Vocoder Use

[evergrain]

ok, I have owned my Virus Indigo II for about 5 years, and I had never been able to get the vocoder to work well, but over the past week I have been researching, and remembering the few tid-bits of info I had gathered before, and I am now at the stage of having a pretty reasonable, and intelligable robot voice. Its not perfect yet, but I think thats now more down to me finding the right carrier, or to be more specific, of creating the right carrier.

Let me share what I DO know so far.

You need your mic to be pre-amped. I used the mic pre-amp on my MOTU Ultralite with a gain boost of 24dB.

You need to use another channel in Multi mode for your carrier synth (lets say, channel 2). Set the outputs of this to be Aux 1+2. You may also want to change the midi channel of this to the same channel you have your Vocoder patch on, so you can play the notes while displaying the controls for your vocoder.

In the FX edit page, on your Vocoder patch channel (say, channel 1), select the Vocoder MODE to be AUX 1+2 - the mode is where you select your carrier . Then select the vocoder input (the modulator) to be where you have routed your preamped mic output - IN L, for example. I also found that even with a pre-amped mic, it was a good idea to turn on the INPUT BOOST, and to turn the input gain up a bit. Oh, and you probably want dynamic setting on...

Once you've this done, you're halfway there.

Then, things to note, that aren't so well explained in the manual are: The filter balance should really be at 0 for classic vocoding. to the left will add unprocessed carrier, and to the right your voice. the middle is like a proper 'insert' fx type setting.

Be aware that selecting filter 1 allows you to control the carrier response, which is where you should mostly be. selecting filter 2 turns cutoff 1 to control of the modulator - this is usually less dramatic changes.

At the filter env, you really want 0 attack, a low decay setting, and release sets the amount of bands. I found 8 - 16 to be good, but it's really play around at this stage, and what I found great at this point was being able to go to the carrier channel, and flick though patches... some surprises there! .. some not so great, and in fact nothing that I am 100% blown away with, but I'm certainly getting places now. Had a pretty good Cylon going there!!
But I think now its just a matter of tuning, but as I say, I am getting results already.

This method kicks the arse off using the vocoder on one channel, I think - the reason ? There's no filters for the carrier in that mode, as the vocoder replaces them.

I hope somebody finds this a useful start, because I had done some much looking online for any help, and nobody seemed to be posting any, so I thought I'd do my bit!...

Anyone with any more advice, please chime in!!

[boreg]

Wow, lots of great info here!

[ShortBus]

A 32 band vocoder with a grafical display like the arpegiaters would kik ass Ive never had any luck on the virus. The one is reason has great character and can make any vocoder voice there is but has no live input I havnt messed with cubases.

[annikk.exe]

It's struck me from my foray into vocoder land (MS2000, and the vocoder in Reason) that the more bands one makes use of, the more intelligable the result becomes. Is it fair to say that more bands = better vocoder?

Also vocoders are useful in lots of ways, not just the clichéd robot voice and satan voice (how many of you have tried it out for the first time, and been totally unable to resist breaking out into a huge grin and yelling "I AM SATAN!!!" into the mic?)
One of my favourite uses is to use drum sounds as the modulator. By carefully controlling the dynamics of the drum source, you can make a really nice organic-sounding stepped sequence. Personally I find this a much easier method to create this type of sound, and often produces better results. However, the output also depends on the quality of the vocoder, so YMMV and all that...


-Annikk

[evergrain]

Originally Posted by annikk.exe

One of my favourite uses is to use drum sounds as the modulator. By carefully controlling the dynamics of the drum source, you can make a really nice organic-sounding stepped sequence. Personally I find this a much easier method to create this type of sound, and often produces better results.

-Annikk

nice one Annikk.. yeah, I was mad to try drums thru it, but my initial attempt was unsatisfactory. I think it might be the thing to be writing your drum loop while running through the Vocoder, rather than just taking an existing drum loop and running it thru.. which is what i did and didn't think much of. Have yet to get back and try construct the drums with Vocoder on.

You say your foray into vocoding has been MS2000 and Reason.. have u got a Virus too? How does it compare?

I am wondering if I'll ever get that 'classic' robot thru my Virus. I am pretty certain its more down to the carrier, as I'm getting closer when I change the carrier than when I change the Vocoder settings (but then I have the Vocoder at a pretty optimal setting I think)

Having said that, I'm starting to think the Virus Vocoder might have it's own 'classic' sound!! It's just not the traditional one... . but then I never really was one for tradition anyway!

[Nonikoff]

Well all above is actually true - Virus is very wrong tool to make vocoder effects THOUGH !!! I remember one track where I managed to get unique sound out of it - none of other soft or hard (I own SuperNova mk IIwhich is almost perfect in vocoding in my opinion) could help me to create such a sound. the trick is virus is too "SOLOUS" and has complex patches. and in case of vocoding you need simple carriers...

[evergrain]

Nonikoff - Simple carriers then yes? That's a helpful hint I think. Must try to make my carriers simpler. Strip away FX and strip down to one osc. That might get a bit closer. Sounds like a good idea.

Funny, but the 'basic' way of using the virus' Vocoder, with the carrier on the same channel (not the way I explained earlier in this post), would be closer to that idea, but I never got as close to a decent vocoder with that 'basic' way as I have by having the carrier on another channel. Maybe having filters is an advantage. But to get rid of the other processing and oscillators on the carrier. I'll give it a try...

[annikk.exe]

Carriers are tricky beasts to program. My suggestion is to make sure your carrier wave contains a broad range of frequencies. If you try to use a bass sound with the low pass filter turned way down, you are only going to hear bass-y frequencies. If you're trying to use your own voice as the modulator, you're generally going to find the output quite muddy and difficult to understand.

Try building a simple carrier sound with osc 1, 2, and the sub-osc. Set them to sawtooth or whatever. Put sub-osc at about 50% mix. Make sure your filter is opened all the way up. Apply some Hard Filter Saturation (the Edit menu on the filter section). Apply some Hard distortion in the effects section.

Set your amp envelope to A=0, D=0, S=max, R=0
Filter envelope doesn't really matter, just make sure that the Envelope Amount in the filter section is set to 0.

Ok great, so now we have a really horrible, abrasive, nasty sound - but it should hopefully contain a nice broad range of frequencies. Use this as a template for your carrier, then try experiment a bit with different changes :>


If you write a really nice vocoder carrier but the voice output is still quite hard to understand, try adding some Noise from the noise generator.
Generally, difficulty understanding the voice = some frequencies are poorly represented in your carrier wave.


On drums as a modulator source,
Try adding some extreme compression to the modulator signal before it enters the vocoder.
Also when writing a drum riff, I strongly suggest to not use loops, and to just dial in single-hit drums manually. Experiment with each different drum sound, figure out what it sounds like, then arrange the different sounds in your head into a riff. The best riffs for drum modulator imho are fairly simple..



I haven't used the Virus vocoder at all yet, to be honest with you =P I will give it a try at some point but apparently it's quite hard to get a good sound from it. I have to say I'm quite excited by the idea of things like using the input level (of the modulator) to modulate the cutoff of the carrier...

The MS2000's vocoder is 16 band. It's pretty good..
The vocoder is Reason is awesome. I found it very powerful and flexible.


-Annikk

[flipside]

How nice wouldn't it be with a "VP330 mode" in the virus vocoder? I used one recently, and I was amazed at how "plug and play" it was even though it's really basic in what kind of voice it can produce. What it did it did really well! That said, I made a multisample of the entire VP330, so I'm gonna try and use that as the carrier in the virus vocoder.. Ho hum!

Alex

[Yornav]

Well euhhh... I bought a KORG R3 for (Voice)vocoding...
Forget the virus for robot shit...