A tuner, voice harmonizer, and vocal effects plug-in all in one.
The Mu Voice plug-in from Mu Technologies tunes your vocal recordings, applies special effects, and adds natural-sounding harmonies to your tracks when you're mixing. The proprietary spectral analysis and synthesis techniques of Mu Technologies provide a unique vocal processing tool for your recording studio. An internal delay of only 5.8ms makes Mu Voice an ideal vocal processor to perform live on stage.
Intelligent Harmonizing
Mu Voice has an intelligent harmonizer that takes the musical context of a piece into account, such as chord and scale information. A 4-track mixer allows you to configure the voicing (1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th voice) and octave for each channel.
Scale/Chord Selection
The chord panel offers a straightforward interface to select chords. When a given key signature is selected, the diatonic series of chords is displayed. By clicking the chords and modifiers, a chord is selected for harmonization.
Chord Scheme Editing
Chords can be added to a scheme by pressing the Insert button or double clicking them. By clicking an item in the scheme one can navigate through a chord scheme.
Mixer
The mixer combines all four tracks and allows you to mute certain channels with the M-button. The first channel can be put in bypass (via the B-button). A pitch shift slider adds an extra interval to the channel. The range of the shift slider is expressed in half tones which can be quantized by pressing the Q-button.
Tuner
Mu Voice comes with a built-in tuner that has a parametric impact (0: no impact, 1: full impact). The tuner has two modes:
•Chromatic - tune to the closest half note.
•Scale - tune to the closest note in the current scale.
Channel FX:
In addition to the voicing configurator, gain control, and pitch shifter, each track has an additional set of FX:
•Pan: To obtain a realistic spatial positioning, the panner uses interaural delays and an interaural gains that are based on psychoacoustic measurements. The panning parameter corresponds with the angle relative to the listeners nose.
•Humanizing: When the pitches of the harmonies are coupled too tight, they might interfere and be perceived as a single distorted voice. The humanization parameter solves this problem by adding very slight random pitch variations and an additional delay.
•Formants: The formants determine the timbre, or color, of the voice. When the pitch of the voice is altered, the formants are maintained. One can disable the formant correction by pressing the green button next to the slider. The formant slider controls a linear scaling of the formants and alters the color of the voice. By shifting the pitch up and scaling the formants, the voice of a woman can be changed to the voice of a young girl.
•Filters: Mu Voice offers a number of filter presets—high-pass, band-pass, comb-filters, notch filters, and more.
•Harmonic EQ-ing: The proprietary spectral analysis technique on which Mu Voice is based allows you to control the amplitude of each harmonic in the sound. A number of presets are provided that illustrate this unique feature.
Preset Management:
To keep the large number of control parameters manageable, all parameters that are not related to the chord scheme can be saved in presets. By selecting a preset, configuring the parameters and pressing the Save button, the preset is stored. When a preset is selected and the Apply button is pressed, the preset is loaded. Presets can also be added to the chord scheme by pressing the Insert button.
Full Automation
The progression of chords and presets can be fully automated in two steps:
Write Mode
The plug-in is put in write-mode by pressing the [W]-button above the chord scheme. When you select a starting point and press the right arrow on your keyboard, you will move to the next position is the scheme while the timing of this event is recorded.
Read Mode:
The plug-in is put in read-mode by pressing the [R]-button above the chord scheme. The plug-in will synchronize itself to the host time so that it becomes fully automated.
MIDI Controls
(Since version 1.2.0—free update for licensed customers) The MIDI enabled version gives you full control from a keyboard, making it an excellent tool to perform live. Use it from a real-time host like Ableton Live, Apple MainStage, etc. Key features include a state-of-art chord recognition system to control the scale and chord over time, preset selection, and chord scheme navigation. And there's no need to worry if your keyboard only has 48 keys, the plug-in can be configured for any keyboard.
XML based file exchange
The plug-in state, chord scheme, and presets can all be saved in XML. This makes the configuration of your plug-in readable, editable, and portable over all platforms.
