Introduction

Little AlterBoy is a voice manipulation tool plugin developed by Soundtoys. It offers powerful vocal processing and pitch shifting effects to alter vocal tracks in creative ways.

With Little AlterBoy, users can transform vocals by adjusting pitch, applying robotic effects, using hardtune for aggressive autotuning, adding vocal doubling, and more. The plugin aims to provide producers, sound designers, and audio engineers with new ways to manipulate and mangle vocals within their projects.

Some of the key features of Little AlterBoy include:

• Independent control over pitch and formant shifting
• Natural sounding pitch changes that retain clarity
• HardTune mode for aggressive T-Pain style autotuning
• Robot mode for vocoder-style effects
• Voice doubling to fatten up vocals
• Built-in modulation effects like vibrato, tremolo and wah
• Intuitive workflow and interface

Whether you want subtle pitch corrections or radical voice mutations, Little AlterBoy offers the tools to creatively alter vocal tracks and take them into unnatural territory. Its high-quality sound engine ensures professional results. With creative use of the plugin, producers can transform vocals to suit any style or genre.

Interface and Controls

Little AlterBoy features a clean and intuitive interface divided into several sections that allow for precise control over the vocal processing and effects.

The main section sits in the center and includes knobs for Tone/Pitch and Formant. These allow you to shift the pitch up or down and alter the formant in real-time to dramatically change the tone and quality of the voice. Independent control over the pitch and formant allows for creative voice manipulation effects.

Below this are the Modulation controls including Rate, Depth, and WaveShape knobs to add vibrato, tremolo and other modulation effects. You can create anything from subtle warbling to intense robotic voices.

On the right side is the Output section with controls for Dry/Wet mix, stereo Width, and Volume. This allows you to blend the processed vocal with the original signal and apply stereo enhancing effects.

At the top is a display showing the pitch shift amount and input/output levels. The preset browser allows you to quickly select from over 100 expertly crafted presets as a starting point or inspiration for your own vocal processing designs.

Overall, the well-organized interface makes it intuitively easy to achieve precise manipulations and transformations on mono vocal tracks. The hands-on control paired with visual displays give you creative flexibility when mangling and morphing voices in your mixes.

Sound Engine

Little AlterBoy uses advanced formant shifting technology to manipulate voice in real-time. Formants are the peaks of energy that give a timbre its characteristic sound, especially for vocals. By independently manipulating the first and second formant, Little AlterBoy allows you to subtly change or drastically alter vocal tone and pitch. This goes beyond just pitch shifting, as it modifies the actual vowel sounds in a voice.

The formant shifting algorithm was designed by SoundToys to preserve the naturalness and quality of the source audio, even when making extreme vocal transformations. Many of the unique vocal effects in Little AlterBoy come from manipulating both the first and second formant together. For example, you can turn a male voice into a convincing female voice by raising both formants. Or you can create a robot voice by lowering the first formant only. The ability to tune each formant independently gives huge flexibility for voice modulation effects.

Under the hood, Little AlterBoy is using complex digital signal processing. But the intuitive and visual interface makes it easy for anyone to use. You don’t need to understand the technical details to get great sounding vocal effects. The formant shifting engine is optimized to work in real-time, so you can tweak knobs and hear results instantly. Whether you want subtle retuning or radical voice mutations, the technology inside Little AlterBoy makes it possible.

Presets

Little AlterBoy comes with a variety of presets to get you started. Here are some of the main types:

• Vocal transformations: These presets transform vocals in creative ways. There are presets like Monster Vox, Growl Vox, Robot Vox, and Megaphone that give vocals otherworldly effects.
• Pitch shifting: Presets like Drop Octave, +4 Semitones, and -7 Semitones shift the pitch up or down for thickening vocals or creating harmonies. The pitch can be shifted by semitone intervals up to +/-12 semitones.
• Tone shifting: Presets like Brighten Vox, Darken Vox, Telephone Vox, and Radio Vox shift the tonal quality for unique effects.
• Modulation: The modulation category has presets like Vibrato, Rotating Vibrato, and Tremolo that add wavering effects.
• Talkbox/Vocoder: Presets like Talkbox Synth, Vocoder Bass, and Robo-talkbox emulate classic talkbox and vocoder effects.
• Ambience: Effects like Cathedral, Stadium Hall, and Long Hall add spacious reverbs.

The presets make it easy to quickly apply effects to vocals and are a jumping off point for further customization. Little AlterBoy has over 30 presets covering a wide range of voice manipulation effects.

Tone/Pitch Settings

Little AlterBoy gives you extensive control over tone and pitch with independent settings for both. This allows you to shift the timbre up or down while keeping the pitch consistent, or vice versa.

The Tone knob adjusts the timbre from brighter to darker. Turning it clockwise makes the sound brighter and more crisp, while turning it counterclockwise makes it darker and warmer. This can dramatically change the character of a vocal while retaining intelligibility.

The Pitch knob shifts the entire signal up or down by up to one octave in either direction. You can use this creatively for special effects or correctively to fix tuning issues. The pitch tracking is excellent and natural-sounding.

One of the plugin’s signature features is Formant Shift. This morphs the formant peaks of the sound to alter timbre and gender characteristics while keeping the pitch consistent. Turn it up to transform a male voice into female, or down to do the opposite. Extreme settings can generate robot voices.

You can also pitch-correct audio in real-time with Adjust Pitch and Throat Length sliders. The former snaps pitches to the nearest semitone for quantized correction, while the latter simulates longer or shorter vocal tracts.

Overall, Little AlterBoy provides an intuitive toolbox for dramatic yet natural tone and pitch manipulation on vocals and other solo instruments. The precise controls breathe new life into sounds.

Formant Settings

Formants are the resonant frequencies of our vocal tract that give the human voice its characteristic tonal quality. AlterBoy provides intuitive controls for manipulating formants to transform the timbre of a monophonic vocal input source. The Formant section has two main parameters:

Shift Knob – Alters the center frequencies of the formants globally. Turning the knob clockwise shifts the formants higher, while turning it counterclockwise shifts them lower. This effectively “shrinks” or “stretches” the vocal tract shape to dramatically alter the tonal quality. For example, shifting up adds a childlike character, while shifting down adds a deep giant-like character.

Smooth Knob – Adjusts the rate of formant change from the Shift parameter. Higher values smooth the formant shifts for more gradual transformation, while lower values introduce rapid formant changes for more dramatic effects. This allows you to control how responsive the formant shifts are to change the naturalness of the effect.

Together, the Shift and Smooth controls provide intuitive options for manipulating the resonant peaks that shape vowel sounds. Whether you want subtle tone-shaping or radical vocal mutations, AlterBoy gives you the powerful formant tools to craft the voice you desire. The simple interface belies the depth of sound design possibilities.

Modulation Effects

Little AlterBoy includes several built-in modulation effects like vibrato, tremolo, and ring modulation to dramatically alter the tone and texture of vocals or other monophonic sources.

The Vibrato section features controls for the rate, depth, and onset (how abruptly the vibrato kicks in). This allows for everything from subtle pitch wavering to more dramatic warbling effects. The tremolo effect creates rhythmic amplitude modulation, with rate and depth controls.

One of the more unique effects is ring modulation, which uses two oscillators to create metallic, discordant tones. The frequency and modulation controls give you a vast range of ring mod possibilities. You can also change the oscillator waveform between sine, triangle, saw, and square shapes for distinctly different flavors of ring mod.

The modulation effects breathe new life into vocals and instruments, opening up creative ways to manipulate sound. Whether you want to add a hint of movement or completely transform the timbre, Little AlterBoy gives you the tools. The built-in effects are high quality and greatly expand the creative potential beyond simply pitch and formant adjustments.

Audio Quality

Little AlterBoy delivers high-quality audio manipulation with pristine sound. The plugin uses 32-bit floating point precision for all of its real-time digital signal processing, ensuring the best possible audio quality.

When manipulating the tone and pitch, there is no unwanted distortion or artifacts. The formant shifting algorithms retain clarity and intelligibility. Even when applying more extreme settings, the audio retains a natural, high-fidelity sound.

Comparing the processed audio to the unprocessed vocal track reveals no loss of quality or introduction of audible noise. The mixes sound clean and smooth across the frequency spectrum. Little AlterBoy enables creative sound design while maintaining excellent transparency.

The modulation effects like vibrato and tremolo are also crisp and artifact-free. The LFOs ensure smooth, undistorted modulation effects. At no point does Little AlterBoy degrade the integrity of the original audio source.

From subtle pitch correction and refinement, to radical manipulation effects, Little AlterBoy delivers professional results. It’s reliable for improving vocals in the mix and opening up creative possibilities through real-time sound design. For live performers, it provides an indispensable tool for reshaping vocals dynamically. The pristine sonic quality makes Little AlterBoy a versatile production workhorse.

Ease of Use

Little AlterBoy is designed to be user-friendly for both beginners and advanced users. The simple and intuitive interface allows you to quickly achieve convincing vocal manipulation effects without getting lost in complex parameters.

Despite its depth of controls, the plugin doesn’t overwhelm the user. The most important parameters like Pitch, Formant, and Tone are right at the top level, while additional effects and modulation options are tucked away under expandable sections. This cleanly separates the core tone-shaping tools from more advanced features.

Navigating between the main pages for Pitch, Formant, and Mod FX is seamless, with each page focused on its own function. Within sections, controls are thoughtfully grouped and labeled for clarity. Hovering over a control also brings up a helpful tooltip explaining its function.

Whether you just want to quickly shift a voice up or down, or dive into detailed vocal sound design, Little AlterBoy makes the process intuitive. Both pros and amateurs will appreciate how easy it is to use this plugin to get polished, professional-sounding vocal effects.

Conclusion

Little AlterBoy is an impressive vocal effect plugin that gives you a ton of control to manipulate and transform monophonic vocals. The interface is clean and intuitive, with easy to use controls for pitch, tone, and formant shifting. There’s also a flexible LFO section for creative modulation effects.

Some of the highlights are:

• Intuitive and easy to use interface
• Powerful pitch shifter that can go from subtle tuning to full-on gender bending
• Formant shifting to maintain clarity when pitch shifting
• Creative modulation and vibrato effects
• Great sounding presets to get inspired
• Light on CPU for real-time pitch and formant shifting

The main limitations are:

• Monophonic input only
• Can’t load in your own wavetables
• Only offers pitch/formant shifting on a single track

Overall, Little AlterBoy is an extremely versatile vocal processing plugin that delivers an array of creative effects for monophonic vocals. The tone/pitch shifting and formant controls give you a lot of control to manipulate vocals and design unique vocal sounds. If you need high-quality pitch shifting and vocal effects for monophonic vocals, Little AlterBoy is easy to recommend.