How to Change Your Voice on a PC

There are several reasons you might want to change your voice using your PC. If you want to alter your voice in real time to improve the way you sound when speaking via VoIP or create special effects for games, for example, there are various applications to help you with this. Audio-editing software can change recordings of your voice, adding special effects or enhancing the quality of your speech or singing.

Changing Your Voice in Real Time

Plenty of applications exist that will let you change your voice in real time, applying the effects as you speak. These changes can be as simple as adding a little resonance to your voice so that you sound less flat to more dramatic effects -- some voice-changing applications can make a male voice sound female and vice-versa, or change your voice altogether, making you sound like anything from a science fiction villain to a cartoon mouse.

Changing Recordings of Your Voice

If you want to give your voice recordings a professional feel, you can use sound-editing software to add effects. Common effects include reverb, echo and reverse. Pitch shifting makes your voice sound higher or lower without speeding or slowing your recording. A variety of applications exist to improve a vocal performance; these include filters to smooth the sound of your voice and pitch correction to fix any wrong notes. More dramatic or humorous effects are also possible.

Some Real-Time Voice Changer Packages

There are many voice changer applications available for download. Some of these, like Voxal Voice Changer and MorphVOX Junior, are standalone packages. Others are intended to be used with a specific application, such as Skype Voice Changer. In general, they are simple to use: just navigate to the download page to acquire the software and then follow the on-screen instructions to install and use it (links in Resources).

Audio-Editing Software Packages

Professional audio-editing software is typically expensive. Limited demo versions are available, some with special effects or pitch correction. A few freeware or open-source packages are also available. Audacity is one of the best known open-source audio packages -- download it from SourceForge; alternatively, Antares Auto-Tune has become synonymous with pitch correction applications in recent years and you can download a demo version if you want to fix a few wrong notes in a vocal recording (links in Resources). Once installed, you will be able to open your voice recordings in these packages and change their sound by applying various effects.