Baby Audio Humanoid: A Vocal Manipulation Powerhouse

Humanoid combines pitch correction, vocoder technology, and wavetable synthesis to transform voices from subtle enhancements to radical robotic transformations.

Baby Audio, known for innovative plugins like Atoms and Spaced Out, has unveiled Humanoid – a powerful new vocal resynthesis and manipulation tool. This plugin goes far beyond traditional pitch correction, offering extreme hard tuning and radical voice transformation capabilities. With its combination of tuner, vocoder, and wavetable synthesis, Humanoid can turn any vocal into a robotic voice.

As with previous Baby Audio releases, Humanoid boasts a user-friendly interface divided into several key sections:

Pitch Panel

Humanoid’s Pitch panel contains 3 Modes:

1. Scale: In this mode, you can choose any Key or Scale and it will automatically tune the vocals accordingly.
2. Note: Set the notes and Humanoid will play manually using the keyboard.
3. MID: In this mode, you can control Humanoid by using a MIDI controller or MIDI track.

Key Selector: This feature is only available in the scale mode. It includes all 12 musical notes with major, natural minor, and chromatic scale modes. You can select any scale to tune the vocals.

Quantize: Ensure that the notes sustain for a longer period before remapping to the target pitch. Also, adjust the strength with which incoming audio is corrected to the target pitch. It includes some Calibration options such as Attack, Hold, and Polarity.

Robotify: By using this option you can increase the robot effect and turn the natural voice into a mysterious unnatural vocal sound. Its calibration options including Denoise, Metallic, Flatten & Emphasis help to control the amount of effect you want. You can find these options on the right side of the Pitch panel.

Formant: The last option on the Pitch Panel is Formant. It adjusts the resonant frequencies of the voice up or down to simulate different vocal tract shapes. The formant calibration includes a bandwidth option to adjust the frequency range.

Synthesize Panel

Synthesize is the main control panel of Humanoid. As you can see above, it contains a Waveform display where you can view the synthesized wave and pitch-corrected harmonics. You can also select the stock waveforms or import your audio file. Humanoid accepts any audio file but only creates wavetables of a single cycle. For best results, import a single-cycle audio file. Longer files will be automatically trimmed. Other than that, it also contains options such as Shape, Stretch & etc.

Shape: Change or bend the wave shape accordingly, you can also experiment with its calibrations including two options: Odd – change the warp points of odd harmonics & Even – change the warp points of even harmonics.

Stretch: Stretch the waveform from forward and backward which provides a modulating effect.

Transform: It works as a morph control where the pitch corrected voice gradually turns into synth waveform as it is increased. 

The other options include Note Shift and Octave, Which help to adjust the semitones and blend the octaves up and down. Down below the line can control the mix and Crossfade between pitch-corrected signal and synthesis, including note shift and octave voices.

Filter Panel

The Filter panel is divided into three parts consisting of the High pass filter, the Low pass filter, and the Mid Boost. The High pass filter or HPF and the low pass filter (LPF) include Frequency as well as resonance control, whereas the Mid band adjusts with Gain, Frequency, and Width (Q).

Utility Panel:

Utility Optimize the signal for the best performance from the tuning and resynthesis engines. Options and features of this panel are:

Range: The range increases the accuracy of pitch detection by selecting the incoming notes from both sides.

De-ess: A De-ess is used to decrease the sibilance on the vocals. It acts like a compressor that controls the harsh “S” sound. You can also explore its calibration option to adjust the attack and sensitivity.

Gate: It adds a threshold to minimize background noise and determines the minimum volume level that the incoming audio signal must reach before it is allowed to pass through. Any signal below this level will be muted. Its calibration option includes Attack, Hold, and Release

And lastly Smoothing helps reduce artifacts from abrupt note transitions and Sharpen adds a pre-EQ curve for a cleaner result.

Effects Panel

Effects consist of Widen which provides a chorus effect and according to Baby Audio, it is similar to the chorus found on BA-1. Warble adds an effect similar to vibrato that you can observe on the filter panel. You can also choose LFO mode for gentle vibrato or FM for growling audio rate modulation. The Buffer and Freeze options are synced with each other providing a glitch effect. This section of Humanoid is full of experiments and you can explore more by clicking on the small icon below every option.

One of Humanoid’s standout features is its extensive preset library, boasting over 180 factory presets and 64 wavetables crafted by renowned sound designers. These cover a wide range of applications, from drums and instruments to harmonies and experimental sounds.

Features and Uses

Humanoid’s flexibility shines through its diverse applications. For extreme vocal tuning, you can achieve an aggressive auto-tune effect by setting lower Robotify levels and keeping the Transform dial left-aligned, while fine-tuning the quantize control for faster pitch remapping. The plugin also doubles as a voice-controlled synthesizer by pushing the Transform dial fully right, effectively replacing the original vocal with pure synthesis.

Harmony generation can be quite easily done in MIDI mode, allowing for easy creation of vocal variations. For those seeking more experimental territory, the range tool opens up possibilities for unconventional sounds, which can be further enhanced with the widen effect for added chorus-like textures. Humanoid is pretty versatile in offering both subtle vocal enhancement and radical sound design.

Pricing & Availability

Baby Audio Humanoid is available now for an introductory price of $79 (regular price $129). It supports all major plugin formats (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) and is compatible with all major DAWs.

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