If you’re not familiar with Gamechanger Audio, they’ve been messing around with using plasma in distortion/overdrive pedals and modules for a while now. Suffice it to say that it seems they have a pretty good bead on merging gas, electrons, and patch cables, but still, Plasma Voice is the first of their plasma devices that makes sound on its own. So what exactly does plasma sound like? That is and was a burning question in my mind. According to the Plasma Voice manual, it:

"...generates sounds through the manipulation of high-voltage electrical discharges between two electrodes on a specially designed xenon-filled gas tube. These discharges are converted to analog audio using a specialized rectifier circuit."

Maybe plasma doesn’t make any detectable sound itself. Maybe that’s not possible without some help or conversion. As such, Plasma Voice is preset based, as there’s seemingly no way to build a sound from scratch, from a plasma-made waveform. For a farm to table person like me, it’s a bit of a bummer, but you know what’s not a bummer? The sounds you can get out of Plasma Voice. No bummer there, quite the opposite. Plasma Voice is gritty, aggressive, crunchy, and really unique. It actually sounds how I picture that glowing tube would sound: strained, stretched, electric, fritzy, tough...
Plasma Voice is organized into seven banks (Bass, Lead, Pluck, Drum, Metal, Static, and Spark) with seven sounds per bank, selectable by a pushbutton encoder with the selections being viewed via a small screen, which serves multiple duties. Just by looking at the names of the preset banks, you can kind of see how the forty-nine embedded sounds form Plasma Voice’s aesthetic in terms of flavor; a flavor that you can both see (via the tube and by viewing the waveforms through an oscilloscope), and most definitely hear. You further shape each preset with six light-up sliders to control Pitch, Time, Mod(ulation), Harm(onics), Flux, and Filter. Each of these parameters has a CV in with an attenuverter control, and each parameter also sports an alternate function. There’s a Drive and EQ section (with Bass and Treble controls) to further hone in on your desired sound, and there are inputs for Trigger, Accent, MutliCV (all with multiple modes), a 3.5mm MIDI input, and a main Output along with a couple of light up push buttons; one for trigger functions, one for Clutch (which, when held down, allows you to change settings without affecting the outputted sound, so long as the button is held), and an Alt button for accessing alternate functions.
Plasma Voice is an attractive module, what with the tube, light up sliders, and black faceplate, and while I find it appealing in terms of the way it looks, at first it seemed slightly clunky in operation as it took me a second to figure out how to navigate everything. I'm not a fan of the Bank/Sound display with its tiny rectangles for selection, and since the banks are written out above the screen (with corresponding numbers next to them) anyway, it seems a bit redundant to have both. A more streamlined approach would have been nice. Navigation-wise PV is intuitive in some parts (move a slider, hear the change!), and not so in others, like the alternate functions (multi-button presses + encoder to select modes on the small screen…), but once I became familiar with it I realized that everything is labeled on the faceplate pretty well, and there’s no real deep diving needed. Truly, once you patch the Output and trigger the input (or get into Oscillator mode—more on that later), you’re off and running and Plasma Voice sounds nothing short of stellar.
The preset names are accurately described, which makes it easy to find the right starting point. There’s movement in the sounds no matter what you do, and seeing the tube change and light up like a bug zapper also contributes to the feeling of Plasma Voice being truly alive. Using the Accent control, in the various modes, adds some extra oomph, extending the palette of sounds and giving sequences or percussive hits more of an emotional feel. Actually, “emotion” is a great way to describe Plasma Voice; it has a real personality: it’s vulnerable, scared, broken, angry…but strong, persistent, and defiant. I really grew to love its character the longer I played with it. I especially loved the Drum, Pluck, and Spark sounds and exploring further from the presets and creating odd sounding rhythms. I’m a freak for short, stuttery sequences, and so I spent much time manipulating the Time/envelope slider in the Trigger or Gate mode along with the resonant Filter before moving on to the Harm, Mod, and Flux parameters, which directly control the part of the digital engine that shapes the sound, the part that has the most human interaction with the tube/plasma itself. I found the multiple trigger modes to be really valuable and by entering Oscillator mode in the Trigger settings, you can get a continuous sound and turn Plasma Voice into a typical (more like atypical) oscillator for creepy, gnarly sequences or drones. Recording/layering sounds on top of and along with other Plasma Voice sounds was a treat and sounded unlike any other VCO or sound source in my arsenal. The closest I could think of were some granular samples I’ve been collecting of coughing, scraping, and radio fuzz, but none had the body or heft that I was getting from Plasma Voice.
This is a wild module, unhinged yet controllable, with sounds that will appeal to those who like distortion, grime, and teeth. And while it’s a shame that there’s no way to hear what the raw tube/plasma sounds like, the real shame about Plasma Voice is that it's singular. Plasma Voice. Not "voices." Only one. Having four PVs to use for a drum track would be killer—a true game changer for rhythm tracks. Ditto for stacking multiple PVs for a lead line in real time. There are so many great and unique sounds in Plasma Voice that it’s destined to reveal the portal to a promised land; the darkest of dark clubs, the sinisterist of the most sinister. If you like drums (ummm….), if you like the color black, and you aren't fearful of plasma in any form, you'd do well to grab one, if not a few. At least until Gamechanger Audio makes a Plasma Multi-Voice synth. Oh, how sweet that would be.

Price: $499

gamechangeraudio.com