Vocoder service proposal

Would any of you lot be prepared to pay a bit for this kind of thing? Here's my idea:

"Fancy a killer vocoder part but don't have a good vocoder?

Send me your exciter and speech samples, I'll stick them through my EMS Vocoder 2000 (via some high end EQ and AD/DA) and send you back the result for 2.50 Euro (ie the price of one bottle of beer in my local bar).

Signal path would be:

Your samples -> Kyma D/A -> SSL X-Desk -> Neve 8803 EQ -> EMS Vocoder 2000 -> API 2500 compression (just a touch to make it nice) -> Manley Massive Passive EQ (once again, nothing crazy, just a tad if needed) -> Burl A/D."

Whatcha fink?

(PS, all the stuff mentioned above is the hardware version, no UAD / software stuff)

Jesus you have some nice kit.

I should add that as much as I don't need that service at this time it's a pretty sweet deal.

what in the fuuuuuk, insane gear.....

very generous offer, i think i am gonna send u something just to hear wat it snds liek

seems like a pretty fucking good deal yeah

Thanks for the feedback. Just PM me if you have a vocal and synth part ready you want worked on. 48 kHz, 24bits is the preferred sampling/ bit rates, but if you want to do 44.1khz, 16bits that's okay too. I personally think 48/24 is fine but if anybody wants to up it to 96/24 I can probably do that, all of my own stuff is 48/24.

The EMS Vocoder 2000 takes mono inputs for the exciter and speech, so send me mono files. No point making them stereo, it'll be mono going in and mono coming out. (welcome to vintage analogue baby!)

I've got the fruity loops vocoder, I'm all set!

  On 11/5/2012 at 10:34 PM, impakt said:

I've got the fruity loops vocoder, I'm all set!

Who knows, it probably sounds pretty close! :)

would love to see a picture of that signal chain

Your setup sounds amazing though.

  On 11/5/2012 at 11:04 PM, RadarJammer said:

would love to see a picture of that signal chain

I'll stick up some photos later, they won't all fit into the same picture though.

  On 11/5/2012 at 11:33 PM, Rbrmyofr said:

  On 11/5/2012 at 11:04 PM, RadarJammer said:

would love to see a picture of that signal chain

I'll stick up some photos later, they won't all fit into the same picture though.

Seconded. Please.

I've got two bandpass filters and a ring modulator. I'm all set.

Joke. It's not a bad idea for people to collaborate online seeing as we all own all this electronic junk that we can use to make sounds. Good luck. DerWashBar I'll try to send you some loops later....................................................................

  On 11/5/2012 at 8:36 PM, Rbrmyofr said:

Whatcha fink?

I fink you freeky

  On 11/5/2012 at 10:28 PM, Rbrmyofr said:

Thanks for the feedback. Just PM me if you have a vocal and synth part ready you want worked on. 48 kHz, 24bits is the preferred sampling/ bit rates, but if you want to do 44.1khz, 16bits that's okay too. I personally think 48/24 is fine but if anybody wants to up it to 96/24 I can probably do that, all of my own stuff is 48/24.

 

The EMS Vocoder 2000 takes mono inputs for the exciter and speech, so send me mono files. No point making them stereo, it'll be mono going in and mono coming out. (welcome to vintage analogue baby!)

You do realize that 48k is for video, right? That sampling rate could change the playback speed of the track depending on what program you open it with afterward. 44.1k at 24 works just fine for audio across the board.

Anyway, it sounds like a good way to supplement your income for people that either don't know how to use a vocoder, or want to treat their sound with some nice gear.

I am well versed with vocoders, but I might take you up on this some time just to give it that extra something special. Plus, if I do mic & analog synth into my sampler, then send you the wavs from that, it won't have to go through any of my shit soundcards.

  On 11/8/2012 at 11:23 PM, Braintree said:

You do realize that 48k is for video, right? That sampling rate could change the playback speed of the track depending on what program you open it with afterward. 44.1k at 24 works just fine for audio across the board.

Ooh careful there Braintree, this is quite controversial. Any improvement to your sampling rate is an improvement to the amount of quantization error in your A/D conversion. 48khz is regarded as the pro standard used by almost any audio engineer you talk to. 44.1khz is only done in the mastering stage to align with CD-quality standard that has been put in place in the consumer audio market.

I agree 44.1khz does work just fine, but you can't argue that 44.8khz isn't better. And it's a best practice to always work in 48/24 if you can help it.

Am I the only person in the universe who insists on using 32khz/12bit samples?

  On 11/9/2012 at 6:07 AM, ryanmcallister said:

  On 11/8/2012 at 11:23 PM, Braintree said:

You do realize that 48k is for video, right? That sampling rate could change the playback speed of the track depending on what program you open it with afterward. 44.1k at 24 works just fine for audio across the board.

Ooh careful there Braintree, this is quite controversial. Any improvement to your sampling rate is an improvement to the amount of quantization error in your A/D conversion. 48khz is regarded as the pro standard used by almost any audio engineer you talk to. 44.1khz is only done in the mastering stage to align with CD-quality standard that has been put in place in the consumer audio market.

 

I agree 44.1khz does work just fine, but you can't argue that 44.8khz isn't better. And it's a best practice to always work in 48/24 if you can help it.

It's a timing thing, not a fidelity thing.

The track itself could run at a different speed depending on what you open it in.

  On 11/9/2012 at 6:07 AM, ryanmcallister said:

  On 11/8/2012 at 11:23 PM, Braintree said:

You do realize that 48k is for video, right? That sampling rate could change the playback speed of the track depending on what program you open it with afterward. 44.1k at 24 works just fine for audio across the board.

Ooh careful there Braintree, this is quite controversial. Any improvement to your sampling rate is an improvement to the amount of quantization error in your A/D conversion. 48khz is regarded as the pro standard used by almost any audio engineer you talk to. 44.1khz is only done in the mastering stage to align with CD-quality standard that has been put in place in the consumer audio market.

 

I agree 44.1khz does work just fine, but you can't argue that 44.8khz isn't better. And it's a best practice to always work in 48/24 if you can help it.

Massive thread derailment alert:

I'm sorry, but I don't agree with this at all - yes it is massively controversial. To begin with, quantisation error is dependent on bits per sample, not sampling frequency. So 24 bits over 16 bits is a good thing, yadayada.

Increasing sampling rate is good for several reasons, but really with today's technology, 44.1kHz is still viable more than ever and used by many in pro situations. If you sit down and listen to 44.1kHz even at 16bit compared to 12495348975230kHz at 24bit, there really isn't a noticeable difference on decent, well designed kit. Go check the tech. specs with high-end measurement kit and again, the difference really is negligible. Anyone experience a change in quality can be blamed on placebo effects, or poor design on the manufacturer's part.

48kHz is really only ever used for film/video/moving picture due to synchronisation with frame rates. DAT joined the party due to its technology being rooted in digital video. The whole 44.1k / 48k debacle is a MASSIVE unnecessary argument semi-pros are still having and from my own experiences causes a problem where it really need not, ESPECIALLY where video gets involved (ask me about the number of times I've mastered audio for picture at 48k, when in fact the end user is running digital video at 44.1k - WHY?!?!). 48k = Video. 44.1 = Audio. End of.

88.2kHz is becoming more common in studios for time stretching and pitch shifting reasons (i.e. feed an algorithm with twice as much data and better results are output), yet the final masters are usually resampled to 44.1kHz because this is what most digital audio equipment is designed to handle. As you said, think CD players, many digital audio codecs, etc.

One of the primary reasons why oversampling is used is because the anti-aliasing low-pass filters can have a simpler design. It's difficult electronically to design a linear filter that has a very sharp roll-off, but alas this is something you need when sampling at 44.1kHz, otherwise you introduce audible aliasing. Hence why lots of people now use 96kHz, though if manufacturers retained the notion that the anti-aliasing filter should be as good as it can possibly be, 96k really would be redundant (unless doing the double-the-sampling-frequency trick described above for DVD audio). In my opinion, a better engineered filter is worth putting the work into, rather than paying out for more digital storage capacity. So much wasted disk space it's unbelievable.

Rant over. Resume normal course of conversation please.

Also, your ear cannot discern the difference between 44.1k and 48k.

Welp, just wanted to help derail the thread. I'm in the "it doesn't matter" camp. AFAIK, most audio applications will import audio at its original sample rate. I think you'd have to really try to get a DAW to ignore the header on a wav file.

I do work with film from time to time so everything I do is 48K and 24 bit. 48/16 is DVD standard, 48/24 is Blu-ray. All film dialogue nowadays gets recorded at 48/24.

and Modey: YES. Or probably not, I'm sure there are Gearslutz peeps who would identify.

BACK TO THREAD: RBRMYOFR POST PICS OF GEAR PORN PLAZ

PS. I always record in 48/24 too, but like was mentioned here, it's the 24 that's important. 44.1kHz isn't terrible either. Bob Katz says as much in his "Mastering Audio" book and I'd go with his advice normally, he seems to know his stuff.

The Vocoder is being sent to Robin at EMS for a tuning, one of the bands is off. Should be back soon. Here's a bit of it in action by the way: http://soundcloud.com/splitradix/spookyspansnippet

It's also in this remix I did for DAT Politics: