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Getting started with Dehumaniser Lite

1 Dehumaniser Lite is a standalone application, so launch it from your Applications folder. To feed it a live signal from a microphone, switch the Select Input option to Mic/Line. Hitting the Record button will capture both the dry input and processed output as two separate audio files. Click Record again to stop. 2 With File selected as the input type, click Load File and browse to a sample or a folder full of samples, the latter of which will list its contents in the menu below. A set of 20 demonstrative vocal samples is included with the software, so we’ll use those for now. 3 Dehumaniser Lite is a processorhungry application, so Krotos have included an On/Off switch – the key command for this is the spacebar. Playing back your loaded sample is done by clicking the Play button, with or without looping activated. 4 Dehumaniser Lite convolves the input with one of 35 preset ‘monster’ sounds – or a blend of six of them, which we’ll come back to. The presets are divided into three categories: Basic, Experimental and For Speech. Select the category with the Libraries menu, and the preset with the menu below, or the Previous and Next buttons. 5 The Basic category is a general purpose set of “common monster and imaginary creature sounds”. The Experimental presets are rather more extreme in their effects, generating alien and robot voices of varying levels of intelligibility. For Speech is the category to go for when you want to keep the words relatively clear. 6 You don’t get any control over the specifics of each preset – for that, you’ll need to upgrade to the full Dehumaniser Pro Extended or Dehumaniser 2 – but you can alter the Pitch of the input signal by up to 24 semitones up or down, and set the mix of dry and wet output using the Morph dial. 7 A five-band EQ and a Limiter are onboard, too, for shaping the frequency content and dynamics of the output. The Smooth Limiter setting is a soft knee, while Punchy is a hard knee. To save your tweaked preset, click the Save Options button, select Save As and give it a name. 8 Using the Voice Designer panel, you can create your own custom blend of up to six presets, for a huge variety of sounds. Simply load a preset into each of the six blocks around the XY pad and move the puck to mix between them. Take individual presets out of the process by muting them. 9 Finally, to render your processed vocal, click the Process Sample button. If your preset has added any delay to the signal, as many of them do, raise the Add Time To Record setting to extend the recording to suit. Again, you get both the dry and wet signals as discrete audio files, at the sample rate and bit depth set in the Record section.