MOTM

ithaib writes: 
>>I want to purchase a vocoder, however there are not many being produced, and I 
don't want to get a vintage one... any suggestions anyone?<< 

Maybe there aren't many being produced as seperate units, but the majority of 
virtual analog synths out there have them built into them. Buy an Ion and 
you'll get a 40 band vocoder. Supernova, Virus, JP-8080, Nord Modular, and so 
on, they all have vocoders. I think I have to agree with the late Konkuro on 
this one, that some things these days are just better done digitally. It's just 
far more economical in this case, plus you get a lot more bands and better 
quality vocoding. 

Dino Leone writes: 
>>And how did you guys end up with 70 pots in your 
design? Was that like 21 filter with freq and Q each 
and VCA each? That would make 21x3=63 plus some 
attenuation and summers I guess.... wild thing! 
How about cutting that down? For example design it 
with only variable Q (leave the band frequencies 
fixed) in order to reduce parts and pots (and 
price!!!)?<< 

It's nice to be able to adjust the level of each band and use it as a filter 
bank. But some functions would be better controlled by a single knob, such as 
the resonance of all the filters at once, or shifting up or down connections 
into the synth filters for lower male / higher female type sounds. That's where 
knobage could be saved. 

John Mahoney writes: 
>>A 7-band circuit board could be used to build 7, 14, or 21 (or beyond...) 
band vocoders. The "modular" approach, dare I say? If the filters are adequately 
field-tunable, only one flavor of 7-band board is needed. When using multiple 
boards, you increase the Qs and stagger the center frequencies. Right?<< 

Sounds similar to the vocoder module in the Creamware synth. It's 11 bands, but 
since you can set the freqs of all the bands and change the resonance, you could 
parallel them into 22, 33 band vocoders and so on. 


-Elhardt