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Can someone help me with settings for the vocoder that will allow the audience to both hear and understand what is being said into the mic. We had a not so good experience yesterday and I want to get on it right away. Oh, and I also posted this on the new members page so I hope someone is able to give me a hand.
THANKS.....

Well first, when you're playing live, it's very hard to get it so you can hear it. Other than that, just play with cut off and resonance until you get a sound that you like and can understand. You can always turn the DIRECT LEVEL up in AMP so you have your voice coming through as well to help with the comprehension. That only works if you can sing though. I realize I probably was not much help, but I'm not a total expert either.

Think of a vocoder as a sophisticated equalizer that changes the frequency curve of the carrier based on the curve of the voice input from the mic. A common mistake is to use a carrier that doesn't have audio in the same frequency band as the vocals - so you lose the most important effect of the vocoder for the key syllables necessary to understand the words. Adding lots of effects also makes it difficult to make out the syllables. So you can't use just any synth program for the source and add a ton of effects and expect anyone to understand the words. You need wide frequency carriers, which you can get by adding upper&sub harmonics through overdrive and modulators(doublers,etc.) and by adding a moderate degree of white noise to the carrier. All voice contains noise due to the restriction of air through the vocal tract, so adding noise helps a lot to keep the understandability of Essess, Effs, Sees, Tees, Peas, Vees, and other fricatives. plosives, and stops.

How you speak into the mic is also important because if you sing into a vocoder you will not get as understandible result as speaking into it with a voice that _does not_ sound good to your own ears. A good vocode usually starts with a voice that sounds terrible if you listen to the source mic input alone, because you want to use extreme ennunciation of the words - which sound very unnatural when heard without the vocode.

go to your AMP settings and turn the LEVAL down and the DIRECT LEVAL up. getting a good balance between these two amounts is key to getting a sweet vocoder sound.

xmlguy wrote:You need wide frequency carriers, which you can get by adding upper&sub harmonics through overdrive and modulators(doublers,etc.)

This is pretty old but I thought I'd give it a shot.

If you (or someone else) could dumb this down for me a little it would be very helpful. Doublers?

Basically a pure sine wave is a single frequency, single tone. So if you start with a 440Hz sine wave carrier, there are no other frequencies for vocoding, and your voice may have little frequency content at that frequency to vocode as the source. Your voice contains a wide range of frequencies that not only contain the tone of your vocal cords but also modulations from your vocal tract along with the air that passes through your mouth. Speaking an S, K, T, Z has a rich amount of air noise.

Vocoding uses your voice as a source to modulate the carrier according to individual frequency bands, so if the carrier doesn't contain those frequencies then the vocode will have no apparent effect on them. Distortion and other effects add harmonics to the base frequency that put more frequencies in the carrier for the vocode to use. An example would be to start with a simple sine/tri/saw/square wave, add some noise, add some distortion, and richen up the carrier so that there are more frequencies there for the vocode to be understandable, at least if you want to understand any words that you vocode.

Doubling can be done on vocal harmonizers, which change the original voice to make additional voices that are added back to the source. This used to be done in the studio by recording the artist multiple times singing the same track then mixing them together to give more depth to the result. Vocal processors can do this in realtime. Doubling is more subtle than other kinds of harmonizing because it usually is the same notes, just slightly different in timing and vocal character. The vocals sound thicker, but most listeners don't know why unless they know what to listen for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCpVwpK0IcE

Very helpful. Thanks a bunch!

Hey there, I just bought a microkorg off of craigslist and it didn't come with the condenser mic. I, however, do own a dynamic mic that fits into the "dynamic" slot in the back of the korg. I need to know how to use it. When I plug it in, it won't work for me. Help would be appreciated. Also, I am sure there are plenty of people out there that have the microkorg's condenser mic and don't use it. Would anyone by chance let me have it, I would pay for shipping. Please respond to this post ASAP, thanks.

silly question but I assume you've changed to switch from line to to XLR on the back of the synth?