Best Plugin for Live Vocal Harmonies

[organica23]

I'm looking for a good plugin to provide 4-part harmony vocals for my singing when I'm doing live sets. The idea being I sing the melody live, and the plugin replicates my voice in real time, at the pitches I'm playing live on the keyboard.

I have a TC-Helicon VoicePro box in my studio which makes a good job of this - but it's not something I can just sling in my backpack for live sets, so I'm looking for something similar in plugin form that I can run under Ableton ( or possibly Logic ).

The musical style is folk with electronics, so there is some leeway for it to sound processed / weird - but it would be nice to have at least one setting where it could sound realistic more than synthetic.

I just got an email that Eventide stuff is on a 75% reduction atm, so I'm seeing Octavox and the plugin of the H910 Harmonizer. What else should I be considering?

[Warped Effect]

I'm looking for a good plugin to provide 4-part harmony vocals for my singing when I'm doing live sets. The idea being I sing the melody live, and the plugin replicates my voice in real time, at the pitches I'm playing live on the keyboard.

I have a TC-Helicon VoicePro box in my studio which makes a good job of this - but it's not something I can just sling in my backpack for live sets, so I'm looking for something similar in plugin form that I can run under Ableton ( or possibly Logic ).

The musical style is folk with electronics, so there is some leeway for it to sound processed / weird - but it would be nice to have at least one setting where it could sound realistic more than synthetic.

I just got an email that Eventide stuff is on a 75% reduction atm, so I'm seeing Octavox and the plugin of the H910 Harmonizer. What else should I be considering?

You should hear what zplane reTune and iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer sounds like when they are chained together, it's the best Real-Time harmony effect that i have heard in the audio plugin world.

I chained together zplane reTune and iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer VST's to create the Real-Time harmony effect in the below audio clips, i figured it out back in 2016, because i wanted a good Real-Time harmony effect in VST so badly, because there was none.

You won't find a standalone audio plugin to do this harmony effect or any decent harmony effect in Real-Time, i have searched for years, and the reason it works so well with those 2 plugins chained together, is because zplane reTune uses Real-Time Polyphonic AutoTune, listen to the below audio clips.

if you don't like the sound of zplane reTune + iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer chained together, there is another MIDI to Voice Harmonizer VST called MIDI Choir.

zplane reTune + iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer (Set to use 2 Harmony Voices without MIDI)
https://vocaroo.com/gGAoyH6EPLl

zplane reTune + iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer (Making my voice sound like the MIDI notes from a "Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles" MIDI File) (MIDI to Voice Harmonizer)
https://vocaroo.com/19t0yFuvbyvC

MIDI Choir 3.1 (Making my voice sound like the MIDI notes from a "Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles" MIDI File) (MIDI to Voice Harmonizer)
https://vocaroo.com/14RSxEA0LjJ1

[organica23]

Thanks for the idea - I've been considering getting ReTune for a while - already have Zynaptiq Pitchmap and was wondering whether I might be able to do something with that...

Never actually occurred to me to chain two together - could you give me a little detail on how you're working that - which one is first in the audio chain, and which one is receiving the MIDI data?

[Warped Effect]

I was using Zynaptiq Pitchmap for years before zplane reTune got released, but then i stopped using it in 2016 when zplane reTune got released, because i started comparing their Polyphonic AutoTune and i noticed that Zynaptiq Pitchmap does some weird things when you change the key.

Zynaptiq Pitchmap is a weird Real-Time Polyphonic AutoTune plugin, because when you change the key on Zynaptiq Pitchmap, it over-exaggerates the pitch change like a pitch shifter and it makes your voice sound like a chipmunk voice or deep voice.

Here's an example that you can try on Zynaptiq Pitchmap, change PURIFY to 90% or 100% and change KEY TRANSFORM to Major F or Major G on a voice recording, and you will notice that the voice sounds like it has been pitch shifted and it sounds like a chipmunk voice or deep voice.

zplane reTune doesn't do a weird pitch shifting effect when you change the key, and zplane reTune is also better for creating custom scales.

Here's screenshots of the zplane reTune & iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer settings that i used for creating the "Real-Time Harmony Vocal Effect" in the audio clips.

The chain order is important, you need to have iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer at the top and zplane reTune at the bottom, because otherwise it will sound messed up.

I am using iZotope Nectar v2.04, it's the last version of iZotope Nectar 2 that got released, and i am using zplane reTune for receiving the MIDI data.

zplane reTune & iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer Chain Order
https://ibb.co/PrNr8hY

zplane reTune settings
https://ibb.co/3fDpQyg

iZotope Nectar 2 Harmony Pan & Gain settings
https://ibb.co/Jq9jL21

iZotope Nectar 2 Harmony Pitch & Delay settings
https://ibb.co/8xdSqty

iZotope Nectar 2 Harmony Range settings
https://ibb.co/dpZCsLG

[Boy Wonder]

This thread just gave me an idea. I wonder if I can use a 4-part harmonizer on a mono synth in Cubase to create a polyphonic 4-part patch in real time? I'll give it a shot now.

Update: It worked but it's very limited. At least the transpositions in Quadravox sound natural.

[organica23]

Here's screenshots of the zplane reTune & iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer settings that i used for creating the "Real-Time Harmony Vocal Effect" in the audio clips.

The chain order is important, you need to have iZotope Nectar 2 Harmonizer at the top and zplane reTune at the bottom, because otherwise it will sound messed up.

I am using iZotope Nectar v2.04, it's the last version of iZotope Nectar 2 that got released, and i am using zplane reTune for receiving the MIDI data.

That's great - thanks for taking the time to share.

[Warped Effect]

That's great - thanks for taking the time to share.

I am going to explain zplane reTunes settings and how to properly change key and scale, because it works differently than other AutoTune VST's and it might be confusing at first.

Screenshot of my zplane reTune settings for changing a song / voice into C Major: https://ibb.co/3fDpQyg

Don't use the Trans / Transpose arrow buttons for changing keys, because it sounds like a pitch shifter effect when you use them.

Here's the settings that i use:

Always set the Top Dropdown Menu to Chromatic.

Top Dropdown Menu: C chromatic <--- if you want to change the key, ONLY change the key on the "Top Dropdown Menu"

Bottom Dropdown Menu: C major <--- if you want to change the scale, ONLY change the scale on the "Bottom Dropdown Menu"

You can either use 0 ms or the default 46 ms for the Smoothing setting, it depends on which you prefer the sound of.

Sensitivity: 100%

Transients: 100%

Smoothing: 0 ms

Dry/Wet: 100%

Trans: 0.00 st

Pitch Correct: Full bar

[dionenoid]

Antares Harmony Engine maybe ? : https://www.antarestech.com/product/harmony-engine/

[dionenoid]

@warped effect : Why do you send me Private messages about this ?

The OP asked for options, let him decide what's best for him.

[Mister Natural]

There is also a new "Shifter" inside LIVE 11
I dunno if it's polyphonic tho - OP wants 4 voices . . .

[Andreya_Autumn]

I'm looking for a good plugin to provide 4-part harmony vocals for my singing when I'm doing live sets. The idea being I sing the melody live, and the plugin replicates my voice in real time, at the pitches I'm playing live on the keyboard.

I love this kind of thing. <3 There’s two methods to this, in my awareness.

The T.C. Helicon devices, and some plugins too, listen to a sidechain input (from a guitar or something) to figure out the key and chord at each given moment, and then generate parallell harmony against the main voice automatically based on that info.
The other method is vocoder-style. Think Imogen Heap/Jacob Collier. The harmonizer doesn’t know anything about chords or keys, it needs keyboard input/MIDI notes in order to do anything.

The automatically-generated approach can sometimes sound more natural in that the harmonies will slide between notes like your main voice, unlike the vocoder style harmonizers which typically switch instantly between notes.
On the other hand, the former style will harmonize very naively, simply parallelling the melody even when a real harmony singer would make a different musical choice. With the second method you can write harmonies with better voice leading.

You mention using Ableton Live, so I assume you are performing in sync with DAW timeline? If you are, either method can be hands-free. Just make clips with the audio chords or MIDI notes and send to the plugins. I don’t know if you care about that, but personally I like having my hands available to play something else while singing.



If you want the automatic style, you might consider this:
https://www.tc-helicon.com/product.html?modelCode=P0DDV
Not a plugin, I know, but you say you like the rackmount thing you have, and I'd guess this is pretty close? These seem to be marketed mostly to one-person-bands or duos in the country/singer-songwriter/folk genres, and for my personal tastes the demos all sound too processed for those styles. But for what you wanna do it may work great. There are some more expensive pedals too with compressors/EQ etc for the main voice, this harmonizer-only version is probably the cheapest.


I’ve a lot more experience with the MIDI vocoder method, and IMO the best-sounding one is Madrona Labs Virta: https://madronalabs.com/products/virta
It can do about a thousand other vocal FX tricks, but the 256-band vocoder is what you want for this purpose. It's straight up the best sounding harmonizer I've tried. Happy to share my preset if you want. Madrona Labs presets are plain text, so that's trivial.

BE ADVISED though that this one comes with some issues, couple small and one severe. From what you (OP) wrote I think none of these are going to affect you, but I’m putting them in anyway in case someone else takes interest.

1: Four voice polyphony max. An understandable choice since Virta is almost a decade old and back then, computers strong enough for more voices were not common. Nowadays that’s not the case, making this limitation a bit annoying. If you really need more you can use multiple instances of course.
2: In case you're on an M1 mac: There's no native support yet, and there likely won't be until the next Madrona product enters beta. It does run well under Rosetta tho. I haven't had any CPU issues really.
3: The worst one... In Reaper on MacOS, the 256-band vocoder in particular doesn't load correctly. Whenever I open a project, or load a preset, that has this mode in it, the plugin straight up doesn't work until I page through some other presets and back. It’s *verrry* frustrating... The owner and lead dev is aware of the issue, and says he’ll fix it, but again not until the next product hits beta. Kinda sad for me, since it leads me to not use Virta very much for now, even though I love it. Patience is a virtue…

In the meantime, I’ve been having good results with Izotope VocalSynth2.
This is the one from “Hide and Seek”. Has some really nice sounding vocoders, but if you’re looking for that harmonizer sound, the only one you need is Polyvox.
This one will do both the automatic style and the MIDI vocoder style, though I’ve never used the former personally so I can’t say how well it works. I got this on sale at some point for like 25 bucks, and at that price it feels very worth it. I’d say don’t pay full price for it, since those sales aren’t that uncommon. Also it pops up in the buy&sell forum here sometimes.

I tried Antares Harmony Engine too, but wasn't too impressed for the price of a licence (and am absolutely not gonna subscribe). I'm sure you can get it to sound as good as VocalSynth, but it seemed to require a lot more tweaking. YMMV

Good luck!