VirSyn have unveiled Cantor "The Vocal Machine" at Musikmesse in Frankfurt.

Cantor is a sophisticated real-time vocal synthesis instrument that allows you to enter your lyrics in plain english and then "sing" them instantly by playing the melody on your MIDI keyboard. Realistic expression can be added with real-time parameters controlling vibrato rate and depth and you can change the character of the singing voice from female to male.

Cantor also goes beyond creating realistic "human" singers as many parameters have no relation to the human voice, for example "Metallize" apparently turns your virtual singer into a singing Gong!

Cantor's voice editor allows you to edit the character of your virtual singer by defining the base spectrum for vowels and consonants. The Phoneme editor gives you full access to the atoms of the vocal synthesis engine where you can define the formant structure and the noise characteristic of each phoneme used by the vocal engine.

Features:

• 8 part vocal synthesis engine:
  • Plays lyrics in real-time.
  • English phoneme dictionary.
  • No samples used.
  • Score editor.
  • Voice editor.
  • Phoneme editor.
• Real-time editing:
  • Brightness.
  • Humanize.
  • Metallize.
  • Gender factor.
  • Vibrato.
  • Breath noise.
• System requirements:
  • Mac G4 400MHz+ or P3/Athlon 600MHz+.
  • 256MB RAM.
  • Mac OS X or Win XP.
• Microtuning
  • Scala compatible microtuning.

Cantor is scheduled for release in May 2004 and will be available for Windows and Mac OS X in stand alone, ReWire, VST, AU and RTAS formats.