KVR Audio

jamcat · Post by **jamcat** » Wed Oct 29, 2025 10:47 pm

marcedwards wrote: Wed Oct 29, 2025 10:33 pm Quite a few people who were interested in the VST version have said they missed the launch sale, so it’s back on until 7 November 2025.

Duly noted!

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Wed Oct 29, 2025 11:00 pm

marcedwards wrote: Wed Oct 29, 2025 10:33 pm Also, of the plugin, to celebrate the release of the VST version.

LOL! That's great!

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Thu Oct 30, 2025 12:44 am

Uncle E wrote: Wed Oct 29, 2025 11:00 pmLOL! That's great!

Thanks! It’s the first time I’ve properly used Robot Rocket live with the mic and synth going into Logic in realtime. This is what I should have been doing all along. I find it a lot easier to play and sing than try to match something that’s already been recorded.

The carrier was a Korg ARP Odyssey module. Just a single oscillator sawtooth, with the filter closed a little bit. Linear predictive vocoders can get a little spitty on the top end, so dulling the carrier solves that. The “yeeeeeaaaahhhh” bit at the end was done with the rubber vibrato button on the Odyssey. I’m glad that feature never caught on. Mod wheels are so much nicer to use, with more control. I haven’t yet figured out if I can get the Odyssey to respond to mod wheel MIDI.

ChamomileShark · Post by **ChamomileShark** » Thu Oct 30, 2025 1:03 pm

marcedwards wrote: Thu Oct 30, 2025 12:44 am The “yeeeeeaaaahhhh” bit at the end was done with the rubber vibrato button on the Odyssey. I’m glad that feature never caught on. Mod wheels are so much nicer to use, with more control. I haven’t yet figured out if I can get the Odyssey to respond to mod wheel MIDI.

David Friend insisted on having the PPC for the remakes.

It's also my go to synth for vocoder talking work, it works nicely with the SVC350.

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Thu Oct 30, 2025 9:20 pm

ChamomileShark wrote: Thu Oct 30, 2025 1:03 pmDavid Friend insisted on having the PPC for the remakes.

Oh, that’s cool! I do like that the remakes stay true to the original. The workflow quirks are often what make certain models interesting. I never used an original Odyssey, so I’m glad I get to experience one now, and with a brand new build that should last 30+ years.

ChamomileShark wrote: Thu Oct 30, 2025 1:03 pmIt's also my go to synth for vocoder talking work, it works nicely with the SVC350.

Awesome. I haven’t used an SVC-350 in person yet. That’s also on the list of things I’d like to use or own. One day!

ChamomileShark · Post by **ChamomileShark** » Thu Oct 30, 2025 10:52 pm

I'm sure you've seen this but this is vocoder / artificial voice heaven..if you have the money. (Hint, there are a bunch of vocoders in the racks so search on vocoder and also phonemes)

https://www.juliensauctions.com/en/auct ... collection

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Fri Oct 31, 2025 2:47 am

ChamomileShark wrote: Thu Oct 30, 2025 10:52 pm I'm sure you've seen this but this is vocoder / artificial voice heaven..if you have the money.

So many cool things in that auction. That VSM201… I would just like to see it in person. Amazing. What an important piece of music history.

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Fri Nov 07, 2025 9:56 pm

The launch sale is ending soon. The site says it ends on November 7. We’ll keep it running until the entire planet has enjoyed November 7! Happy vocoding.

https://bjango.com/plugin/robotrocket/

jwfeniello · Post by **jwfeniello** » Sat Feb 28, 2026 2:15 am

marcedwards wrote: Wed Oct 01, 2025 11:02 pm

We created Robot Rocket because the technique is rare and I personally love its sound. It’s my favourite digital vocoding method. I also now use Robot Rocket over the hardware, because the quality can go higher (LPC order), and because the Talker only has a mic input for the voice, which means you need severely attenuate if you’re working with already recorded audio. The mic input and attenuators also mean there’s more noise to deal with. All the magic of the Talker is digital, so using a plugin gets the result, imo.

Hey Marc,
Not sure if this is the right place but ive been playing around with similar things for the past couple months.
What techniques did you use in this to differentiate your plugin from something like mdatalkbox. They are both linear-predictive. While they both sound good, yours defintley sounds more like the talker. Did you do any reverse engineering of the chip on the actual talker or anything? Or was it purely black box?

Sorry for so many questions and cheers on releasing your plugin!

Been wanting something like this for YEARS.

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Fri Mar 06, 2026 5:35 am

jwfeniello wrote: Sat Feb 28, 2026 2:15 amWhat techniques did you use in this to differentiate your plugin from something like mdatalkbox. They are both linear-predictive. While they both sound good, yours defintley sounds more like the talker. Did you do any reverse engineering of the chip on the actual talker or anything? Or was it purely black box?

Thanks! There’s a bunch of stuff going on in the Talker, beyond the LPC analysis and LPC filtering.

We didn‘t do any reverse engineering at all. I’d be worried from a legal point of view doing that. It’s also something I’ve never done before, so I’m not quite sure where to start. Everything was done by just making assumptions and testing with audio.

The extra bits needed to get the Talker sound:

Voice/unvoiced detection. This switches to the voice input for sibilant passages (NuVo program only).
Formant shifting (TalkBox program only).
High pass and low pass filtering.
Compression.
The lower sample rate of the device (31.25kHz), which also results in some low pass filter and crunch.
The bit depth also plays a minor role (16bit), but honestly this doesn’t contribute much.

I believe most LPC algorithms will sound similar or identical, so the special sauce for the Talker is the other parts.

jwfeniello wrote: Sat Feb 28, 2026 2:15 amSorry for so many questions and cheers on releasing your plugin! Been wanting something like this for YEARS.

Happy to answer them.

Hope you like it!

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Fri Mar 06, 2026 9:55 pm

Btw, Robot Rocket is currently on sale to celebrate the release of Instant Vibes, our second plugin. Plugin number 3 will go into beta next week, and we’re prototyping plugin 4 and 5. Lots of good stuff is coming!

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Wed Apr 08, 2026 12:18 am

Really cool Talker demo:

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Sun May 31, 2026 6:55 am

If anyone’s interested, here’s some latency testing I’ve done with the Talker, Talker prototype, and Warp Factory.

Talker_Latency_testing.png

There’s some important things to note:

They all seem to have the same latency of 48ms when enabled. However, the Warp Factory seems to have a different noise gate or envelope. I need to look into this further to find out what’s going on.
The Warp Factory’s bypass mode seems to be a software bypass, so the unit has around 24ms latency when bypassed. The Talker’s bypass appears to be true bypass, or at least not going through the ADC/DAC conversion.
I didn’t test all program modes. I just used the TalkBox program.

Robot Rocket has a latency of 20ms. Also, Robot Vowels may be of interest. We built another plugin on the same LPC filtering as Robot Rocket. It does different things though.

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Sun May 31, 2026 7:33 am

Hi Marc, Chaos Line looks really cool but I had no luck getting the AU to work. It loads fine and seems to be playing, it just doesn't send MIDI to the instrument. I was able to get the VST3 to work using Element.

marcedwards · Post by **marcedwards** » Sun May 31, 2026 9:18 am

Uncle E wrote: Sun May 31, 2026 7:33 am Hi Marc, Chaos Line looks really cool but I had no luck getting the AU to work. It loads fine and seems to be playing, it just doesn't send MIDI to the instrument. I was able to get the VST3 to work using Element.

Thanks! Hopefully we can get the AU working. I’ve sent you a PM!

digitech talker