Does Vocal Bender have a floor and ceiling? Somethings not right

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1

I’m trying to use Vocal Bender to apply a chipmunk type effect to my live voice using FL Studio. I’ve got the pitch set to 12 and the Formant set pretty high. That’s it. I’m not looking for other random, crazy effects. My mix is set to 100% and Flatten is disabled. I meet or exceed all the system requirements.

The effect seems to work on most of my speech. But sometimes, when I first speak, the effect won’t kick in. I think it might be when my initial “word-sound”, as it forms, is maybe below a threshold? Like if I say “why”, the “wuh” sound is fairly low. Or when I simply laugh (like “ha ha ha”), the effect won’t kick in. So my performance is peppered with pops where my normal voice comes through… and if I laugh, all bets are off.

I think there might be floors and ceilings, because if I hum and go high enough, it seems to hit a ceiling and the effect stops working as well. Is there a way to adjust these cut off levels?

I know these types of tools often rely on performance, but keeping my voice in a mid, soft, range and never laughing is fairly restrictive.

Any ideas what’s going on here?

I know I can assign M1, M2, AM or PT to either Pitch or Formant (or Mix). But is there maybe a way to have the Formant effect go up when the pitch of my voice goes down maybe? By assigning PT to Formant maybe? I’m also trying to figure out how the Smooth, Offset and Level knobs work (and the other effects too, to be honest. Any guides?).

Also, I think if I don’t assign any of those to Pitch, Formant or Mix, they have zero effect, and the knob setting don’t matter, is that right?

Could it be fixed with the Amplitude’s Attack or Release functions assigned to Pitch or Formant?

Any help or direction would be appreciated, thanks!

2

Many voice manipulation plugins detect what’s called “voiced” and “unvoiced” sounds, basically consonant and vowel sounds. Pitch manipulation can often ignore the consonant sounds and repitch the vowels. This tends to make the pitch shifting sound more natural.

I’m not saying that’s what is happening in Vocal Bender, but it could be. Another thing to consider is perhaps you’ve accidentally written some automation that may be contributing.

What you can also try is compressing your vocal before passing it to Vocal Bender. That pay help alleviate the issues too.

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Thanks for the reply. I understand what you’re saying about the consonant vowel thing, but in these cases, it seems like if you’re initial sound is below a certain pitch (an undefined floor), the effect doesn’t trigger and it doesn’t apply the pitch correction to any of that word or phrase, even when the vowel pitch rises. It waits until the next group of sounds come after a pause. I wish I could adjust that floor or eliminate it altogether. I don’t know if the other tools inside Vocal Bender allow that. Some documentation on the M1, M2, AM and PT tools might be helpful.

And re: automation, I don’t even know how to do that, haha! I can open a new project, add a mic and then just add Vocal Bender and I have this same issue. I’m not doing any other processing.

I like your suggestion to try compressing my vocal before passing it to Vocal Bender. I’ll see if I can figure that out and post any updates… thanks for the suggestions to try!