The iZotope company, renowned for making software products that cover a multitude of audio activities, has once again expanded the frontiers when it comes to the treatment of vocals. VocalSynth is a multi-effects plug-in for studio or live use that allows for creating a wide gamut of complex, interesting, and unique vocal effects. Using four resynthesis engines—Vocoder, Talkbox, Polyvox, and Compuvox, music producers can shape and manipulate voices to create electronic vocal textures, robot sounds, computerized harmonies, vocoder and talk-box effects, thick octaves or doubles, or produce otherworldly sonic palettes—and not just for music. One can imagine the plug-in being a veritable gold mine for sound design and effects, or for movie scores.
The character of the voice can be further shaped using a selection of effects, such as adding edgy or tasteful distortion, filtering, speaker convolution modeling, beat repeating, and wide stereo delays. Natural-sounding pitch correction effortlessly corrects off-key notes in real time, while adding multiple harmonies, octaves, or unisons in auto mode can be easily achieved without needing MIDI input. For those who want to dive in deeper—and iZotope always provides the opportunity—plugging in a MIDI device allows for driving VocalSynth with the exact harmony voicings desired. Finally, a wide variety of presets allows quick access to the sounds of famous vocal productions, be it the vocal harmonies of Bohemian Rhapsody, the talk-box effects of Daft Punk, or the vocoder and computerized voice sounds of other musical hits.
