Looking for a Roland vp-330 vocoder emulation.

[Boulotaur2024]

Hi everyone (sorry for my english),

I've been searching the forum and the net for an existing vp-330 emulation but couldn't find one.

The Roland vp-330 was considered like the best sounding vocoder back in the early 80's though not the most flexible obviously, but it has become
a rare and expansive item.

Therefore i was wondering if a software emulation existed, but found nothing so far.
Yet I've been told emulating it would be quite easy (you can read omissis posts on Arturia forums)

So if anyone has an idea I'd be glad to hear about it.

[vista]

FruityLoops VOCODER
FREE ComputerMusic-Edition [32bands]

or

FruityLoops VOCODER
Commercial FruityLoops Edition

have fun

[Boulotaur2024]

Thanx for your answer, are you sure it compares to vp-330 sound ? Do you know the original vp-330 sound ?

I'm sorry if I may sound nagging, but I read vp-330 had a particular preset suited for string which gave any oscillator you put into a warm rich and almost organic sound (it was and is still famous for that feature)

Recently I've been listening to a lot of Vangelis songs, Antarctica, Blade Runner obviously, and especially Friends Of Mr Cairo by him and Jon Anderson, and you can hear the Cs-80 routed to the vp-330 and oh my god this sawtooth is unbelievably textured, and... I lack vocabulary to precisely describe its beauty

[omissis]

Hi
Me for sure would long for a VP emulation too...the fact, as an all time classic is that, even with limited functionalities, it was a character-full instrument...actually no vocoder can give you the same flavor as the VP...the Vocoder was limited to 10 bands and the string machine section was paraphonic, that is not polyphonic, being the filters and envelopes shared by all voices , you take a chord and press another note after? The tone sprung out suddendly....anyway there are some characteristics that are still unique:

1. Human voice . nobody tried to emulate this kind of configuration ( 8' inverse truncated exponential sawtooth, 4' inverted exponential sawtooth feeding two serial bandpass filters )

2. Ensemble : non switchable off from the Strings section, very similar to the Dimension D architecture ( 4BBD with no feedback with mixed straight-inverse phase outputs )

Anybody likes to challenge himself?

[omissis]

By the way, in the very last days of the Nemo Studio ( 1985 - 1986), Vangelis replaced the strings of VP330 with those coming out of a Roland JX8-P

[Boulotaur2024]

Hey Omissis, what an honor to meet you on this forum

I posted my initial message while still at work, now I'm at home so I can post a short audioclip of the sound I'm in the process of creating.

For now, its a z3ta+ custom preset with a touch -yea with a *big* touch- of RaySpace Reverb (preset 'Air Dizzle'), and the whole thing is -slightly- EQ'ed with PlparEQ.

http://s146380088.onlinehome.fr/Muzik/Vp-330.mp3 (170 Ko - 10 sec.). (old link)

http://s146380088.onlinehome.fr/Muzik/SynthStrings.mp3 (224 Kbps mp3 - 19 sec. - 522 Ko)

The 'performance' sucks big time since I dont have a controller, just a PC Keyboard (!) to play a few notes, without velocity obviously.
But it can give you a hint of what I have already created and what could be added to get the sound I want to achieve.

edit : I'm trying to compensate the lack of 'that-vocoder-emulation-I-badly-need' by the use of z3ta+ internal 'Stereo Chorus' effect.

[omissis]

honor???

About your preset what I hear is a similar sound but with a maybe too hearable phasing of the chorus...mind that the sound of the VP was a saw+square patch all in all, the "magic" was within the vibrato ( it was the ensemble that made it with a fast modulation of one BBD ) which you can still make with bypassing the sound through a fast modulation, slow amount chorus , and the ensemble itself, you could make it by having two outputs of the sound passed through any tool that could inver the phase of the signal, then mix the straight and the inverted outputs until they are very slightly biased to the inverted sound...I can get a very close sound with a JX10 but, heh , it is always Roland....

[omissis]

By the way! A CS80 routed through a VP330?? These were the usual Raphael Preston's tricks but I can't remember he did these things into the 80s...moreover consider that Vangelis is much of a "preset boy", let's say a very skilled pianobar player with expensive tools, and he rarely used the instruments to make weird things, even with the CS80!!

[Boulotaur2024]

Double post :/

[Boulotaur2024]

By the way! A CS80 routed through a VP330?? These were the usual Raphael Preston's tricks

I don't know ! I chose the word the routed but I could have said "connected to" as well (I didn't about Raphael's trick btw)

let's say a very skilled pianobar player with expensive tools

I like the expression , that's exactly what I thought while I was watching french documentary 'Musique au Coeur' with Vangelis, when asked by Eve Ruggeri to play something with a guitar sound, he replies "Je suis comme une boutique" (I'm like a shop"). Oh btw he can speak French quite fluently, almost without accent, its quite amazing. It's as if people with good language skills were equally good at composing/playing music (one of my theories).

Ok, enough OT, I could ramble all day about V. genius, back on topic :

I'm still at work but I plan to follow your advice Omissis and to reduce chorus amount on that patch, the rest of your explanation being pretty obscure to me yet ).

Do you know of any good Vocoder soft-synth wich could do the trick in the meantime some skilled developer stumbles on that post and decides to take up the challenge ?

(Btw, it could be a good idea to create a post in the developer section with accurate details of the inner working of vp-330, such as those you posted on this thread, as an incentive for them to create a emulation VSTi. As you said, it should'nt be to hard to do).

edit : Omissis, what do you mean by 'BBD'

[omissis]

By the way! A CS80 routed through a VP330?? These were the usual Raphael Preston's tricks

I don't know ! I chose the word the routed but I could have said "connected to" as well (I didn't about Raphael's trick btw)

let's say a very skilled pianobar player with expensive tools

I like the expression , that's exactly what I thought while I was watching french documentary 'Musique au Coeur' with Vangelis, when asked by Eve Ruggeri to play something with a guitar sound, he replies "Je suis comme une boutique" (I'm like a shop"). Oh btw he can speak French quite fluently, almost without accent, its quite amazing. It's as if people with good language skills were equally good at composing/playing music (one of my theories).

Ok, enough OT, I could ramble all day about V. genius, back on topic :

I'm still at work but I plan to follow your advice Omissis and to reduce chorus amount on that patch, the rest of your explanation being pretty obscure to me yet ).

Do you know of any good Vocoder soft-synth wich could do the trick in the meantime some skilled developer stumbles on that post and decides to take up the challenge ?

(Btw, it could be a good idea to create a post in the developer section with accurate details of the inner working of vp-330, such as those you posted on this thread, as an incentive for them to create a emulation VSTi. As you said, it should'nt be to hard to do).

edit : Omissis, what do you mean by 'BBD'

Well, R.Preston was a great experimentator into the Nemo asset but I don't think that he ever patched a CS80 through a VP330 : normally you patch into a mono source to get chords with the voco section , and moreover you can recognize the two different strings , those of CS80 were way more powerful and moving, while those of VP were pad like.

BBD= Bucket brigade device, that is a pre digital implementation of delay: you know that a chorus is nothing more than a delay line with short timings , well to make it easy the BBDs were simple delay lines based on an ...er....analog sampling!!

When I talk about invert the phase I mean like you have a speaker with damaged cables or like it with the headphones...sometimes you can hear the sound like it is "far" and drowned in a kind of enormous reverb....spread wide open over the stereo image...well that's the inverted phase: you should be able to get an example of it with an audio editor which can invert the phase of the signal...then you should get a device which is able to do like it and mix this output with the normal output of your synth patch;you will get a sweet ,open, paddy sound, like on the VP

[lex_strooder]

... and he rarely used the instruments to make weird things, even with the CS80!!

... well, i think Beabourg is one of the weirdest thing made with a CS80 !!!

[Boulotaur2024]

... well, i think Beabourg is one of the weirdest thing made with a CS80 !!!

Yea, but I remember I once read that despite appearances, Vangelis took Beaubourg very seriously.

Omissis (lol so you're italian right ?), if you could post audioclips of what you are able to get with your Roland JX10, I'd be curious to hear that, and that would be a great starting point for me as I can't seem to find audio samples on the net of what the vp-330 actually sound(ed) like, apart from Vangelis records.

Thank you very much for your knowledgeable posts

also if you have a website or any webspace I'd love to listen to your music buddy.

[omissis]

Beaubourg is not a weird thing , to overclock a PS3300 LFO with a modified external pedal, that's a weird thing!!!
Actually my JX is moved to another place but I think it's rather easy to find some patches on the net, even a JX8P could fit

[Boulotaur2024]

BBD= Bucket brigade device, that is a pre digital implementation of delay: you know that a chorus is nothing more than a delay line with short timings , well to make it easy the BBDs were simple delay lines based on an ...er....analog sampling!!

When I talk about invert the phase I mean like you have a speaker with damaged cables or like it with the headphones...sometimes you can hear the sound like it is "far" and drowned in a kind of enormous reverb....spread wide open over the stereo image...well that's the inverted phase: you should be able to get an example of it with an audio editor which can invert the phase of the signal...then you should get a device which is able to do like it and mix this output with the normal output of your synth patch;you will get a sweet ,open, paddy sound, like on the VP

Ok, this is starting to sink in...
Would anyone know of an existing vst that would do that kind of job, in realtime of course ?

Otherwise, I could try to investigate in SynthEdit stuff but I'm kind of overworked right now (that's why I'm posting on KVR at work ), though I'm a coder 'in real life'.