Plug test: THROAT from Antares AVOX bundle

[Resonant Alien]

So, when I read about THROAT from Antares, with its the ability to change the character of a vocal from the original singer's to another - ethical discussions aside, it sounded like a great tool for a songwriter - say you recorded a demo but needed a different vocal sound that your own voice, but didn't have another singer ready, etc.

I demoed it and was extremely underwhelmed! Especially for the $499 asking price. To my ear, when you set it within the "musically usable" range, it didn't sound much different than if you applied some tasteful EQ and compression. It does do some "extreme transformations", but most of these I found extremely unusable from a musical point of view and almost comical - it even has a setting that sounds just like the Chipmunks.

I really expected to be blown away, being that it is Antares, especially considering the price, but I couldn't delete the demo file fast enough....maybe I just don't know how to use it correctly?? Anyone else tried it?

[gregwhartley]

I've used it before and I really wasn't that impressed. There are some neat subtle things you can do with it, and some completely whacked out stuff too, but in the end all I found myself using was THROAT to thicken up a weakly recorded Vox track (in a project that was sent to me). This produced good results but the track still had that synthetic sound to it so I took it off and just used a Waves C4 which yielded a better fit in the song. $499? I'd rather apply that towards a preamp personally, but I can understand using the AVOX plugins for the extreme settings if that's your bag.

Greg