[RWP] Vocoder

Mon May 21 17:36:42 EDT 2012

No, those types of effects work best as track inserts rather than sends, 
as would be the case, generally speaking, of course, with something like 
an EQ or compressor.

On 5/21/2012 5:31 PM, colin McDonald wrote:
> so, when utilizing an auto tune or pitch correct plugin, is it best to
> use a separate audio track for the effect, and route the source material
> to that track as well?
> I just added the effect onto the original audio track and never did have
> much success.
>
> regards
> Colin
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Perdue" <patrick at pdaudio.net>
> To: "Reapers Without Peepers" <rwp at reaaccess.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 12:56 AM
> Subject: Re: [RWP] Vocoder
>
>
>> Generally speaking, no, unless you're using a vocoder that happens to
>> have it's own synth engine, like Klanglabs Vokko. Most don't.
>>
>> A traditional vocoder takes two audio inputs, usually the modulator
>> (the signal to be vocoded) on input 1, and the carrier (the thing over
>> which the modulator is, well, modulated,) on input 2.
>> There are a bunch of different ways to achieve what I'm about to
>> describe, but this is how I'd setup routing for a vocoder input, in
>> order to keep things discrete for additional processing for both input
>> and output if necessary, such as compression and filtering.
>>
>> First, set up two tracks for your two individual sources, or one track
>> with mod panned hard left, and carrier panned hard right. In the case
>> of a single stereo track, you could either insert the vocoder directly
>> on the track, or send this track to another dedicated one with the
>> vocoder effect on it. If you send a single stereo track to another one
>> dedicated to a vocoder, make sure that track's master send is off.
>> Otherwise, if the vocoder has been inserted as an effect directly on
>> that track, leave it on, unless you're doing custom hardware output
>> routing or something.
>>
>> Sending dedicated source tracks to the vocoder's input, however, has
>> additional benefits. Let's say you want to compress your vocal track
>> before it hits the vocoder, which really does help sometimes, as well
>> as applying a highpass filter, but you don't want to effect the
>> carrier source at all. You can simply stick those effects on your
>> modulator track, and you're good. With a single stereo track, that's
>> harder, though not impossible, to accomplish. The "not worth it"
>> factor is pretty high, and it's just easier to work with individual
>> tracks.
>>
>> If you have a dedicated track for each of your sources, let's say
>> track 1 is a microphone, and track 2 is a softsynth putting out a
>> sawtooth wave form, send both of these tracks to another track with
>> the vocoder inserted as an effect, and unroute both from master,
>> unless you want both wet and dry signals from each track to show up.
>>
>> Now, use the ReaAccess track I/O, shift+i, on the vocoder track, then
>> select receives. You should see the tracks you are sending to the
>> vocoder. For your microphone track, route input channel 1 to output
>> channel 1, and for the synth track, route channels 1/2, or just 1 or
>> 2, to only channel 2 of the vocoder track. It is very important to not
>> have either of your tracks routed to both channels 1 and 2 of the
>> vocoder track. If this happens, you will essentially be vocoding
>> something over itself, which is probably not what you want to do,
>> although, depending on the vocoder algorithm you use, it can either be
>> interesting as a stupid effect, or incredibly boring and pointless.
>>
>> In this dialogue, mono channel routing comes after all the stereo
>> pairs from 1/2 to 63/64, and in this case, you want to generally send
>> one channel directly to another on a different track. Most vocoders
>> don't have stereo modulator or carrier inputs.
>>
>> Now, make sure your modulator track is armed, and that monitor is set
>> to normal. This insures that the track's output is actually sending to
>> other tracks as you send live input to it. Otherwise, those other
>> tracks will only get audio when playing stuff that has already been
>> recorded on that track.
>> You'll want to arm the carrier as well, unless you want to record both
>> parts at separate stages. This is theoretically no different if you're
>> using a piece of hardware to generate your wave form to drive the
>> vocoder, or a piece of hardware connected to a physical input on your
>> sound interface.
>>
>> If you've never used a vocoder before, you may want to experiment with
>> the types of wave forms you use for a carrier input. I'd suggest
>> starting out with a raw saw wave, or playing with string and pad
>> patches with very little, if any, attack and release. The very boring
>> ReaSynth can supply you with the basic wave forms, but you won't get
>> anything fun like monophonic or portamento.
>>
>> Of course, the possibilities are endless. You can use any given number
>> of things to get interesting results, but those are good starting points.
>>
>> Also, the vocoder which comes with Reaper isn't really that great.
>> Depending on the type of vocoder sound you're looking for, I'd suggest
>> trying a few other ones. The free MDA vocoder is relatively OK at
>> providing a classic vocoder sound, and is generally more intelligible
>> than Reaper's default one, although you'll want to tweak the defaults
>> on just about anything you use to make it suck less.
>>
>> I have several hardware vocoder solutions, ranging from the really not
>> so awesome algorithm on my currently broken Ensoniq D/P4, the not much
>> better one from my Alesis Ion, the slightly nicer one from my Digitech
>> Studio Quad IV and Yamaha Motif XS, to my over all favorite, the
>> Electrix Warp Factory. I like this unit because it offers the most
>> clarity with 24 bands, and has a huge amount of frequency response.
>> It's also the only unit I've seen with a stereo carrier input. It,
>> however, doesn't have the "classic" sound I want sometimes, though it
>> is generally a really cool unit to play with, so I usually fall back
>> to the built-in vocoder on my Motif XS to get that sound.
>>
>> On 5/20/2012 4:56 PM, Alexander Westphal wrote:
>>> Hello!
>>>
>>> When I want to use a vocoder for an audio track, is it as simple as I'm
>>> about to think? I would first record an audio item, insert a vocoder as
>>> effect and then set up the track for midi recording and play the parts I
>>> want to have. Could this be so easy?
>>
>>
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