Modcan Vocoder 71

rezzn8r · Post by **rezzn8r** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:44 pm

The VCO used was one half of a Modcan 46B.
weird idea regarding switching the modulator and the carrier. I thought the envelope followers were looking for amplitude changes on the modulation channel, and mapping them onto the carrier. I guess I would have to feed the VCO into a VCA before the vocoder, and apply a gate to get any effect???
I'll give it a try and report back.

dude · Post by **dude** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:48 pm

i mean, what wave used? saw? square?

and of course, even though you don't want to, maybe you could record some words on a cv recorder or any recorder and vocode them?

little girls in sicily are waiting for this stuff man. you'll become the king of france! or...

rezzn8r · Post by **rezzn8r** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 1:57 pm

dude wrote:i mean, what wave used? saw? square?

and of course, even though you don't want to, maybe you could record some words on a cv recorder or any recorder and vocode them?

little girls in sicily are waiting for this stuff man. you'll become the king of france! or...

It was a square wave used in the demo. Is there a preference for wave shapes in this type of application? This is the first hardware vocoder I`ve ever used, so I`m a bit of a noob with this stuff.
I just tried the switched mod/carrier. I haven't tried gating the VCO yet, but changing the frequency sounds kind of like a filter sweep on the drum loop. interesting...

I'll try and dig out a mic later.

dude · Post by **dude** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 2:03 pm

dirty low saws always tickle my dick but whatever is fine. i don't have a preference necessarily in this application, i just wanted to know what i was hearing.

you don't even need a mic. you could download a stupid podcast or snag some radio. mic need not be involved as it can be a pita if you don't rock it comfortably.

rezzn8r · Post by **rezzn8r** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 12:13 pm

"A Rap for Dude
'cause he rawks a good attitude
his shirt is lewd
shows nazis gettin' hella screwed
his unicorn is phat
he has a great cat
and he likes his Modcan
He knows where it's at!"

Using dirty saws as the carrier (Modcan 46B to STG Wave Folder)
Still experimenting with the ideal config for robo-voices. This one uses a little low-pass filtering between the mic preamp and the modulation input.

cheers

dude · Post by **dude** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 12:46 pm

charming thanks! i will have to listen later on headphones as i couldn't understand a single word here at work on my fucked-shat laptop speakerz.

of course by the time i can hear this on real speakers i should have a box waiting for me (i hope i hope i hope ) containing one of these machines as well as a dual-multi filter (which you sold me on btw).

moar demos plz. video.

haricots · Post by **haricots** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 9:38 pm

I'm not really a fan of vocoders (I have owned one but don't really miss it). This one seems to be more suited for non-voice processing judging from Rez's demo. Are 10 bands incapable of producing an intelligible classic vocoded voice?

haricots · Post by **haricots** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:03 pm

Btw, that wasn't meant to state your patch sucked ... I can't be bothered with friendly/playfull emoticons when using my iPod to post.

rezzn8r · Post by **rezzn8r** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:10 pm

haricots wrote:I'm not really a fan of vocoders (I have owned one but don't really miss it). This one seems to be more suited for non-voice processing judging from Rez's demo. Are 10 bands incapable of producing an intelligible classic vocoded voice?

I suspect it is capable of better than I achieved with that patch, as I've only spent a little time doing the voice thing.

haricots wrote:Btw, that wasn't meant to state your patch sucked ... I can't be bothered with friendly/playfull emoticons when using my iPod to post.

ach_gott · Post by **ach_gott** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:14 pm

haricots wrote:I'm not really a fan of vocoders (I have owned one but don't really miss it). This one seems to be more suited for non-voice processing judging from Rez's demo. Are 10 bands incapable of producing an intelligible classic vocoded voice?

The Roland VP-330 (and SVC-350) is a ten band vocoder and is pretty intelligible in my opinion. Maybe it's just the settings being used, but I do remember seeing a lot of software vocoder reviews saying that this or that one was better for instrument processing as opposed to voice.

dude · Post by **dude** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:28 pm

10 is fine for your average robot voice. i will have some research to add to this discussion soon.

8_)

JohnLRice · Post by **JohnLRice** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:54 pm

Often with vocoders . . or other extream voice effects . . . mixing in some of the original vocal signal is needed to restore intelligability while maintaining the 'effecty' sound.

7thDanSound · Post by **7thDanSound** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 1:13 am

Vocoders are cool things, I love them! But don't get stuck on using them for voices only, they are extremely useful for other things too. In fact, having one as module like this brings up anumber of ideas and thoughts on unusal uses. E.g. feed both inputs the same signal but process one of them a bit, like with a filter, wavefolder, ringmodulator, delay, flanger, phaser, whatever you get it.

I read somewhere that Adolphson & Falk (Swedish 80's synthpop band) made extensive use of vocoder but put the same signal into both inputs just because they thought it sounded so good.

dude · Post by **dude** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 1:27 am

my favorite besides bass sawz w/sub-bass as carrier + my voice as modulator is: sync'd sequence to drum machine. sequence into carrier and DM into modulator. adjust to suit. the microkorg +electribe er1 could do this for days. i used to use it for live abstract improv and it had lot of depth. i sort of miss it and hope i can pull similar sounds at some point.

JohnLRice · Post by **JohnLRice** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 1:41 am

7thDanSound wrote:I read somewhere that Adolphson & Falk (Swedish 80's synthpop band) made extensive use of vocoder but put the same signal into both inputs just because they thought it sounded so good.

Good idea! It might be interesting to run one of the signals through a digital delay and play with the delay times!

BlueOctopus · Post by **BlueOctopus** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 1:51 am

Many thanks to rezz for the demo

I'm sure I'll wind up with one of these soon enough but I doubt I'll use it much for voices.

dude · Post by **dude** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 1:54 am

my box shipped express from bruce thursday and i still can't see an update. bah. i was hoping it would arrive tomorrow but that is looking a lot less likely as it doesn't even appear to be in the US at this point.

JohnLRice · Post by **JohnLRice** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 1:59 am

dude wrote:my box shipped express from bruce thursday and i still can't see an update. bah. i was hoping it would arrive tomorrow but that is looking a lot less likely as it doesn't even appear to be in the US at this point.

hhhmmm . . . it's not like I called up Bruce and said I was Liam and that JLR was helping me with my system and to just ship the modules to him so he can test them . . . .

thermionicjunky · Post by **thermionicjunky** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 11:29 am

It does sound like the 71 could benefit from a voiced/unvoiced detector. Since I raised more money than I needed to buy it, I'll probably buy the Doepfer A-129/5. A noisier carrier should boost the consonants enough to improve intelligibility.

emeb · Post by **emeb** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 11:47 am

While we're waiting for Bruce to put up the official web pages for the Vocoder 71, complete with well produced sound samples, here's one I did during the development process:

Vocoder Test

Notice that there's some fairly strong unvoiced/sibilance content - I've found that this is pretty easily acheived by keeping the modulation gain high (make sure that clip LED is flickering some) and crank the Attack control down - faster attack seems to allow that sibilance to modulate the carrier even when there's not a lot of high frequency in the carrier.

rezzn8r · Post by **rezzn8r** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 11:54 am

thermionicjunky wrote:It does sound like the 71 could benefit from a voiced/unvoiced detector. Since I raised more money than I needed to buy it, I'll probably buy the Doepfer A-129/5. A noisier carrier should boost the consonants enough to improve intelligibility.

emeb wrote:While we're waiting for Bruce to put up the official web pages for the Vocoder 71, complete with well produced sound samples, here's one I did during the development process:

Vocoder Test

Notice that there's some fairly strong unvoiced/sibilance content - I've found that this is pretty easily acheived by keeping the modulation gain high (make sure that clip LED is flickering some) and crank the Attack control down - faster attack seems to allow that sibilance to modulate the carrier even when there's not a lot of high frequency in the carrier.

I thought the example Bruce posted in the other thread was very intelligible.
viewtopic.php?t=23850

The one I posted was my 1st attempt with a P.O.S. mic and isn't really a good example of what the 71 is capable of. I might give it another shot this afternoon.

thermionicjunky · Post by **thermionicjunky** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 12:40 pm

emeb wrote: ... here's one I did during the development process:...

Yes, that speech is quite clear. I might still want to automatically switch the carrier for consonants in some patches, but it seems like less of a necessity now.

7thDanSound · Post by **7thDanSound** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 12:53 am

I remember someone trying to patch a voiced/unvoiced detector. Have no idea on how to do that but maybe that should be a fun experiment. Any ideas anyone?

dude · Post by **dude** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 1:10 am

scanner is going to kill with this and fuck i hope it fucking shows up tomorrow

dude · Post by **dude** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:39 pm

[video][/video]

MOD WIGGLER

MOD WIGGLER

Modcan Vocoder 71