Getting started
Plop Vocal records your singing and tunes it. It runs on its own — you don't need any other music software.
Choose your microphone first
Press Audio Settings and pick your microphone from the input list. Do this even if something is already selected. Windows chooses a default for you, and if you have more than one microphone, webcam or audio interface connected, its choice is often not the one you're singing into.
Hear yourself
Tick Monitor to hear your voice through the app as you sing. Wear headphones. Through speakers, the sound loops back into the microphone and howls. Untick it when you don't want it — the box is the only thing that controls it.
Tick it, say something. You don't need to record. Silence means the wrong microphone is selected, and nothing else you try will work until that's fixed.
Recording
Press Record, sing, press Stop Rec. The take is written to disk as you sing rather than held in memory, so closing the app or a crash will not cost you the whole performance. A sudden power cut can still lose the last second or so, because a small amount is always buffered and the file is finalised when recording stops.
If your computer cannot write fast enough, Plop Vocal tells you when you stop rather than leaving you to discover the gaps later.
What gets recorded is your dry, untouched voice — no tuning, no effects. All the knobs change how the take plays back. That's why you can re-tune the same performance as many times as you like, on any day, without ever degrading it.
Long takes
After 15 minutes the app asks whether you're still going. After an hour it stops by itself and keeps everything recorded up to that point.
Singing over a backing track
Import… opens a small menu with two choices, and the difference matters:
- Load Vocal — replaces the take you are working on with a file from your computer (WAV, MP3, AIFF or FLAC). Use it to tune a vocal you recorded somewhere else.
- Load Backing — adds a song or instrumental underneath the vocal. You hear it while recording and while playing back, with its own volume slider in the transport bar.
They are two separate slots. Loading one does not remove the other, so after loading a vocal and then a backing you will hear both together — that is the point, but it surprises people the first time.
That is a backing track playing. The waveform at the bottom of the window always shows the vocal take and never the backing, so a loaded backing is audible but not drawn. Pull its volume slider down to silence it, or press Clear — which removes the backing and your take together, so export anything you want to keep first.
Playing back
Press Play to hear the take through the tuning and the effects. Click anywhere on the waveform to start from that point — the white line shows where playback will begin. Turn knobs while it plays; everything responds immediately.
Reading the display
The display follows what the app is doing. The IN meter is live while you record, so you can catch a level that is too hot during the take rather than after it. OUT, GR, the pitch lane and the NOTE panel show what the tuning is doing, so they come alive on playback. While the app is idle everything rests at zero — that is deliberate, not a fault. To check a microphone without recording, use Monitor and your ears.
- Pitch lane
- A scrolling picture of your singing. The grey line is what you actually sang; the yellow line is the corrected result. The lit horizontal bands are the notes of your chosen Key and Scale, and the tinted one is the root note. A tuned vocal sits centred in the lit bands.
- NOTE panel
- The note being tuned to at the point the take has reached, how far it moved in cents (hundredths of a semitone), and a small bar showing how confident the app is about the note it's hearing. Low confidence usually means breath, consonants or background noise rather than a sung note.
- IN and OUT meters
- Level going in and coming out. Green is healthy, yellow is hot, red is close to distorting. IN is live while recording — aim for green with occasional yellow, and start again if it hits red. OUT shows the level after the tuning and effects, on playback.
- GR meter
- Gain reduction — how hard the compressor is working, hanging downward from the top. Movement here is normal and good; pinned at the bottom means you're compressing very hard.
Pitch and tuning
Set the key before anything else. Correction toward the wrong key sounds worse than no correction at all.
- Key and Scale
- The set of notes the tuner is allowed to move your voice onto. Major and Minor restrict it to that key; Chromatic allows every note, which is the safest choice when you're unsure.
- Key Scan then Apply
- Don't know the key? Start your take playing, then press Key Scan. It listens to ten seconds of playback and Apply accepts what it found. It analyses what is playing through the app, so it works on a recorded or imported take — not on live singing.
- Tune how much
- How strongly your voice is pulled to the nearest allowed note. Low values quietly tidy a good performance. High values hold you firmly in tune and begin to sound deliberate rather than invisible.
- Speed how fast
- How quickly the correction happens, in milliseconds. Slow (30 ms and above) keeps your natural slides between notes. Fast (5–10 ms) tightens them. Tune and Speed work as a pair — more of both sounds more obviously corrected.
- Vibrato
- Adds a gentle wobble to the corrected note. Hard tuning flattens your own natural vibrato; this puts a controlled one back. It only acts while you're holding a note.
- Transpose
- Moves the whole vocal up or down in semitones, on top of the tuning.
- Formants
- Keeps your voice sounding like your voice when the pitch moves. Leave it on for natural results. Turning it off gives the chipmunk or monster effect on purpose.
- Voice Range
- Tells the tuner roughly where your voice sits, so it doesn't mistake a low note for a high one. Set it to match the singer.
Tone
Four controls that shape the sound rather than the notes. Small moves go a long way.
- Body
- Low-mid weight and warmth. Centre is neutral; cut for a thinner, clearer voice, boost to make it fuller.
- Mud Cleanup
- Clears the boxy, cloudy region that makes a voice sound like it's in a cupboard. More is cleaner.
- Presence
- Pushes the voice forward so it sits in front of the music.
- Air
- The very top end — breath and sheen.
Dynamics
- Compress
- Evens out the loud and quiet parts so the vocal stays steady. Play a take back and watch the GR meter to see it working.
- De-Ess
- Softens harsh "s" and "t" sounds. Raise it until the esses stop stabbing, then stop — chasing every last one makes the voice lisp.
Character and effects
- Saturation
- Adds harmonic colour and density. A little makes a vocal feel recorded rather than clinical.
- Width
- How wide the vocal sits across the stereo picture. Centre is as recorded.
- Delay
- Echo. Small amounts add depth without being obvious.
- Reverb
- Room sound and space.
- Mix
- Blends everything the app is doing against your untouched voice. 100% is the full effect; lower it to soften the whole treatment at once.
- Input and Output
- Level in and level out. Set Input so the IN meter sits green on playback, and use Output to match the final volume.
Presets
Nine starting points. Pick the closest one and adjust from there.
| Preset | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Default | A sensible everyday vocal |
| Natural Polish | Tidy-up you're not meant to notice |
| Pop Vocal | Bright, forward, modern |
| Warm Intimate | Close and soft, for quiet singing |
| Tuned Lead | Full tune at the fastest speed, effects forward — the most produced of the nine |
| Flat (Init) | Everything doing nothing — start from scratch |
| Airy Ballad | Open and breathy |
| Rap Tight | Controlled and punchy, minimal tuning |
| Radio VO | Spoken word and voiceover |
Save your own with Save and bring them back with Load. Once you change any knob, the box stops showing a preset name, because the sound is now yours rather than the factory one.
Exporting and files
Press Export… to render your take plus any backing track through the current settings into a finished stereo file you can send to anyone or open in any other program. Effect tails are included and the result is protected against clipping.
| What | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Your recordings | Documents\Plop Vocal, named by date and time |
| Your saved settings | Documents\Plop Vocal\Presets |
The app remembers your knobs, your microphone choice, your backing track and your last take between sessions.
When something's wrong
I record but nothing is there
The microphone selected in Audio Settings isn't the one you're using. This is by far the most common problem. Test it in seconds: tick Monitor, put headphones on and speak. Silence means the wrong input — open Audio Settings and work down the list. On a laptop, also check Windows hasn't blocked microphone access for apps, and that nothing is covering the microphone.
The IN meter is the other half of the same test: record a few seconds and watch it. A dead IN meter during recording means the wrong input. Press Clear to throw the test take away.
A loud squeal
Monitor is on and you're using speakers. Put headphones on, or untick Monitor.
The tuning sounds wrong or seasick
Usually the wrong Key or Scale. Set them properly, or switch Scale to Chromatic, which never forces a note that isn't there. If single words wobble, the app may be trying to tune breath or consonants — lower Tune slightly.
I can't get the robotic pitch-snap effect
It isn't in this version. Plop Vocal corrects pitch — it keeps a performance in tune — but it does not do the hard, instant note-snapping used as a deliberate effect on some pop and rap records. Turning Tune all the way up with a fast Speed gets you a clearly corrected vocal, not that sound.
My voice sounds like a cartoon
Formants is off, or Transpose is set a long way from zero.
It sounds distorted
Watch the IN meter while you sing. If it reaches red you are too loud for the microphone. Fix it at the source: move back from the microphone, turn the gain down on your audio interface, or lower the level under Windows sound settings. Then record the take again — distortion captured into a take cannot be removed afterwards.
The Input knob will not help. Plop Vocal records your microphone exactly as it arrives, before any of the controls; Input changes what you hear on playback, not what is written to the file.