REAL-TIME VOICE CHANGER IN MAX/MSP
Shengwen Yang
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Rochester
ABSTRACT
This paper describes applications of pitch shifting in
real-time audio signals as developed for a voice changer.
The project in this paper explores pitch shifting, time
stretching and phase modulation of live signals. Several new
techniques, such as pitch shifting, vocoder and Doppler
effect, have been adopted and will be described.
Index Terms—Voice changing, pitch shifting, vocoder,
Doppler effect, delay window, fundamental frequency,
formant frequency, real-time, phasor, Max/MSP, C++
1. INTRODUCTION
Voice Changer is created to modify input voices in real-time
during a conversation, and it works on every platform. This
type of entertainment device has being amazingly popular
among young people recently. In order to modify, change
and disguise the input human voice in any circumstances by
using a microphone, and to add another dimension of
creativity with limitless options, voice changers work
behind the scenes intercepting audio from the microphone
before it goes to the applications, so there’s no need to
change any configurations or settings in other programs. It’s
become easier to simply run the program and start creating
voice distortions in minutes.
2. PITCH SHIFTING
Pitch shifters are included in most audio processors today,
and pitch shifting is provided based on the concepts of
increasing pitch and reducing durations, or reducing pitch
and increasing duration. At the far extremes of pitch shifting,
the resultant sound bears little resemblance to the original.
Usually there are two synthesis methods. One is based on a
bank of sine wave oscillators, and the other is based on an
inverse FFT. These techniques can also be used to transpose
an audio sample while holding speed or duration constant.
This may be accomplished by time stretching and then
resampling back to the original length. Alternatively, the
frequency of the sinusoids in a sinusoidal model may be
altered directly, and the signal might be reconstructed at the
appropriate time scale.
1
2.1. Frequency Shifting
A device raising or lowering the frequency of an input
signal is called frequency shifter, which uses a complex
amplitude modulation technique. Unlike the pitch shifter,
the frequency shifter does not preserve the harmonic
relationships between the various tones and harmonics in the
input signal. For this purpose, sounds processed by a
frequency shifter start to sound very unnatural with only a
small amount of shift. However, it is feasible to implement a
frequency shifter with all analog circuitry, which means that
frequency shifters were available as far back as 1950.
Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in
frequency shifters as effects, and currently models intended
for using with modular synthesizers have been produced.
2.2. Pitch Shifting
Pitch scaling or pitch shifting is the opposite to time
stretching, where the process of changing the pitch without
affecting the speed is used for audio data processing. Similar
methods can change speed, pitch, or both at the same time,
or in a time-varying way. These processes are used to match
the pitches and tempos of two pre-recorded clips for mixing
when the clips cannot be reperformed or resampled. For
instance, a drum track containing no pitched instruments
could be moderately resampled for tempo without adverse
effects, but a pitched track could not. They are also used to
generate an effect, such as increasing the range of an
instrument (like pitch shifting a guitar down an octave).
The pitch shifting technique mentioned in this paper is a
sound effects unit that raises or lowers the pitch of an audio
signal by a preset interval. For example, a pitch shifter set to
increase the pitch by a fourth will raise each note three
diatonic intervals above the notes actually played. Simple
pitch shifters raise or lower the pitch by one or two octaves,
while more sophisticated devices offer a range of interval
alterations.
3. VOCODER
Vocoder is a category of voice codec that analyzes and
synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data
compression, multiplexing, voice encryption, voice
transformation, etc.
The human voice consists of sounds created by the opening
and closing of the glottis by the vocal cords, which produces
a periodic waveform with many harmonics. This basic
sound is then filtered by the nose and throat (a complicated
resonant piping system) to produce differences in harmonic
content (formants) in a controlled way, generating a wide
variety of sounds used in speech and conversation. The
vocoder examines speech by measuring how its spectral
characteristics change over time. This results in a series of
signals representing these modified frequencies at any
particular time as the user speaks. In simple terms, the signal
is split into a large number of frequency bands (the larger
this number, the more accurate the analysis) and the level of
signal present at each frequency band gives the
instantaneous representation of the spectral energy content.
Therefore, the vocoder is dramatically reducing the amount
of information needed to store speech, from a complete
recording to a series of numbers. Since the vocoder process
sends only the parameters of the vocal model over the
communication link, instead of a point-by-point recreation
of the waveforms, the bandwidth required to transmit speech
can be reduced significantly.
4. PHASOR
In physics and engineering, a phasor (a portmanteau of
phase vector), is a complex number representing a
sinusoidal function whose amplitude (A), angular frequency
(ω), and initial phase (θ) are time-invariant. It is related to a
more general concept called analytic representation, which
decomposes a sinusoid into the product of a complex
constant and a factor that encapsulates the frequency and
time dependence. But in this project, we use phasor,
including a low-frequency oscillator, as a sound processor
for filtering a signal by creating a series of peaks and
troughs in the frequency spectrum. The position of the peaks
and troughs of the waveform being affected is typically
modulated so that they vary over time, creating a sweeping
effect.
Fig 1. Phasors at both audio and asub-audio frequencies
In this project, the phasor used in Max patch is a
non-bandlimited sawtooth-waveform signal generator which
can be used as an audio signal or a sample-accurate
timing/control signal. For 'smoother' sounding sawtooth
oscillator, but one which isn't as suitable for timing/control.
When specifying the behavior of a phasor by interval rather
than frequency, we make use of the tempo-relative Max
time format syntax.
2
5. MAX/MSP
Max/MSP is a visual programming language written in C++
and produced by Cycling '74, that helps us build complex,
interactive programs without any prior experience writing
code. MSP is a DSP plug-in for Max, allowing real-time
audio synthesis. Max/MSP is especially useful for building
audio, MIDI, video, and graphics applications where user
interaction is needed. Max/MSP is split into several parts -
"Max" handles discrete operations and MIDI, this is the
easiest place to start getting familiar with the tool, where
"MSP" deals with signal processing and audio.
Fig 2. A well-organized Max patch
For the above purposes, we use Max as a platform to
implement with its larger community, as well as more
interesting existing projects, more libraries, and its internal
documentations. Max is easier to work with because of its
key-bindings, which makes Max a more active development
than Pure Data. Besides, prettier GUI objects makes it
popular because of more options, where the patch cords in
Max are not just simply straight lines, but are smoothly
curved that can be routed around.
6. IMPLEMENTATION
6.1. Voice Changing
Voice changers alter the tone or pitch, add distortion to the
user's voice, or a combination of all of the above and vary
greatly in price and sophistication. In this paper, we discuss
feasible programs which are capable of changing the pitch
and timbre of the user's voice, applying special effects, and
performing graphic equalization almost in real-time by
stretching fundamental frequency and formant frequency.
Fundamental frequency and Formant frequency are two
essential features of human voice, whose distribution
determines how different people sound like.
People Fundamental Formant frequency
frequency
Men Voice [50, 180] Low
Women Voice [160, 380] Middle
Children Voice [400, 1000] High
Fig 3. Distribution of formant frequencies
6.2. Implement
In this project, we create several Max patches to implement
voice changers with diverse functions. For example, a basic
real-time voice changer with an effect of “World of
Warcraft”, an advanced one with an effect of “Man, Woman
and Child voice converting”, and an ultimate version of
“Robot sound with customized tones” based on vocoder.
Fig 4. Max patch of a Real-time voice changer
With Max/MSP, we try to create a voice changer mentioned
above by taking normal voices and shifting their pitches. In
the first patch implemented with an effect of Warcraft, tapin
and tapout objects have been used based on the principle on
which this shifter will operate is a key to the Doppler Effect.
Besides, we create a phasor to vary the delay, between 0 and
1, and scale it by 100. For example, when the phasor
number is positive, the sounds are taken and increased by
the amount that they’re delayed over time, so that’s what
decreases the frequency. If we set phasor as 2, the output
voice is lower; if 4, the output is much lower.
Fig 5. Max patch of a Real-time voice changer
The simple relationship between frequency in and frequency
that comes out is as follows:
3
𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑡 = 𝑓𝑖𝑛 ∗ (1 − 𝑝𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 ∗ (𝑑𝑤)/1000)
Where 𝑓𝑜𝑢𝑡 is frequency in, while 𝑓𝑖𝑛 is frequency that
comes out. 𝑝𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 refers to the frequency of the
phasor, and 𝑑𝑤 refers to a delay window.
If the input frequency is 100Hz, then the frequency out is
60Hz; if the former is 1000Hz, and the latter is 600hz.
Therefore, we shift pitches down. Of course, when phasor
number is negative, the opposite happens and the pitches
shift up.
Fig 6. Max patch of a voice changer
However, some annoying clicks resulted from the phasor
obviously are introduced when we shift pitches down. Since
phasor is going from 0 to 1, and jumping right back down to
0, so the jump makes the noise sound like click. To deal
with this, we try to window the sound, multiplying the
sound by 0 as it approaches those clicks. By setting a cosine
rap, and subtracting, only for adjusting and scaling the
phasor, we make those clicks 0. Plus, to make it sound better,
we’ve decided to add another phasor working together with
the original one but shifted by a certain number of degrees
by duplicating the original one and adding 0.5 to the new
phasor. So, another phasor with 180 degrees out of phase
with the original one has been generated. Last but not least,
we put two scopes below in the patch to analyze the
corresponding waveforms.
7. CONCLUSION
Voice changer is more than an entertainment device among
youngsters, or some novelty invention appearing on TV
screen, but also a research topic that has a large amount of
academic principles and knowledge behind, ranging from
pitch shifting, vocoder to Doppler effect. The plugins in a
voice changer contain some novel and musically useful
applications of the phase vocoder algorithm. However, there
are apparent directions for further development of other new
researches. In pitch shifting, more could be done with other
types of pitch sieves. Also, a compositional algorithm could
intelligently control the sifting process. In the future, a
cross-synthesis technique will be developed, able to analyze
multiple real-time signals with one sound’s harmonics as a
pitch sieve for the other. As this work was concentrated on
developing new and funny applications of pitch shifting and
phase vocoder, improvements such as phase locking and
multi-resolution peak detection would make obvious
progress to the overall quality of processed sounds.

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