Vocoder Use

[GrooveNinja]

Does anyone know how to use the vocoder on the Virus TI to actually make an interesting sound? Is there a reference somewhere on what a vocoder does and how it works? I played around with all of the vocoder related settings, but all I could get from it was either really horrible, screechy noise or a bad sounding PA. I could hear how the microphone input sort of gated the selected patch, but that wasn't very interesting. Isn't this supposed to be the tool to make cool sounding space and robot vocal type sounds?

[Monobeat]

Good use for the TI vocoder...


1) Discussion threads about how much it blows.

2) Nothing to report quite yet.

[Malibu]

good luck....

[maelstrom808]

Originally Posted by Malibu

good luck....

As he said...good luck. As much as I have loved every Virus I've owned, the vocoders are crap, always have been. The only thing I have ever really managed to do with the vocoders is make very non-vocoderish noise patches.

[GrooveNinja]

Ok, I'll take the bait. What is so bad about the vocoder? I managed to get it to work last night, and it made what was, to me, a perfectly acceptable robot voice. I was singing, "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto" all evening! It sounded much better than my normal singing voice.

[Monobeat]

Please post your ninja-ness samples so we can all be jealous.

[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