Talk:Vocoder

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Vocoder and voder

A - the Vocoder was never known as the 'voder' - that was a different device, developed by a lot of the same people, that was one of the first speech synthesizers. And a lot of recent recordings that sound very like a vocoder has been used are in fact using pitch correction software with the parameters adjusted to over emphasise the effect (like Cher's Believe)

I suggest there be more examples of vocoding listed in this article. The examples should be more recent. Cher, Daft Punk, and Air have all used vocoders in the past 10 years. Air uses them every chance they get. Maybe add a small section with a list? MichaelD 23:22, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I removed this, as I already covered formants as frequency peaks and dips from resonance:

Of course, the actual qualities of speech cannot be reproduced this easily. In addition to a single fundamental frequency, the vocal system adds in a number of resonant frequencies that add character and quality to the voice, known as the formant. Without capturing these additional qualities, the vocoder will never sound "real".

- Omegatron 17:46, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Channel vocoder

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Ok, I'm confused. The description in the article is confusing, and now that I've thought about it more, my knowledge of various vocoder types has several different variations. I was taught that this is how a channel vocoder works:

One type of early vocoder design is the channel vocoder. There are two major sections. The first section simply detects the fundamental frequency of the waveform over time. This value is recorded (or transmitted). The other section breaks the frequency content of the original signal into a series of frequency bands (using band-pass filters). Instead of storing the entire waveform from each of these bands, only the magnitudes of each band are recorded. To reproduce the signal, an oscillator with heavy harmonic content (a square wave or triangle wave, for instance) is run at the recorded fundamental frequencies, and this raw signal is passed through a filterbank. The filters' magnitudes are controlled by the values measured at the original filterbank. The resulting signal has a fundamental frequency close to the original signal, with a similar filtered spectrum.

This would probably use equally spaced bands.

And my knowledge of a phase vocoder is related to the STFT version, where you are measuring all the frequency bins and keeping the complex data (magnitude and phase) and using an inverse STFT to reproduce. Then for data compression, you can throw away all the values with lower than a certain threshold magnitude if you want. However, these two don't work the same way. Phase vocoder is supposed to be "one step above" the channel vocoder. But a channel vocoder using the STFT would throw away the phase data, with no frequency detection as I already described. On the other hand, a phase vocoder "enhancement" of my described channel vocoder would be.... weird. Comments? - Omegatron 18:09, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

This article is primarily about the Channel vocoder. Phase vocoder has its own article. ~Kvng (talk) 19:47, 10 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

Talking Guitar?

I think some more research should be done re "Talking Guitar" or "Talk Box" of Johnny Guitar Watson & Peter Frampton. I used to own an electric guitar accessory which comprised a miniature amplifier and speaker combo, with a plastic tube which physically relayed the guitar sound from the mini-speaker into the guitarist's mouth. This was not a vocoder.

design 15/09/05

Yes, I agree with you. The old talk-box (I'm personally thinking of Joe Walsh) was NOT a vocoder, because it doesn't process your voice electronically. Instead it works mechanically, as the motion of your mouth changes the sound coming out of a speaker. See Talk box.

However, it IS possible to ELECTRONICALLY modulate a guitar carrier wave with a voice. I just don't know anyone who's done it in music.

24.213.90.666 29/09/05

Someone put Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" in there -- same deal, talk box not vocoder. I removed it. Jerry Kindall

2000s: Kraftwerk?

I'm sorry, but for "Tour De France Soundtracks", I can't see why it should be given as an example use of a vocoder by Kraftwerk. "Vitamin" has a little bit of something backing Florian's voice that might be a vocoderish backing effect, but I was under the assumption that the majority of vocals on the rest of this CD come from computer voice simulators, and not vocoders.

There's tons more stuff that you could put in the 2000s list, instead of Kraftwerk.

Phase vocoder

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The phase vocoder is not at all adequately dealt with here. It would be nice if somebody could add a section (or an entirely separate entry) on the phase vocoder algorithm.

See Phase vocoder ~Kvng (talk) 19:50, 10 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

RE: the John Larry Kelly section

surely that was a classic example of speech synthesis, which could be considered related - but is essentially different. A vocoder requires a person talking as a modulator, a carrier wave (oscillator, synth or sample sound) and the vocoder then produces an output based on the modulated carrier. The 'daisy daisy' example is of formant speech synthesis, segment recombining. That process uses stored data about phonemes being pulled from memory and used with a generator in an order to give recognisable speech. I'm not sure how wide you want a definition of vocoding to spread?

The Voder

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I searched for voder hoping to find information about The Voder, and was disappointed to find that it redirects here, with no mention on the page about that device. How come? Homer Dudley is mentioned, but The Voder is not. Decoder24 02:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Try: http://www.wendycarlos.com/vocoders.html

or: http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/vocoder/

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Vocaloid2

Does the Japanese Vocaloid software series count as a Vocoder?