Popular voice changing software Voicemod is finally going to work with game consoles like the PS5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch. While Voicemod has been available as an app on Windows PCs for more than five years, platform limitations have forced Voicemod to create dedicated hardware to bring its popular voice changer and soundboard to game consoles.
Voicemod Key is a tiny USB-C dongle that turns your regular gaming headset and mobile phone into a voice changer and soundboard for game consoles, phones, and tablets. “The original idea was from the community, we found it on YouTube,” explains Voicemod chief operating officer Jochen Doppelhammer in an interview with The Verge.
Voicemod can’t build an app for Xbox or PlayStation, so Voicemod users had been using headsets within headsets to get the voice changer working with their phones and consoles. One person even put together a bunch of audio splitters that fed the output of a microphone into Voicemod and then back out into the microphone input on a console. “They put it together and I was like, I need to try that! That was the initial idea, and with the splitter you find problems and to solve them we needed electronic components,” says Doppelhammer.
Voicemod Key works by using two audio jacks and a USB-C port to route your gaming headset into the Voicemod app on mobile and back out into your console. You plug your wired headset into one port, a stereo cable into the other, and then connect up the other end of the stereo cable to your game console. The dongle then plugs into the USB-C or Lightning port on your phone, where you can launch voice changing features or the soundboard.
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Image: Voicemod
Voicemod’s AI voices and real-time voice changing features will all be available, alongside buttons to launch custom soundboard audio that your friends will hear in a party chat. Voicemod is also planning to get its Key hardware working with voice chat apps on a phone in the future. Voicemod will turn its Key dongle into a virtual device so it loops back the audio and any iOS or Android apps will then receive the modified voice changing audio as if it were the real microphone. It’s similar to how Voicemod works on macOS or Windows, with virtual audio devices.
Doppelhammer and the Voicemod team have had to create hardware to solve a software restriction in closed platforms like iOS, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. You can publish apps on many of these platforms, but Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo don’t let developers get deep access to the audio components.
I get the sense that Voicemod Key is a solution that Doppelhammer and the team are reluctantly having to build to try and prove to platform holders that they should open up and allow apps like Voicemod.
Voicemod Key will only work with wired headsets, largely because of the way it captures the audio and modifies it. Proprietary solutions like Xbox Wireless won’t be supported, and the latency of Bluetooth would make a real-time voice changer like Voicemod challenging. Doppelhammer says the “vast majority of our target audience” is more inclined to use a wired headset or have access to one, so he’s not too concerned about the lack of support for wireless headsets at launch.
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Image: Voicemod
If Voicemod were able to build a native app on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, the wireless problem would be solved. “We don’t want to build our own device. This will enable a lot of conversations, because people will see how it works, what it takes, and that there’s a market,” says Doppelhammer. “This whole thing made me realize one thing: PC and Mac are the only platforms left that are half-way open. Everything else is locked down.”
Voicemod has grown in popularity in recent years as people look to real-time voice changing software and soundboards to be more expressive in online words like Fortnite or Roblox. Voicemod was once a niche app for Twitch streamers, but Voicemod Key aims to bring the software to people who play Fortnite on console or Roblox on a tablet or mobile phone.
The first version of Voicemod Key, with support for a console mode, will soon be available for registered beta testers. Voicemod is planning to bundle the hardware with its Voicemod Pro subscription, so you won’t need to purchase it separately. The team is targeting a launch later this year in the US, with a second version supporting both console and mobile early next year.