How Does A Vocoder Work

1. What Is A Vocoder
2. How Does A Vocoder Work For Pc

May 13, 2008  Introduction to Vocoders. A vocoder needs two inputs to function properly. A ‘carrier’ wave, and a ‘modulator’ input. The carrier is the sound you want to vocode through, and the modulator is your voice. The modulator takes your voice, finds the fundamental frequencies (important bits) of it, and converts them into levels of amplitude on a series. First, to describe what a vocoder does. Wikipeda does a good job at this, but if your happy with a one sentence explanation it takes tonal inputs from one audio source(the carrier) and applies them to the wave structure of a second input(the modulator). In mixcraft you have to use the 'master tracks' FX or a 'Sub Mix' FX to use a 'real' Vocoder.

The 'Believe' effect? That's her voice run through a Nord Lead. It's processed, but it's not the same as vocoding. Try running the vocal either through a synthesizer's audio inputs, if available; or into some kind of softsynth. Which one, I can't help you with.

You can run audio into the Emagic synths, but you might need Logic Gold or Platinum to make it work. The Creamware Modular would be ideal; anything that will let you process an audio input.Re: Is it a Vocoder?10/26/03 04:12 AM 10/26/03 04:12 AMJoined: Feb 2003Posts: 117. Yeah I dont have the money for a Nord lead.The effect in Believe is exactly what I'm looking for. I didnt think it was a vocoder but it was some sort of a form of it.I dont know what the Creamware Modular is. Do you think you could expand upon it?I havent gotten into the VST hosts yet.I use Chainer for any vsti stuffThe software I do have is Reason 2.5, Wavelab 3.0, Orange Vocoder plugin (sorry I bought it) and NI B4.I was thinking maybe the vokator from NI would do it but I'm not sure now that its not a vocoder according to what you just said.I dont need it for live input.I want to add it to my recorded vocal tracks.Re: Is it a Vocoder?10/26/03 06:28 AM 10/26/03 06:28 AMJoined: Feb 2003Posts: 1,083.

If you can't afford the Nord, the Creamware won't help you much. It's a collection of softsynths, mixers, samplers, and effects that run on a PCI card with several powerful DSP chips. It functions as a computer audio input, and as a kind of hybrid hardware/software synth. Their lowest-end model, the Luna, would probably run around $350; their highest-end model gets you into used-car territory.

But, not only does it take the DSP chores off the CPU, the devices designed for it are pretty special in their own right.Anyway, given what you have, your best bet is to process the vocal with Malstrom or the NN-XT. You can either play the track from Wavelab into the Reason device of your choice using Rewire, if Wavelab supports Rewire and it probably does; or you can load the vocal track into one of the samplers. From there, if you want to use Malstrom to mangle it, you simply route the sampler output into on of Malstrom's audio inputs. If you like, you can send one side of the sampler output unprocessed to the mixer to blend the clean and processed sounds.

Needless to say, Reason's effects are also available to you.Re: Is it a Vocoder?10/26/03 07:37 PM 10/26/03 07:37 PMJoined: Oct 2000Posts: 1,243. Mark: 'It all began with a Korg VC10, which is a very rare, very groovy-looking analogue vocoder from the '70s, with a built-in synth, a little keyboard and a microphone stuck on top', he enthuses.

'You must mention this, because SOS readers will love it - and I know, because I've been reading the mag for years!' Anyway, the Korg VC10 looks bizarre, but it's great to use if you want to get vocoder effects up and running straight away. You just play the keyboard to provide a vocoder carrier signal, sing into the microphone to produce the modulator signal, and off you go. The only drawback is the synth - you can't do anything to change the sound, so the effects you can produce are rather limited.' I played around with the vocals and realised that the vocoder effect could work, but not with the Korg - the results just weren't clear enough. So instead, I used a Digitech Talker - a reasonably new piece of kit that looks like an old guitar foot pedal, which I suspect is what it was originally designed for see review in SOS April '98.

You plug your mic straight into it, and it gives you a vocoder-like effect, but with clarity; it almost sounds like you've got the original voice coming out the other end. I used a tone from the Nord Rack as a carrier signal and sequenced the notes the Nord was playing from Cubase to follow Cher's vocal melody. That gave the vocals that 'stepped' quality that you can hear prominently throughout the track - but only when I shifted the the Nord's notes back a bit. For some reason, if you track the vocal melody exactly, with the same notes and timing, you hardly get get any audible vocoded effect. But I was messing about with the Nord melody sequence in Cubase and shifted all the notes back a fraction with respect to the vocal. Then you really started to hear it, although even then it was a bit hit-and-miss - I had to experiment with the timing of each of the notes in the Nord melody sequence to get the best effect. You couldn't hear an effect on all the vocals by any means - and on others it made the words completely impossible to understand!'

In the end, we only used vocoded sections where they had the most striking effect, but didn't make the lyrics unintelligible. To do that, I had to keep the vocoded bits very short. So for example, when Cher sang 'Do you believe in life after love?' , I think I only cut the processed vocals into the phrase on just the syllables 'belie-' from 'believe' and 'lo-' from 'love' - but that was enough to make the whole phrase sound really arresting. I made sure throughout that the last word of each vocal phrase was unprocessed, because again, I found it sounded too bubbly and hard to understand when it was vocoded.' Gulliver, It is used a lot but.It fits my style of music. Lots of sounds and stuff are overused but when it fits the music and it blends then its good.Now I can get the effect by using auto-tune but its not as effective as the way the big names do it.Ok I tried the suggestion you gave me with running it through th Malstrom in reason.It gave me some interesting fx, but not the 'Believe' effect.

I have even tried with the vocoder in reason.If it cant be done with software what is the cheapest hardware I can get to do that same exact effect?If it can be done with software let me know, I have friends that run studios so I can pretty much get software if I want to try it.Also Auto-tune, Is there any instructions on maybe doing it with that by playing the keys on my midi controler while I record it live?Re: Is it a Vocoder?10/26/03 11:11 PM 10/26/03 11:11 PMJoined: Jul 2001Posts: 714. Ok the feeling I'm getting from reading all the posts so far is that I can get the effect by usingAuto-Tune at the settings of Retune-0, Tracking-100, Key- Set to the key of the song.And now from reading bleen's and FrankieP's posts I figure that the Digitech Talker is probably fake or the would be impossible to find BUT! I believe (theres that word again lol) the part about how he had to only vocode certain parts of words. Now I just do the processing through the DX plugins in wavelab but if there is a way to have it triggered via midi in Cubase could someone let me know of the instructions how to do it.

What Is A Vocoder

If I can trigger only parts in a cubase setup via midi then we may have found the home studio way of doing it.If I am wrong let me knowRe: Is it a Vocoder?10/26/03 11:49 PM 10/26/03 11:49 PMJoined: Jul 2001Posts: 714. Originally posted by Gulliver:Phestic, don't you feel like this effect (whatever it is, I don't care) is too overused in today's pop-music? I turn off my radio every time a song with that (did I say overused?) 'sher effect' starts playing on it.Actually I take that idea one further: The sound was over used when it was hip up to several years ago. I have got to go with Gulliver's instincts Phestic. This sound is a basically over, (even with the top forty dance market which can be really slow to let things like this go) and it is just too soon for a revival.

How Does A Vocoder Work For Pc

You run the immanent risk of simply sounding really out of date at this point.Vocoder will never completely go out but this micro movement is done.- DJDM.