can be used with any PLG compatible synth. I sense that the one in the S900 is derived from the card, which do a decent job for chord based vocal harmony, crisper and sounds more modern compared to the older Digitech Studio Vocalist. But I don't think that it would do that believable voice transformation. More into the harmony/detuning/doubling coverage, which is very good.

[Hugo76]

crystalmsc;
Yes, you are correct. The plg100-VH did, however, include a gender changing alorithm, which in fact was quite good. I used it to great effect on a gabber track I made some years back

[space6oy]

goofy VT-1 demo!

[space6oy]

wait wait, here - this is way better!