There´s not much to say about Sybil other than that it works extremely well.Īntares clearly has some extremely clever technology invested in the Avox package, but from a user´s perspective, this isn´t really the point. This is a de-esser - a tool to remove explosive sibilance (eg, ‘s´ and ‘t´ sounds) from vocal recordings. It´s great to have an easy-to-use compressor, but it´s not so great when you feel that you can´t quite trust what it´s doing.įinally, there is Sybil. You wouldn´t want Punch as your only vocal compressor though, and sometimes it seems to do some slightly odd things (such as slowly fading down the vocal over the course of each lyrical phrase, or snatching the vocal level sluggishly as if the attack time is set too slow). It certainly adds a lot of impact to vocals, and is ideal for creating that up-front, ‘in ya face´ vocal sound that´s currently so popular. In most cases, Punch works extremely well and is a joy to use. This is a vocal compressor with a minimal number of controls. You can get subjectively similar results - but with much better sound quality - if you use good old-fashioned modulated delay-based techniques. Worse still, because the technology degrades vocal quality, when you double-up a lead vocal you create the illusion of poor sound quality on the original master vocal. The human ear is not that easily fooled, so you can immediately tell that this is just one single voice with some kind of digital effect on it. Unfortunately, this approach doesn´t actually work very well. By using a combination of pitch detection and modification, coupled with random timing and a degree of stereo spread, the idea is that the illusion of multiple voices can be created. With some types of songs, this won´t be a problem - especially if you want to use Throat as a gimmick - but you really wouldn´t want to use this plug-in as a subtle correction tool on a highly-exposed vocal performance.Īvox´s Duo and Choir plug-ins enable you to thicken-up vocal parts by creating extra unison voices (there´s no harmony generation).
It should be said that no matter how subtly you use the settings in Throat, the sonic quality of the vocal is badly affected. While such settings can certainly mangle a voice beyond recognition, it´s a great effect to try on other instruments, too.
The graphical editing controls, for example, let you stretch the throat model into interesting - and physically impossible - new shapes. Other controls in Throat can affect the sound in dramatic ways.