GEAR REVIEW
SONARWORKS SOUNDID VOICE AI TRANSFORMER PLUG-IN | Michael Hodge
KEY FEATURES
• 28 studio-grade Voice Models
• 22 Creative Instrument Models
• Works as a plug-in in Most DAWs
• Pay-As-You-Go Cloud Processing
• Unlimited Local Processing
• Voice to Instrument Feature
Sonarworks makes one of the most popular calibration software systems, SoundID Reference. It uses a calibration mic with proprietary software to transform your room’ s monitoring into an accurate audio representation. It calibrates your studio monitors to account for the nuances and imperfections of your room. SoundID VoiceAI takes your vocal performance and elegantly transforms any voice into a studio-grade singer’ s voice or even an instrument.
OUT OF THE BOX: SoundID VoiceAI is a download with three options: a 7-day free trial demo, a standalone with unlimited local processing, or a Pay-As- You-Go Cloud processing plan. There are many AI singers, including female vocalists, ethnic vocalists, and even children. Each voice has a distinctive sound and can be transposed or even used for a monologue. VoiceAI is compatible with AU, AAX, or VST3 plug-in formats. It’ s available on macOS: 11 Big Sur, 12 Monterey, 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, 15 Sequoia, and Windows 10 and 11. f you are using the Perpetual license, you will need 4 GB of RAM and 4 GB of memory to download all the available presets.
IN USE: I made an account and downloaded the Perpetual version on a Mac Studio computer to get started. You can also get a free trial
and buy tokens for online cloud processing. The best thing about this pay-as-you-go plan is that you don’ t rely on your computer to process the track. All the processing is in the cloud. SoundID VoiceAI comes with twentyeight voices, thirteen female and fifteen male. They have different vibes, accents, and ranges: young, vibey pop voices, Children, and even older adults. I pulled up a song I worked on in Pro Tools a while back to see how it works and sounds.
The recorded female vocal was already outstanding, so I copied the first verse onto its own track and loaded the plug-in. There is a preview button for each vocalist singing,“ This is my voice.” Here, you can quickly decide who might be right for the part. I chose the VoiceAI vocalist, Mia, for this song. Each singer has a short description next to their name. For example, Mia’ s description is Female, Adult, Bright, Clear, Airy, Head voice, Best input pitch G # 4. I selected the section, hit the Capture button, and then hit Play in the DAW. It captures in real-time. Next, I clicked the process button and replayed the section with the new voice. It sounded terrific. As a recording engineer, I can easily hear the difference. Yet when I played it for some music lovers, they couldn’ t tell the difference between who was the original and the VoiceAI. Some voices sound a little more robotic, like too much Autotune. It ultimately sounds like modern pop music when mixed in a track with processing. It’ s a very modern pop radio vibe.
UNISON MODE: SoundID VoiceAI has recently added Unison mode. It’ s only included in the perpetual license. Here, you can take your lead vocal and add multiple singers to layer backgrounds in unison. It sounds great. You can also add an octave up or down via the transpose feature. Unison Mode adds two offline controls, Transpose and Pitch Variation. There are also real-time controls, such as Timing variations and Width. Timing makes
118 May 2025 Subscribe for Free...