Looking for the best vocal-mangling effects out there

[Karl the Hermit]

As a vocalist, I clean up pretty well with just some decent compression, but I'm looking for some effects (free preferred, but will consider paid stuff) that will mangle my voice to the point where the vocals become more of an "effects driver" than anything else.

Suggestions?

[Brother Greg]

An area I find interesting, too.

Seems like any cheapo effects processor can easily destroy a vocal beyond recognition. To me, the question is whether you still want anyone to understand what you're singing or saying.

Don't know about free ones, but on the relatively cheap side there's NI's The Mouth and izotope's Vocalsynth.

[Ploki]

Well for dedicated there's only two from the top of my head:

Already mentioned iZotope Vocal Synth is imo a pretty versatile vocal destroying box.

There's also Polyverse music Manipulator which has different effects, might be useful.

There's also Flux Ircam Trax, which is less "ooh aah effects" but more of a "lets make this male vocal sound more like an old lady". -This one is pretty unique, but expensive.

Then there's not much more you can do with vocal specifically in terms of processing, so its more your imagination that has to do the heavy lifting

[biomechanoid]

https://somasynths.com/pipe/

[martinjuenke]

Zynaptiq Wormhole

[Aloysius]

I can mangle vocals without any effects.

[pekbro]

Virta from Madrona Labs

https://madronalabs.com/products/virta

[garryknight]

There's some interesting stuff in Melda's MXXX VST, but it's certainly not cheap. For example, any preset with the name "Reverse World" in it, i.e. "Reverse World", "Another Reverse World", "Twisted Reverse World", "Vibrated Reverse World". Also various voice effects such as "Smaug", "Satan", "Robot Transform". Then there are the shimmer presets. There are also the glitching presets such as "Dancing in my grave". And then there's my favourite, "FSU OMG LOL WTF" which glitches everything up to the max.

Try the demo, put it on a vocal channel, click through all of the presets to see what you like. Note that when the demo period finishes, you'll get a notification saying, "Demo licence has expired. The plugin will occasionally produce noise".

Nearly forgot. There's also some really good vocal processing presets in there such as voice doubling (and more), pitch correction, and so on.

[gnu23]

I can mangle vocals without any effects.

..if I sing, God goes right past kittens as fiddling small change and pots an entire solar system somewhere in the Great Attractor..

(with apologies to Douglas Adams, and KVR for a arguably humorous but unhelpful post - great topic though!)

[dandezebra]

Also check Dehumaniser or Little Monsters.

[Kinh]

The ones mentioned are vocoders , mangling isn't their forte. You need to look at mangling vsts for that like sugar bytes, stutter edit etc or get into resampling and slicing. I dont why people here have recommended vocoders.

All you need is a good stutter effect or a sampler and modulate a pitch shifter/formant effect like little alter boy.

[V0RT3X]

The ones mentioned are vocoders , mangling isn't their forte. You need to look at mangling vsts for that like sugar bytes, stutter edit etc or get into resampling and slicing. I dont why people here have recommended vocoders.

All you need is a good stutter effect or a sampler and modulate a pitch shifter/formant effect like little alter boy.

Not all of the suggestions are vocoders.

As far as mangling goes you can do a lot using a vocoder.

As for the OP i would recommend Native Instruments Molekular, Unfiltered Audio Spec-Ops, Accsone Crusher-X and a few others that can seriously change your sound.

[Karl the Hermit]

Good stuff... thanks!

<span class="skimlinks-unlinked">https://somasynths.com/pipe</span>/

Very interesting... way out of my price range, but very interesting.

There's also Flux Ircam Trax, which is less "ooh aah effects" but more of a "lets make this male vocal sound more like an old lady". -This one is pretty unique, but expensive.

I'll remember this for when I decide to do a cover of the DK's "Buzzbomb from Pasadena." Jello Biafra... most incredible voice in punk rock ever!

Virta from Madrona Labs

<span class="skimlinks-unlinked">https: ... rta</span>

Interesting as well, but the demo's are terrible. "Daisy, daisy..." wtf is that? For $89 I expect better demo songs, lol!

[Chandlerhimself]

Grallion is really cool for this type of thing too. It has the usual autotune fx, but also things like ring modulation and pitch shifting. You can do some cool things with it.

[Ploki]

Interesting as well, but the demo's are terrible. "Daisy, daisy..." wtf is that? For $89 I expect better demo songs, lol!

Well, it's a nod to the first fully synthesized singing (with the method of formant synthesis on a computer, in the 60s), a monumental moment in electronic and computer music history.
It's also the song that HAL sings in odyssey 2001 when he's dying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41U78QP8nBk

So the demo is actually pretty good... if you know some history.
Check out Ircam Trax though, it can do a lot.
And maybe you oughta be a little bit more specific what do you mean with mangling.

The ones mentioned are vocoders , mangling isn't their forte. You need to look at mangling vsts for that like sugar bytes, stutter edit etc or get into resampling and slicing. I dont why people here have recommended vocoders.

All you need is a good stutter effect or a sampler and modulate a pitch shifter/formant effect like little alter boy.

Only one one of those i mentioned was partially vocoder (izotope vocal synth). And I would've suggested iZotope Stutter Edit or Illformed Glitch2, but those aren't really vocal oriented but general glitch effects, and "mangling" can mean a lot of things.