Formant 0.3.1

A quick but important fix.

Fixed

• Formant would install fine but close instantly on startup on machines other than the developer's. The default device configuration named specific hardware, and when none of those names matched, audio setup failed and the app exited with no window. Device resolution now falls back to the system default microphone and speakers, so a fresh install starts on any machine. Pick your real devices in the Setup tab.
• If startup ever does fail now, Formant shows a dialog explaining why and writes the reason to a log, instead of closing silently.

If you downloaded 0.3.0 (or earlier) and it closed on launch, this release fixes it.

Install

• Run Formant-0.3.1-x64.msi (it upgrades an older install in place), or unzip Formant-0.3.1-portable.zip and run formant.exe.
• To route Formant into other apps you still need a virtual audio device such as VB-CABLE (free); Formant prompts you if one is missing.

Requires Windows 10 or 11. Free software under the GNU GPL v3 or later.

Formant 0.3.0

Formant 0.3.0 is about pitch. Existing presets, sessions, and config keep working: new fields default cleanly when an older file loads.

New: Autotune

A real-time pitch-correction node. It detects the note you are singing and snaps it to the nearest note in a key and scale, with full control:

• Key and Scale (chromatic, major, minor, major and minor pentatonic)
• Strength: 0 leaves you alone, 1 is a full snap (the hard robotic sound)
• Speed: a few milliseconds for the classic autotune warble, 100+ ms for natural correction
• Preserve formants to keep your natural vocal character, and a tuning reference

It uses a YIN pitch detector feeding the phase vocoder.

Better Pitch node

• Preserve formants toggle: shift pitch up or down while keeping your natural voice (no chipmunk). On by default for new Pitch nodes.
• Dry/wet mix: blend a shifted harmony under your dry voice.

Fixes

• The noise gate no longer swallows the start of sentences in voice-activity mode. A short lookahead opens the gate just before a word's onset, and the VAD decision now runs through the same hold and hysteresis as the level gate. The lookahead is adjustable (0 to 40 ms, default 12).
• Some UI symbols showed as empty boxes on systems whose default font lacked those glyphs; Formant now falls back to a Windows symbol font.

Install

• Run Formant-0.3.0-x64.msi (it upgrades an older install in place), or unzip Formant-0.3.0-portable.zip and run formant.exe.
• To route into other apps you still need a virtual audio device such as VB-CABLE (free); Formant prompts you if one is missing.

Requires Windows 10 or 11. Free software under the GNU GPL v3 or later. Full CHANGELOG.

Formant 0.2.0

Formant 0.2.0 is a big creative and reliability update. Your existing presets, sessions, and config keep working: new fields default cleanly when an older file loads.

Creative voice nodes

• Pitch and formant shifter (phase vocoder). Control pitch and formant separately, in semitones: go higher or lower, change the apparent size of your voice without changing pitch, or both. Adds about one frame of latency, only when in your chain.
• Reverb, Delay (echo), and Chorus, each with a dry/wet mix.

Metering

• Spectrum analyzer in the Mixer, showing the frequency content of your processed voice.
• Momentary loudness in LUFS (ITU-R BS.1770), which turns green near common streaming and voice-chat targets. Both are fed by a non-blocking tap, so the audio thread never waits.

Node editor

• Per-node Solo to hear one node in isolation while tuning.
• Wire removal: hover a connection's midpoint and click the handle to delete it.
• Undo and redo (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z, plus buttons), with edits debounced so a slider drag is one step.

Mic and setup

• Gate auto-calibration: measures your noise floor, then your voice, and sets the gate threshold between them.
• Device dropdowns of the detected devices, with an Advanced section that keeps substring matching.
• Virtual cable detection: Formant tells you if no virtual cable is installed and gives a one-click link to get one.
• A first-run welcome, a one-time tray hint, and an About panel with a Check-for-updates link (Formant never checks on its own).

Reliability

• Crash logging with a backtrace and a dialog pointing at the log, instead of a silent exit.
• Safe saved files: writes go through a temp file and keep a backup, so an interrupted write or format change cannot lose your work.
• Device-loss recovery: unplug or change a device and Formant reconnects. Losing one output no longer takes down the cable.

Install

• Run Formant-0.2.0-x64.msi for a normal install (it upgrades 0.1.0 in place), or unzip Formant-0.2.0-portable.zip and run formant.exe.
• To route into other apps you still need a virtual audio device such as VB-CABLE (free); Formant will prompt you if one is missing.

Requires Windows 10 or 11. Free software under the GNU GPL v3 or later. See the full CHANGELOG.

Formant 0.1.0

First public release of Formant, a CPU-only, Rust-native vocal processor for Windows. It replaces the everyday Voicemod workflow (a clean chain plus noise reduction) with no GPU, no cloud, and no background service, and it grows into a node-based editor that hosts your existing VST3 plugins.

Highlights

• Real-time mic processing over WASAPI with drift-compensated resampling, so long sessions stay glitch-free.
• Dual output: monitor yourself on one device while a virtual cable feeds other apps as a microphone.
• A full built-in chain: high-pass, RNNoise denoise, gate, de-esser, compressor, 3-band EQ, saturator, limiter, and gain.
• A pan-and-zoom node editor with parallel routing. A Mix node and signal fan-out let you build parallel compression, blend-in saturation, and dry/wet setups.
• VST3 hosting: finds your installed plugins, adds them as nodes, opens their native editors, and saves their settings in presets.
• Mic gating with voice activity, push-to-talk, toggle, and always-open modes on rebindable global hotkeys.
• Lives in the tray with single-instance protection, optional start-with-Windows, and last-session restore.
• Two bundled presets: Standard Vocal and Parallel Vibe.

Install

• Run Formant-0.1.0-x64.msi for a normal install, or unzip Formant-0.1.0-portable.zip and run formant.exe.
• To route into Discord, OBS, or a game, install a virtual audio device (VB-CABLE or Voicemeeter), point Formant's cable output at it, and set the app's microphone to that same device.

Requires Windows 10 or 11. Formant is free software under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later.