Can we talk about Izotope Vocalsynth again?

[HydrogenHuman]

I'm personally very glad I tried the demo because I was able to get some really nice intelligible vocoding from the Talkbox module.

I've been looking a long time for a plugin that can create a more "talkbox" type sound rather than vocoding, so that the vocals are very clear but still have a vocoded sound.

My goal is to see if I can get it to sound like Daft Punk's "Digital Love" or "Harder,Better, Faster, Stronger" voice since that was a mixture of talkbox and autotune (both of which are essentially in Vocalsynth).

Since I'm inexperienced I'm still trying to find the right carrier signal to create the "Daft Punk" style vocals.

I know Vocalsynth has some horrendous sound demos, and their video showcasing it is also terrible, but I think Vocalsynth has a lot of potential, and may fill an audio production gap that has existed a long time for me personally.

[deastman]

I've also been checking it out, perhaps against my own better judgement. I think the vocoder is really crap, but all the other sections are fairly decent. The talkbox is definitely a standout, since that is very difficult to get right in software. To me, the most compelling aspect of this plugin is the ease with which you can throw all those different effects together, mix them in varying amounts, and modulate them with the xy pad. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, and this is a very versatile and easy to use tool for creating a wide variety of synthetic vocals.

The plugin itself aside for a moment, I have to pause and ask myself what use I have for these synthetic vocals. I've always been a huge fan of vocoders, way back to when I built my first PAIA kit in the 80's, and even earlier for speech synthesizers. I have a bunch of different vocoders and other vocal processing tools. The thing is, synthetic vocals are so incredibly overused in pop music today that it has somewhat soured me on the whole thing. I'll never get tired of listening to Kraftwerk's vocoders, Daft Punk made great use of the talkbox, and Imogen Heap's Hide & Seek is a gorgeous song. But for each shining example of vocal processing done right, there are a million cheesy cliched tracks. I'm just not sure if glitchy, autotuned, artificial vocals have any place in my music anymore. Not that I listen to mainstream pop anyway.

I've already said my piece on iZotope as a company, so I won't drag this down into the gutter again.

[HydrogenHuman]

I definitely agree that the vocoder is not that great. In fact, I think it's the weakest module out of all 4.

But there are plenty of really great vocoder plugins, several of which I own, but I was practically willing to buy Vocalsynth just for the talkbox module alone.

I thankfully have avoided the majority of the garbage music abusing vocoders and talkboxes, so maybe that's why my perspective on vocoders and talkboxes haven't soured because I only know the music that set a very high quality standard for making the devices "musical" in a song.

As I've quickly discovered, it's extremely tough to make a talkbox or vocoder "sing" or sound musical in a song. You have to pitch bend, like a human would modulate their voice, which ends up being a huge aspect to the talkbox sound.

One fun thing I found was you can put melodyne or autotune on the same effect track as Vocalsynth, then just purely use Vocalsynth for the talkbox effect and get some neat results.

[deastman]

I have a Danelectro Free Speech talkbox. I'm not sure if they still sell that one. It isn't the greatest talkbox ever, but it is very convenient since it is a completely self-contained unit and doesn't require a separate amp. I haven't used it in years, but I got some great results out of it while performing a lead sound on my Nord Modular G2.

A plugin effect has to take a completely different approach. Instead of starting with a carrier tone which is then modulated by your actual mouth cavity to form speech, it has to take existing speech and try to impart the effect of it modulating a carrier, but without sounding like a vocoder.

I also really liked the Polyvox effect. I don't own Nectar, so that doesn't influence me either way. I do have Melda Mxxx, but I think the iZotope harmonizing effects sound more natural.

[MogwaiBoy]

Anyone compare it to this? It's pretty well priced at the moment:

http://sonivoxmi.com/products/details/vocalizer-pro

[simon.a.billington]

Gotta say the VocalSynth does look and sound pretty damn sexy.

However, I'm really trying hard not to spend any more cash on software for a while.

[Neon Breath]

A vocoder plugin.

What a revolution. Welcome to the party, Izotope.

[simon.a.billington]

It's not necessarily what you do, but how you do it.

How many synths are out there, too many, but it doesn't stop people making more.

Or how many vintage emulations, yet it still doesn't stop people doing more...

In fact, those things I mentioned way out number the vocoders out there. I'm against oversaturation myself, yet personally, I'd have a problem with the first two before I'd have an issue with another vocoder.

It's just the nature of things.

[c_voltage]

Hi folks, in Vocalsynth folders there is folder called Wavetables (placed in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\iZotope\VocalSynth\Wavetables), which contain 30+ different wavetable files, but i not found their names inside plugin. Maybe someone figured for what this ? How use this.

[Steve Bolivar]

Hi folks, in Vocalsynth folders there is folder called Wavetables (placed in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\iZotope\VocalSynth\Wavetables), which contain 30+ different wavetable files, but i not found their names inside plugin. Maybe someone figured for what this ? How use this.

I imagine those are the carrier signals for the vocoder.

I don't use it much on vocals. Instead I use it as a crazy sound mangler on all other instruments.

[ftech]

I'm personally very glad I tried the demo because I was able to get some really nice intelligible vocoding from the Talkbox module.

I've been looking a long time for a plugin that can create a more "talkbox" type sound rather than vocoding, so that the vocals are very clear but still have a vocoded sound.

My goal is to see if I can get it to sound like Daft Punk's "Digital Love" or "Harder,Better, Faster, Stronger" voice since that was a mixture of talkbox and autotune (both of which are essentially in Vocalsynth).

Since I'm inexperienced I'm still trying to find the right carrier signal to create the "Daft Punk" style vocals.

I know Vocalsynth has some horrendous sound demos, and their video showcasing it is also terrible, but I think Vocalsynth has a lot of potential, and may fill an audio production gap that has existed a long time for me personally.

Demoing Vocalsynth now and it's not bad. The Talkbox and Compuvox sections are yielding some usable results.
Whilst it doesn't have the options that Vocalsynth has, I've also been getting some good compuvox-y results with Bitspeak
https://soniccharge.com/bitspeek

[c_voltage]

Hi folks, in Vocalsynth folders there is folder called Wavetables (placed in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\iZotope\VocalSynth\Wavetables), which contain 30+ different wavetable files, but i not found their names inside plugin. Maybe someone figured for what this ? How use this.

I imagine those are the carrier signals for the vocoder.

I don't use it much on vocals. Instead I use it as a crazy sound mangler on all other instruments.

But Vocoder osc has just 10 waveforms in his list, while in mentioned folder more than 30. And as i already said, this files have other names. But maybe i don't understand something ? I mean - maybe Vocoder has some hidden option for choose additional wavetables lists.

[Steve Bolivar]

Oh, I misread that. That's really interesting. Maybe an email to iZotope tech support is in order.

[c_voltage]

Oh, I misread that. That's really interesting. Maybe an email to iZotope tech support is in order.

Yeah i already wrote day or two ago, but no reply yet.

[c_voltage]

Well, support did reply, in general as i figured those waveforms not for manual use, ie it's for some overall sound algorithm purposes inside plugin (ie it's can't be selected in some list view).