Waves released Vocal Bender

[Cancel Culture Club]

Real-Time Voice Manipulation

Manipulate your vocals in real time for the most popular sounds in hip hop, pop, R&B and electronic genres. With zero latency and two simple pitch and formant controls, you can easily track, mix and perform hit-sounding vocals instantly.

Vocal Bender is the fastest and simplest way to getting “that sound.” Yes, you know the sound. Travis Scott’s deep-voiced ad-libs. Billie Eilish’s other-worldly vocal doubles. Frank Ocean’s pitch- and formant-shifted lead vocals. The high-pitched vocal topline in every EDM drop. Vocal Bender will quickly twist your vocals for the sounds of modern pop, hip hop, R&B, electronic and many other genres.

Real-Time Vocals

Vocal Bender works in real time, with zero latency. We made this tool for musicians and producers to get your ideas down quickly; there’s simply no time to waste when working creatively. Vocal Bender allows you to track through the plugin, so you can hear the effect on your voice in real time.

You can even use Vocal Bender live on stage for performances. Pull it up on your live DAW session and manipulate your concert vocal sound, without latency, as subtly or extremely as you’d like.

Two Knob Solution


We created Vocal Bender to get you results, fast. There’s no routing, tweaking, chopping or complicating required. Simply get your hands on the two knobs, PITCH and FORMANT, and you’ll have hit-sounding vocals in seconds.

Don’t be mistaken, Vocal Bender is not a one-trick pony. With these two controls, and the under-the-hood modulation features, the vocal FX palette you can create is practically limitless. The plugin also has a ‘flatten’ feature to lock into a single pitch and sound robotic.

Make your vocals move between genders, change age, sound miniature or appear gigantic. On the subtle side, simply add soft harmonies, vibrato and vocal doubling for thickness.

Modulate for Signature Vocals

Open up Vocal Bender’s trunk to access musical modulation features. With a few clicks you’ll add vibrato, pitch drops, sequenced pitching, and more endless possibilities to the two knobs. These will bring a musicality and movement to your sound, and help you differentiate your style. Start bending your vocals.

LessReal-time monophonic voice manipulation plugin
Easy vocal pitch shifting and formant control
Zero latency for studio recording and live performance
The most popular vocal sounds in hip hop, pop, EDM, R&B
LFO, SEQ, Amplitude and Pitch modulators for deeper musical effects: Vibrato, pitch drops, sequenced pitching, more
‘Flatten’ feature for robotic vocals
Mix knob for blending harmonies and doubles on inserts

I'm not sure I like the new GUI, kind of needs a touch of classic...

[Burillo]

i hope it's at least properly resizeable.

[frizzbee]

first thought it's little alterboy but costs more. but the the modulation could be interesting, though i have not felt the need for it whenever i do such stuff with vocals...

[Cancel Culture Club]

i hope it's at least properly resizeable.

I think that would take a recoding of several hundred plugins, but I'm sure it's in the works.
That's the thing with software companies, they have the ability to string along their updates and upgrades, no one is immune.

[Cancel Culture Club]

first thought it's little alterboy but costs more. but the the modulation could be interesting, though i have not felt the need for it whenever i do such stuff with vocals...

Exactly, first thought I had was little alter boy. But that flatten, in key, looks interesting.

[Tj Shredder]

I wonder how they define zero latency. The DAW alone will introduce latency already... I don’t know of any pitch shifting technique that would allow zero latency... Technically at least one cycle in its frequency range would be necessary... (Heisenberg I hear you callin’...)
But anybody who knows better could explain the DSP principles behind a zero latency pitch shift. Maybe its a marketing principle though...

[briefcasemanx]

Why would one cycle delay be necessary?

[COCPORN]

I wonder how they define zero latency.

They probably define it as in the plugin introduces no more latency in the processing chain.

See this screenshot for PDC comparison with Little Alterboy.

[Ah_Dziz]

Why would one cycle delay be necessary?

Read up on different analysis methods. They exhibit a definite uncertainty between time localization and and frequency resolution. Even fast, variable window analysis methods will need a full cycle to resolve the pitch of a signal. This will have (guessing based on other methods) a variable but very small latency depending on the fundamental frequency of the input. That's about as good as you can wish for unless you tell the plugin what pitches to expect.

[briefcasemanx]

Why would one cycle delay be necessary?

Read up on different analysis methods. They exhibit a definite uncertainty between time localization and and frequency resolution. Even fast, variable window analysis methods will need a full cycle to resolve the pitch of a signal. This will have (guessing based on other methods) a variable but very small latency depending on the fundamental frequency of the input. That's about as good as you can wish for unless you tell the plugin what pitches to expect.

I'm not well versed enough to fully understand everything you just said. I'm not sure why you'd need to know the fundamental frequency or do any analysis of the signal. You can't just take the audio stream and pitch everything in it up or down regardless of frequency content within the stream?

I definitely remember using pitch and formant shifting plugins way way back from companies/devrlopers that I'm reasonably certain didn't have any pitch detecting algorithms is n their arsenal. Like way back when pitch detecting wasn't really a thing.

[Tj Shredder]

I wonder how they define zero latency.

They probably define it as in the plugin introduces no more latency in the processing chain.

See this screenshot for PDC comparison with Little Alterboy.

Yes that makes sense, one processing block is the minimum. I guess you get artifacts if its very low... Anyway I have enough Waves...

[rollasoc]

I wonder how they define zero latency. The DAW alone will introduce latency already... I don’t know of any pitch shifting technique that would allow zero latency... Technically at least one cycle in its frequency range would be necessary... (Heisenberg I hear you callin’...)
But anybody who knows better could explain the DSP principles behind a zero latency pitch shift. Maybe its a marketing principle though...

Kilohearts George, demo'd a shimmer reverb in Snapheap on Youtube the other. I copied how he did it and though I loved the sound, was a little disappointed by the 120ms latency, due to stacking pitchshifters. So I couldn't use it whilst tracking. So I mentioned it to him (saying this plugin has 0 latency) and he sent me a 0 latency version of the shimmer patch. Apparently, there is a new(ish) drop down on the Kilohearts pitchshifter that deals with delay compensation. Now if only they could do a formant side of this plugin. I could re-create it in snap heap. (The Kilohearts formant filter, is more vowel orientated).

[Ah_Dziz]

Why would one cycle delay be necessary?

Read up on different analysis methods. They exhibit a definite uncertainty between time localization and and frequency resolution. Even fast, variable window analysis methods will need a full cycle to resolve the pitch of a signal. This will have (guessing based on other methods) a variable but very small latency depending on the fundamental frequency of the input. That's about as good as you can wish for unless you tell the plugin what pitches to expect.

I'm not well versed enough to fully understand everything you just said. I'm not sure why you'd need to know the fundamental frequency or do any analysis of the signal. You can't just take the audio stream and pitch everything in it up or down regardless of frequency content within the stream?

I definitely remember using pitch and formant shifting plugins way way back from companies/devrlopers that I'm reasonably certain didn't have any pitch detecting algorithms is n their arsenal. Like way back when pitch detecting wasn't really a thing.

Pitch detection is usually a part of a "clean" pitch shift. Ideally you want to be shifting "grains" or whatever terminology/ method at the frequency of the fundamental or some multiple of it. Maybe you've played with simple granular pitch shifters and noticed that with small grain sizes or weird widowing, you get a pile of AM type artifacts. With the window size set high enough these go away but then lead to a "stuttering" sound like old hardware samplers' time stretching algorithms. The better you can match these, the smoother you can make your output. Many things use an envelope follower to track the input so high frequency transients shrink the window and sustained bits use a longer window.
With sample/ audio playback the sample can be analysed on loading and then played back optimally. On a realtime signal you still want to collect enough data to have your window or buffer at the optimal size. This is one reason why most real-time/ almost real-time shifters or tuners want you to pick the pitch range of your input. It keeps them from looking outside of the most meaningful values of input and wasting time/ processing.
If you do some reading on fft and wavelet transformation as well as some adaptive granular stuff it becomes clear how analysis leads to a smooth processing of a signal.
Anyway at a minimum a "vocal shifter" is going to be looking only in the range of fundamental frequencies that can be achieved with the human voice and setting the buffer to either a sliding scale within that range or maybe the lowest expected range at all times.

JJ

[Aloysius]

not too interested.

[SeeingInMidi]

Prefer the sound of this over alterboy. Way less grainy and the added modulation options are a nice touch.