Little AlterBoy: Vocal Pitch and Formant Plugin by Soundtoys

The plugin's core tools cover pitch and formant shifting. Pitch changes the note a voice sits on, while formant shifting changes the resonant character of the voice, which is how Little AlterBoy handles gender changes. Both can be adjusted in real time.

For the pitch-quantized sound popular in hip-hop and pop, the plugin includes a hard-tune style effect. Lock the vocal to a single pitch and you get a robotic tone, or use the mix control to blend the processed signal with the dry voice and create instant harmonies.

Once you have a vocal effect you like, you can use MIDI from your DAW to control the pitch. This allows vocoder-like effects and harmony lines that follow the notes you play or sequence, which makes the plugin useful for shaping vocals into new melodic ideas.

Soundtoys presents Little AlterBoy as a single plugin with a simple set of controls, so it can fit into a vocal chain without a complex setup. Its tube saturation stage adds warmth and edge once the effect is set.