Of all the ways that AI is going to affect the music production process, its ability to create ‘fake’ vocals is currently the most controversial. Artists don’t like the idea of their voices being copied, and we sense that most fans want to believe that what they’re listening to is the singing of an actual person (albeit one whose voice has probably been pitch-corrected and heavily processed).
None of which has deterred Sonarworks from creating SoundID VoiceAI, which is billed as “the first AI voice changer plugin for your DAW”.
This isn’t some upstart audio software company - Sonarworks is already known for its speaker and headphone calibration products. VoiceAI is something very different, though: it comes with 23 “highly realistic” singing voices, and 21 instrument models so that you can turn your humming or beatboxing into something more musical (a guitar, violin or drums, for example).
And then there’s the fact that it works as a plugin, which adds an extra level of convenience. The workflow requires you to load VoiceAI onto your vocal track and then play it back so that it can be captured - it’s then sent up to the cloud to be processed as required.
It’s worth noting that VoiceAI won’t fix out-of-tune singing - all it does is change the sound of the voice. The plugin itself is free, but you have to buy tokens to process audio. €20 gets you 72,000 tokens, which equates to 120 minutes of processing time; 180,000 tokens (300 minutes) costs €40; and for €70 you can purchase 360,000 tokens (600 minutes).
If you want to hear the results for yourself you can sign up for a free trial, which currently comes with 36,000 tokens that have to be used within seven days. This offer applies until 21 May, after which the free trial will come with 9,000 tokens.
VoiceAI runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats. Find out more on the Sonarworks website.
