Hide who is talking, keep every word. Voice Anonymizer disguises a voice from anyone listening, and the same dials take it anywhere from cartoon characters to broken radios.
The short version
Drop Voice Anonymizer onto a clip or a track and you get one small set of dials that can do a lot. The headline is Anonymize: it disguises who is talking from anyone listening, and every word stays clear. No bleeps, no cartoon voice. The same dials also turn someone into a robot, an alien, a monster, or a deep movie-trailer narrator, or push a voice through a phone, an old radio, or a megaphone.
Everything is built from the same handful of controls. There are no hidden menus and no per-character magic. Once you know what each dial does, you can build any voice yourself, or grab a ready-made preset and tweak it. This manual walks through every dial at its lowest and highest setting, then shows how they work together.
Voice Anonymizer was formerly called Incognito. Same plugin, same dials, new name.
First run
Voice Anonymizer installs through FxFactory, a free Mac app that handles the download and the licensing. Here is the whole path.
Voice Anonymizer does all its work on your Mac and never listens in on your audio. The plugin itself makes no network connections at all. Buying and licensing are handled by FxFactory, so your purchase and your Macs are managed in the FxFactory app. Once you are licensed, clicking the LICENSED pill just shows Voice Anonymizer in FxFactory.
The layout
Along the top: license status, Voice, Preset, and help. Below: voice-shaping dials on the left, the big Anonymize dial in the middle, texture and output dials on the right. The pins match the breakdown that follows.
Around the edge
The dials
Every dial, low to high
Pitch, Character and Tone sit at neutral in the middle and turn either way. Every other dial does nothing at zero and its full effect at the top. Here is what you hear as you turn each one from all the way down to all the way up.
Sets how high or low the voice sits.
A deep, heavy, slowed-down voice. Monster, giant, sinister narrator.
A high, light, sped-up voice. Chipmunk, cartoon, tiny creature.
Dead center leaves the pitch exactly as it was.
Changes the size and resonance of the voice without changing the pitch. This is your gender and age lean.
A bigger, fuller, chestier voice. Reads older, larger, more masculine.
A smaller, brighter voice. Reads younger, smaller, more feminine.
Dead center leaves the voice's natural tone untouched.
The reason this plugin exists. It disguises who is talking from anyone listening, while keeping what they say clear.
Off. Your real voice comes through with nothing added.
Strongest disguise. The speaker is masked but still easy to understand.
Anonymize stacks on top of everything else, so you can hide the voice first and then add as much or as little character as you want.
Anonymize is a voice disguise for the people listening: it keeps an audience from recognizing who is talking. It is not forensic-grade protection, and it is not built to beat voice-analysis software. When hiding someone's identity really matters, use it as one layer and pair it with other measures, like keeping faces, names, and other identifying details out of the edit too.
Adds a metallic, machine-like ring to the voice.
Off. The voice keeps its natural texture.
Full metal. Classic sci-fi robot or computer voice.
Adds dirt, drive, and distortion.
Clean. No distortion at all.
Heavily broken up. Demon growl, blown speaker, angry megaphone.
A single dial that runs from dark and muffled, through natural, up to thin and tinny.
Dark and muffled. Like the voice is behind a wall, or underwater.
Thin and boxy. The "through a phone, radio, or bullhorn" sound.
The middle is the neutral, do-nothing spot. This dial sits halfway by default.
Layers a second, subtly different copy of the voice on top.
A single, dry voice.
Thick and wide. Two takes stacked together for more body and presence.
Adds room, echo, and distance around the voice.
Close and dry, right up on the microphone.
Big and far away. A large hall, a cathedral, a ghost down a corridor.
Adds a hiss-and-crackle floor, the kind you hear from old gear.
Clean and quiet.
Noisy and staticky. Pairs with Tone for old radio, walkie-talkie, or phone-line.
Adds a slow, drifting unsteadiness to the pitch.
Rock steady.
Seasick, warped-tape wobble. Great for failing or degraded signals.
Blends the processed voice against the original, dry voice.
Only the original, untouched voice. The effect goes silent.
Only the fully processed voice. This is the default.
The space in between lets you soften any effect or keep a disguise sounding natural by letting a little of the real voice through.
Up top, next to the preset, is a Voice menu: Bass, Baritone, Tenor, Alto, Mezzo, Soprano. Pick the one closest to the speaker's natural range. It quietly tunes the presets so a voice built for a deep speaker still lands on a high one, and the other way around. If you are not sure, leave it on Tenor and adjust by ear. It does not touch the clean default or the device presets, since those are not about a voice range.
There is no wrong answer here, either. Picking the "wrong" range on purpose is a trick worth keeping: a deep-voice setting on a high speaker, or the reverse, often lands somewhere more interesting than the technically correct one. If it sounds good, it is good.
Advanced
Any single dial is simple. The fun starts when you combine them. Here is how the controls play off each other, and a few recipes to get you going. None of this is locked in: think of these as starting points, then trust your ears.
Work in three passes. Shape the voice first with Pitch, Character, and Anonymize. Add texture next with Robot, Grit, Tone, Noise, Wobble, Space, and Doubler. Then balance the whole thing with Mix. If a voice ever sounds like too much, you can almost always fix it by easing one setting back rather than starting over.
Pitch + Character, same direction
Move Pitch and Character the same way and the voice reads as a real, different human. Both down gives you a bigger, older person. Both up gives you someone smaller and younger. Keep the moves modest and it stays convincing.
Pitch + Character, opposite directions
Push Pitch one way and Character the other and the voice stops sounding like a person at all. This is the secret behind aliens, goblins, and creatures. Add a touch of Robot or Grit to seal it.
Anonymize up, Mix back a touch
Turn Anonymize up, then ease Mix back just slightly so a little of the real delivery stays. You get a disguise that still sounds like a human being talking, not a machine. Every notch of Mix you pull back lets a bit more of the real voice through, so go easy.
Tone up + a little Noise + a little Grit
Roll Tone up to thin out the voice, sprinkle in Noise for the line hiss, and add a little Grit for the crunch. That is your phone, radio, or megaphone. Add Wobble on top and it becomes a signal that is barely holding together.
Space for size, Doubler for body
Space sets how far away and how haunted the voice feels. Doubler thickens it and gives it a produced, larger-than-life feel. A little of both reads cinematic. A lot of Space alone reads ghostly.
Preset first, then a light Anonymize
If you start from a character preset, it has already moved the pitch and resonance for you. So a light touch of Anonymize on top is usually plenty to disguise who it is. You rarely need to max both.
One click, full voice
A preset is just a snapshot of every dial at once. Pick one from the Preset selector up top, or step through them with the little arrows. Picking a preset sets all the dials for you, and you can still nudge anything afterward to make it yours. The list starts at Default (Clean), every dial at its do-nothing spot.
The Feminine and Masculine presets give you a believable lean, not a flawless swap. They are labeled that way on purpose. They sound great as a creative voice, just do not expect them to fool anyone into thinking it is a different person's gender.
Make it yours
Built a voice you love? Save it and reuse it anywhere.
Each preset you save is a small file ending in .voiceanonymizer, stored on your Mac under Music ▸ Herbistry ▸ Voice Anonymizer ▸ Presets. Because they live there and not inside one project, your saved voices follow you everywhere: they show up in any audio app on your Mac that loads Voice Anonymizer. You can also hand one of those files to a friend or teammate so they get the exact same voice.
The first time Voice Anonymizer runs, it copies over any presets you saved in Incognito, so your old voices come along for the ride.
Two kinds of "preset"
This trips people up, so it is worth being clear. There are two separate places a preset can live, and they save different things.
Use a Voice Anonymizer preset when you want to reuse the voice anywhere. Use a Final Cut preset when you want Final Cut to remember the entire setup on a clip, automation and all, so you can stamp it onto the next one.
You'll usually tweak Voice Anonymizer while a clip is playing so you can hear it, and that's exactly how it should work. The one exception is Final Cut Pro when you've got several Voice Anonymizer clips going at once: changing a preset or moving a dial mid-playback can make Final Cut pause for a second or two, or a change might not seem to land right away. It's a Final Cut quirk, not a fault in Voice Anonymizer, and it never affects your sound quality or your exported audio. If you hit it, pause playback for a beat, make your change, then keep playing. Final Cut catches up and you're back to editing. Logic and Ableton Live don't do this.
Cheat sheet
Every dial at a glance, from one end to the other.
| Dial | All the way down | All the way up |
|---|---|---|
| Pitch | Deep, heavy, monster | High, light, chipmunk |
| Character | Bigger, older, fuller | Smaller, younger, brighter |
| Anonymize | Off, your real voice | Strongest disguise, still clear |
| Robot | Off | Full metallic robot |
| Grit | Clean | Distorted, demon, blown speaker |
| Tone | Dark, muffled, underwater | Thin, tinny, through-a-device |
| Doubler | Single dry voice | Thick, wide, doubled |
| Space | Close and dry | Big hall, cathedral, ghostly |
| Noise | Clean and quiet | Hiss and crackle, old gear |
| Wobble | Rock steady | Warped-tape wobble |
| Mix | Original voice only | Fully processed voice |
Before you install
Voice Anonymizer is a Mac audio effect. Here is what you need.
Good to know
Final Cut Pro can stall for a second or more while it re-syncs a plugin during playback. The two ways you are most likely to meet it: dragging a dial inside the Voice Anonymizer window as playback reaches a loop point, or switching presets while playback is running. The more clips you have using the plugin, the longer the stall lasts.
This one is not ours. It happens with other audio plugins too, including ones built on completely different code, and it still happens with every bit of Voice Anonymizer's processing switched off. We have reported it to Apple as FB25016341.
Ways around it, all tested:
Get help
Trouble installing, buying, or running Voice Anonymizer? Reach out and we'll sort it.
Open source
Voice Anonymizer is built with the help of these open-source projects, each used under its own license. In the plugin, click Acknowledgements in the bottom-right corner to see them, then View full license texts for the complete licenses.