Pipa

Name: Pipa
Price: 49.99 USD
Author: Klevgrand

by Klevgrand · Instrument · Vocal synth

Not rated yet

Pipa is an expressive vocal synth from Klevgrand that crosses wavetable and granular synthesis, with male and female voices.

It morphs continuously between formants, dynamics and pitch, and costs $49.99.

Best for: Vocals, Keys & Synths, Sound Design. Genres: Ambient & Cinematic, Electronic & EDM, Pop.

Keywords: organic, granular, wavetable, choir, leads, monophonic, pads, cinematic, hybrid, modulation matrix, smooth, sound design, textures.

What it does

Pipa is Klevgrand's "Expressive Vocal Synth". It is a voice you play from a keyboard, not a library of sung phrases: it morphs through thousands of wavetables taken from real vocal samples and plays them back with granular methods for a smooth, organic sound. Klevgrand aims for the expression of a human voice rather than a realistic emulation.

Hybrid engine: wavetable and granular synthesis combined, so many overlapping wavetables blend into one continuous voice.
Morphing voice: continuous morphing of formants (vowels), dynamics and pitch, with male, female and mixed voices.
Tone shaping: Body, Nose and Air controls shape the vocal colour, according to Sound On Sound's review.
Envelopes and LFOs: separate envelopes for formant, dynamics, gain and pitch, each with its own LFO. Release times are linked across the envelope stages.
MIDI controllers: two assignable controllers, Ctrl1 and Ctrl2, can move formants, dynamics, pitch and gain while you play.
Legato: a legato mode with separate pitch-glide and velocity-glide times, for sung-style slides between notes.
Space: voice spatialisation in several configurations, room simulation and a reverb, plus factory and user presets.

The current version is 1.0.5. The free demo is the full version with occasional audio dropouts.

Source: Klevgrand product page

When to use it

Pipa is the better pick when you want a vocal-like sound you can play and shape in real time, rather than a realistic choir. Compared with Eric Whitacre Choir, it can't sing real ensemble parts or words, but it costs a fraction of the price and moves between vowels and dynamics as you play. Compared with Arturia Augmented VOICES, which blends sampled voices with synth layers, Pipa is smaller and fully synthetic, with its strength in morphing formants and glides on a solo line. It works well as a layer under other synths, adding a human edge to pads and leads.

Best for: vowel-like leads, wordless vocal pads, choir-like textures and expressive solo lines played from a keyboard.
Genres: ambient and cinematic, electronic, experimental and pop.
Look elsewhere if: you need a realistic choir or sung words; Eric Whitacre Choir or another sampled choir library fits better.
Tip: CDM suggests also treating it as an oscillator with a vocal-ish character, for example as a sound source in a modular setup such as VCV Rack.

What producers say

Reviewers found it fresh, playable and good value, with a limited range of source sounds as the main reservation.

Sound On Sound (Paul White, June 2021) praised the interface, the LFO and envelope section and its use for layering with other synths, describing it as synthetic sounds "that retain a voice-like organic character".
CDM (2021 hands-on) called it "genuinely new and refreshing", sitting between organic and artificial, and said it "begs you to plug in a little MIDI keyboard".
Criticisms: Sound On Sound noted a limited source palette and the shared release time across envelopes; CDM warned that some envelope settings create so many grains they can max out the CPU.

Where to buy

Klevgrand: $49.99
Plugin Boutique: $49.99
PluginFox: $49.99
AudioDeluxe: $49.99

Tutorials and reviews

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