Vocal Pitch Monitor-Voice Whiz 4+

Useful, if underdeveloped

Using the unpaid version, I found this useful for practicing my pitch with the reading practice it provides. I recommend it if you want another tool to practice with.

My issues are:
There’s no text variety native to the app. Either you up the difficulty, read the same thing every time or create your own text.
The scroll speed of the text is too fast for me, meaning that some texts were very difficult to read.
There’s no history feature, meaning I need to manually save each session’s result if I want to review it later. I’m not sure what the point of assuring me that the recording are secure if I can’t access them.
Some of the learn texts are too broad to be helpful or are missing things, such as one alluding to an audio example that isn’t present.

Some of these features may be part of the paid version. I’m not sure what you get from the paid version. I’m interested in the insights and analytics, but I’m not sure what that means and for $12 a month I’m not interested in finding out.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the detailed review! You’ve mentioned some great points and we are currently considering adding some new features based on them.

No positive feedback for vocal feminization

Because this app uses fundamental frequencies and machine learning to identify whether a voice sounds male or female, there is little or nothing that a trans woman can do to change the program’s assessment of your gender. It cannot tell the difference between speaking with your chest voice and your head voice — mine was assessed “male” with the same confidence regardless — and it cannot provide feedback on the other aspects of voice that a trans woman can learn to control, such as breathiness, nasal overtones, etc. The program thus provides no feedback that can help one to improve, only the endless discouragement that one’s voice is “male” with 95-99% confidence. This is the exact opposite of what vocal training should be trying to do.

While the app is useless for trans women, however, trans men will likely find it much more affirming. Testosterone actually thickens the vocal cords, so a trans man will see his voice gradually become more “male” as his HRT continues. It won’t teach you how to make your voice sound deeper, but it will do a fine job of tracking your body’s changes.

Falls short of its potential.

The following review is my opinion of the app and is not a formal critique. If you are using this program for gender-affirming voice training, the app could be a powerful tool for improving one's voice; however, I can't recommend using it in its current form. 1. Gender determination and confidence. The app never shows how it makes its determination, so the results, to me, seem arbitrary at best. I have 10+ Sessions similar in mean frequency and data point distribution, with wildly varied results. E.g. Sessions A and B have a mean frequency within 2 Hz of each other. The app determined Session A to be Male with a confidence of 68% and Session B to be female with a confidence of 71%. 2. The app does not provide feedback on ways to improve my voice, making it hard for me to focus on areas in my voice where I am doing poorly. Again, the app has so much potential, but the frustrations this app garners are not worth it.

Developer Response ,

Hey, thanks for the feedback, appreciate it a lot. One possible factor contributing to these pitch inconsistencies could be the presence of noisy environments during the recording process. We'll look into it. Additionally, we are currently working on incorporating voice exercises into the app. Regards