AW: PAIA Vocoder?

[Haible Juergen]

>I've been thinking of build a vocoder too. I downloaded schematics 
for
>the Elektor but it looks like a big project.
>Also I've seen a new 11 Band vocoder advertised in Sound on Sound 
for
>£299.
>Can you build a PAIA vocoder for less than this ?

Yes you can. The Paia has an increadibly good value/price relation. 
The same is true for the
"new 11 band vocoder", which indeed must be the MAM one (see below). 
They are in completely
different ranges, both speaking of price and what you get for the 
price. Remember the MAM
is somewhere in between the Roland and the EMS in quality. Can't await 
to get my own one.

The new vocoder in question is the F.A.T. Procoder, which looks
suspiciously similar to the MAM VF-11, in the same way that the 
F.A.T.
FB-383 looks very like the MAM MB-33 303 clone.
Anyone know if these are the same thing ?

Well, recently I read - slightly amused - in some electronic music 
magazine, that there was a
"clone of the clone" now, i.e. the most sucessful 303 clone being 
cloned himself now (;->).
This is obviously not the case ... it is common practice that a 
company licences the technology
of another company, and puts its own package around the product. For 
example, how many
companies do you think there are who actually build RF tuners for car 
audio, and how many
brands of car radios you can buy in the store. Not so common in 
musical buissness, however.
Only thing I remember was some Synton vocoder repackaged as "Dynacord" 
- anybody
remembers other examples ?

JH.

PS.: Speaking of vocoders: Does anybody know how close the ETI / 
Powertran Vocoder and
the EMS are actually related ? Same designer, similar number of bands, 
typical slew control,
same order of bp filters ... must be *very* similar. Has anybody 
actually compared the circuits
one by one ?