Flight Director Voices

One of the most captivating elements of a Dream Flight Adventures mission is the way the crew can hold live conversations with a variety of characters in the story.  These characters are played by the Flight Director, who uses voice modulation software to mask and change his or her voice into something unique and appropriate for each character.

Voice modulation is exciting and easy to do.

Voice Modulation with GarageBand (Mac only)

GarageBand enables voice modulation and is included with all Mac computers.  Here’s how to use it:

  1. Simply download this .ZIP file and extract it to your computer.
    • This includes two GarageBand files.  One is for male Flight Directors, and the other is for female Flight Directors.
  2. Open the GarageBand file of your choice.  You’ll see something that looks a lot like this, with multiple tracks arranged vertically, each labeled to indicate a particular voice style (“Computer,” “Deep,” “Scary,” Weird Alien,” etc.)
  3. Make sure your microphone and speakers are hooked up.
  4. Select the voice you want to use by clicking on the track header, near the title.
  5. Now when you speak into the microphone, your voice will be instantly transformed into the voice you selected.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes the default settings won’t route the audio from your mic through to your speakers.  To fix this, you’ll need to enable a feature called “Monitoring.”

    1. Double-click on one of the tracks to reveal a settings panel.
    2. Enable the Monitoring feature.  The button will be highlighted orange when it is enabled.

Another issue you may face is audio feedback.  This is caused when your microphone picks up audio from your speakers and creates an endless cycle of sound.  For this reason it’s important to have your character voice speakers inside your simulator and your Flight Director microphone inside the Control Room, and to use a noise-reducing microphone, if possible.  If GarageBand detects an audio feedback loop it will automatically disable the “Monitoring” feature.  To resolve this, adjust your microphone input sensitivity and your speaker output volume and then re-enable Monitoring.

Voice Modulation with MorphVox (Mac and Windows)

Another great tool for voice modulation is MorphVox from Screaming Bee Software.  This software works for both Macs and Windows computers.

The software offers a free trial, and the full version is well worth the $19.95 price.