The Best Twitch Voice Changer – Roland VT-3 Voice Manipulator Review

[columns count=’2′] [column_item]

The Good

The Bad

Thousands of streamers compete every day for the affections of the millions that call Twitch home. As streamers we investigate endless avenues of opportunity as we each strive to innovate and entertain our audience but sometimes the solution is in the success of those that lit the way before us.

Using specialist equipment and software to manipulate voice, music and other forms of audio has proven successful for many of Twitch’s biggest names in the past, but with each wanting to carefully guard their secrets, it’s often felt the same opportunity is out of reach for those hoping to stand out from the crowd. All too often I’ve seen information requests pertaining to voice manipulation go unanswered in chat, and Twitch panels information mentions nothing of the sort. Well, your hours of searching for software or a device that offers such capabilities has come to an end.

I recently had the opportunity to field test the Roland VT-3 Voice Manipulator and with no audio experience or expertise whatsoever, you can enjoy the fun and variety of content provided by such a device.

The Roland VT-3 acts as an intermediate device connecting your microphone and your PC, placing the power of voice manipulation at your finger tips. The device itself connects to the PC via a simple USB cable (not provided) and manipulates input audio through an XLR cable. The traditional PC doesn’t support XLR microphones so if you’re a Blue Yeti or Snowball user, you’ll be needing to investigate other microphones if you hope to incorporate voice changing into your streams. I opted to pick up an Audio Technika AT2020 as my microphone of choice for the duration of my review and I have to say – despite being almost half the price of the Blue Yeti, I found the quality of AT2020 to be outstanding. I’ll be posting more on my experience with the AT2020 in coming reviews.

The Roland VT-3 allows the user to program several different voice effects into sequence memory buttons, storing that particular setting to allow for easy switching between normal voice and effect enhanced voice. It’s incredibly simple to use, taking little more than the push of a button and a few moments to perfect the desired effect before saving it for future use. During a livestream or recording the effect can be applied and removed simply pushing the appropriate sequence memory button.

General audio manipulation attributes can be changed, such as Formant, Pitch and Reverb, which each customizable further using any of the predefined effects such as Synth, Auto Pitch, Radio, Scatter & Megaphone. Combining these different effects and manipulating the various sliders creates for hundreds of possibilities, sure to cater to any voice manipulation effects you desire.

Although I was greatly impressed with the versatile options presented by the Roland VT-3, it’s not entirely without fault. If I could request but one single improvement to the device it would be additional memory scenes to store extra effects. The three memory scenes do provide a good level of variety but I often found myself having to try and tweak different settings on the live option to create additional effects, something I screwed up more times than I care to admit.

Outside of the technical limitations of the Roland VT-3 the steep price tag will likely be the biggest deciding factor for streamers looking to broaden their audio abilities. Obviously it was not originally designed as an optional piece of equipment for the budding Twitch streamer and in that respect the price tag matches those of similar products in the music world, but nonetheless, if your creative ideas warrant such an investment the audio manipulation options available are sure to impress.

Whether you’re simply looking to add a humorous twist to your entertainment medium or involve your new audio in more imaginative means, the Roland VT-3 Voice Manipulator is sure to meet the mark if you can meet the bill.