[sdiy] Formant filters, yay!

[Florian Anwander]

And just something more "fishy" about synthesizing vowels or vocoding:

What does mean "a" or  "o"?
"A" in which language Japanese or English? Which dialect: Edinborough or 
London? Which local slang: North or south of Wandsworth Road?

I think vocoders or voice imitating filters will sound very different, 
because they were developed  by engineers, who speak different languages 
and who are used completely different vocalisations. If an english 
person pronounces an "o", it sounds to german ears more like an (german) 
open "u". Dieter Doepfer is born in Frankonia and speaks his "a" more 
open. The Dynacord engineers sit in Lower Bavaria, their "a" is dark and 
tends to be an "o".  How sounds the A-129 compared to a SRV-66? Ok, I 
know the SRV-66 is originally a dutch syntovox 222. But I think you get 
the principle:

If an engineer tries to optimize a vocoder for vowels, or tries to 
create a vocal filter, he will optimize his design for his imagination 
of the vowel, and his device will sound in the vocalisation of his 
language fine, but will fail with some other vocalisations.

Florian