Talk:Vocoder

Vocoder and voder

A - the Vocoder was never known as the 'voder' - that was a different device, developed by a lot of the same people, that was one of the first speech synthesizers. And a lot of recent recordings that sound very like a vocoder has been used are in fact using pitch correction software with the parameters adjusted to over emphasise the effect (like Cher's Believe)

I suggest there be more examples of vocoding listed in this article. The examples should be more recent. Cher, Daft Punk, and Air have all used vocoders in the past 10 years. Air uses them every chance they get. Maybe add a small section with a list? MichaelD 23:22, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I removed this, as I already covered formants as frequency peaks and dips from resonance:

Of course, the actual qualities of speech cannot be reproduced this easily. In addition to a single fundamental frequency, the vocal system adds in a number of resonant frequencies that add character and quality to the voice, known as the formant. Without capturing these additional qualities, the vocoder will never sound "real".

- Omegatron 17:46, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'm confused. The description in the article is confusing, and now that I've thought about it more, my knowledge of various vocoder types has several different variations. I was taught that this is how a channel vocoder works:

Channel vocoder

One type of early vocoder design is the channel vocoder. There are two major sections. The first section simply detects the fundamental frequency of the waveform over time. This value is recorded (or transmitted). The other section breaks the frequency content of the original signal into a series of frequency bands (using band-pass filters). Instead of storing the entire waveform from each of these bands, only the magnitudes of each band are recorded. To reproduce the signal, an oscillator with heavy harmonic content (a square wave or triangle wave, for instance) is run at the recorded fundamental frequencies, and this raw signal is passed through a filterbank. The filters' magnitudes are controlled by the values measured at the original filterbank. The resulting signal has a fundamental frequency close to the original signal, with a similar filtered spectrum.

This would probably use equally spaced bands.

And my knowledge of a phase vocoder is related to the STFT version, where you are measuring all the frequency bins and keeping the complex data (magnitude and phase) and using an inverse STFT to reproduce. Then for data compression, you can throw away all the values with lower than a certain threshold magnitude if you want. However, these two don't work the same way. Phase vocoder is supposed to be "one step above" the channel vocoder. But a channel vocoder using the STFT would throw away the phase data, with no frequency detection as I already described. On the other hand, a phase vocoder "enhancement" of my described channel vocoder would be.... weird. Comments? - Omegatron 18:09, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Example List

I added important vocoder artists Zapp/Roger Troutman, Herbie Hancock. These two artists have made really extensive and dedicated use of vocoder (most notably on albums "Feets don't Fail me Now" and "Zapp"). I wonder why they were not included before. What about Isao Tomita's arrangement of "Colliwog's Cakewalk"? Is that vocoder? If it is, then it must be mentioned.

the following entries were removed in order to make list cleaner. (I assume they were not very important entries. If I was wrong, then you can return some of them)

• Britney Spears - Toxic (2:38)
• Rammstein - Mutter (Vocoder remix)
• Asia - Open Your Eyes (intro)
• Skinny Puppy - Worlock (Chorus)
• Front Line Assembly - Bio-mechanic (Chorus)
• Nine Inch Nails - Starfuckers, Inc. (Version 2) (Starting at 1:46)
• Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion (Intro to David Thoener Remix)
• Loverboy - Queen Of The Broken Hearts (bridge/end chorus)
• Laura Branigan - The Lucky One (bridge/end chorus)
• Legendary Pink Dots - Blackzone (Live '89) (Final verse)
• Skinny Puppy - Goneja
• Pink Floyd - Sheep (Parody of 23rd Psalm just before third verse)

-J.S, 8.4.2005.

• Peter Frampton - Show me the way

This is an article about vocoders, not a list of songs which have vocoders. A list of a few very popular songs could be useful so people can think "oh that's what they sound like", but otherwise start List of songs which use vocoders (and might as well pre-emptively list it on vfd as well).  :-) - Omegatron 13:57, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Someone already created List_of_songs_that_feature_a_vocoder and it was deleted in January: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_songs_that_feature_a_vocoder. If a list of examples doesn't belong in its own article, then it just needs to be shortened and kept in here. Also, Peter Frampton used a talk box, not a vocoder, in Show Me The Way and Do You Feel Like We Do. Same with Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith. And in the section about the Antares Autotune, I think we need a cite about Cher using Autotune on Believe because I'm pretty sure the engineer used a vocoder (among other techniques), not Autotune. I'm not even sure Autotune was out yet by then. Here's my cite to support my theory: [[1]] Raindog469 21:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

User:Raindog469: If you click on the soundonsound.com link today, you'll see a footnote explaining that Cher's engineer did, in fact, use the Autotune. User:Rekoil 10:09, 23 July 2007

I agree it shouldn't be a poorly-choosen ad hoc list of some songs which use vocoders! Better to list certain key artists / tracks which were particular innovative/notable (many of which are already in there) Putting in the fact that the Legendary Pink Dots (?!) one used a vocoder in a single verse of a single live version of a single song is ridiculous.--feline1 14:35, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think the lenght of the list is OK now. There are perhaps a couple of not-so-important-at-all titles and something important may be missing. So those who have relevant knowledge, may keep on fine tuning the list. -J.S. Apr10,2005

I was the original person to start making a list of bands and songs which were good examples of the vocoder in use. The reason I put this up in the first place was definitely thinking anyone who was wondering what a vocoder is would like to find examples of it in use, as many simply do not understand how it could possibly sound. I will respectfully state that I think it is incorrect to consider some of my options as being "poorly-chosen" or "rediculous". I listed what I would consider to be truly awesome examples of what a vocoder can do.

The Industrial music genre is notable for it's vocoder work, whihc is apparent in almost any major band within it, in some song or another. Many of Front 242 drums are created with vocoders, for example. While I can understand the opinion on LPD, the use in that song is an excellent example of the power of the vocoder. I will leave it off as it is obscure and it is live.

However, I strongly disagree with "Worlock" by Skinny Puppy being left off this list. "Worlock" features a vocoder prominently throughout the chorus with a rather stunning impact which has lead it to become one of the band's most well known and beloved songs. They are also pioneers of Industrial, so I am going to return this to the list. It's just too prime an example of brilliant use, by a forerunner of the genre in one of their best songs. I removed the listing of their song "Goneja" in favor of this.

In addition, Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" is another necessary item to keep on the page. This is a very old, very popular example of a "talking guitar" and was my introduction to the instrument. This band is popular enough to merit them staying on said list.

- matt, april 11, 2005

Seriously, the list is ridiculously over sized. I sympathize with the person who previously vandalized the page to point that out. I've tried to keep it manageable on several occasions, but it just grows and grows as everyone apparently feels compelled to add their favourite band (/their friend's band) to the list. Can't we keep it to something like 5 good (not necessarily best, but fairly representative) songs per decade and, if necessary, make the List of songs which use vocoders as Omegatron previous suggested? Better yet, why doesn't someone make an audio demo of a vocoder in action so we can reduce the list of songs even further? -- Oarih 16:59, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

The list is an evergrowing embarrassment. It should contain at most about 5 examples for each decade, all of which have been big hits and/or hugely influential.

Hi... um, it seems this article has no real list now, unfortunately. I had no idea what a vocoder is, and I would love to hear what one sounds like through various examples... if there are really a lot of songs, may I suggest a seperate article for a list? In anycase, I would appreciate if some kind of list is compiled of songs that use a vocoder. The talk box article for one, cited a good number of examples quite perfectly to my needs with enough varied artists to find through my collection of songs to hear what one sounds like. I wouldn't mind this don't the same, heh. Thanks. -- Shadowolf 00:27, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Hide and Seek from Imogen Heap was on this list : this incorrect, she used a harmoniser, a real time multichannel transposer, for this song. Not a vocoder. see : http://aurgasm.us/2005/10/aurgasm-interview-imogen-heap.html. And no, a harmoniser is not the same thing as a vococder.. a harmoniser creates transposed copies of the input signal, the frequencies of which are controlled by midi.

Nahum Reduta 06:01, 2 March 2007 (UTC) — Whenever I think of vocoders, I think of Zapp and Roger, or perhaps the other way around. Whoever removed Troutman from the page made a huge error, as Z&R is just another pop group without the vocoder.

Bryan 12:34, 3 April 2008 - Agree, vocoders are synonymous with Roger Troutman to anyone listening to Funk and R&B music of the early 80's. His samples found its way into countless early rap songs as well - particularly on the west coast. Hope to see his reference reinstated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.169.70.148 (talk)

Talking Guitar?

I think some more research should be done re "Talking Guitar" or "Talk Box" of Johnny Guitar Watson & Peter Frampton. I used to own an electric guitar accessory which comprised a miniature amplifier and speaker combo, with a plastic tube which physically relayed the guitar sound from the mini-speaker into the guitarist's mouth. This was not a vocoder.

design 15/09/05

Yes, I agree with you. The old talk-box (I'm personally thinking of Joe Walsh) was NOT a vocoder, because it doesn't process your voice electronically. Instead it works mechanically, as the motion of your mouth changes the sound coming out of a speaker. See Talk box.

However, it IS possible to ELECTRONICALLY modulate a guitar carrier wave with a voice. I just don't know anyone who's done it in music.

24.213.90.666 29/09/05

Someone put Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" in there -- same deal, talk box not vocoder. I removed it. Jerry Kindall

Vocoders in Television

Two notable examples of vocoders used in television series are the Cylon voices in Battlestar_Galactica_(1978) and V_(TV_series).

There's an unsupported freeware 18 channel software vocoder for Windows, called CYLONIX http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~clark/cyclonix.html

2000s: Kraftwerk?

I'm sorry, but for "Tour De France Soundtracks", I can't see why it should be given as an example use of a vocoder by Kraftwerk. "Vitamin" has a little bit of something backing Florian's voice that might be a vocoderish backing effect, but I was under the assumption that the majority of vocals on the rest of this CD come from computer voice simulators, and not vocoders.

There's tons more stuff that you could put in the 2000s list, instead of Kraftwerk.

Phase vocoder

The phase vocoder is not at all adequately dealt with here. It would be nice if somebody could add a section (or an entirely separate entry) on the phase vocoder algorithm.

RE: the John Larry Kelly section

surely that was a classic example of speech synthesis, which could be considered related - but is essentially different. A vocoder requires a person talking as a modulator, a carrier wave (oscillator, synth or sample sound) and the vocoder then produces an output based on the modulated carrier. The 'daisy daisy' example is of formant speech synthesis, segment recombining. That process uses stored data about phonemes being pulled from memory and used with a generator in an order to give recognisable speech. I'm not sure how wide you want a definition of vocoding to spread?

List of music releases featuring a vocoder

I'm trying to clean this article up, so if any of you have more suggestions of the use of a vocoder in a song, please add it. --Nullcherri 19:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, someone already created List_of_songs_that_feature_a_vocoder and it was deleted in January: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_songs_that_feature_a_vocoder. While I can't come up with any criticisms of the list, I would expect a visit from the deletionists before long. The discussion on the AFD article referenced above, apart from the usual AFD references to edit wars and maintainability and whatnot, seemed to center around whether every instrument should have a list of example songs that use it. Well, many articles about concrete objects feature pictures of that object, but WP has no means (as far as I can tell) to include a sample of how a musical instrument sounds so people can identify it. If it did, I'd upload one of my own lousy little vocoder experiments under a CC license (or the GFDL if it can apply to music.) So a list of examples (even if a brief one) is necessary. If anything were split out of the article, I'd suggest the creation of Vocoder (musical instrument) since I think that's what most people are looking for when they find this page, and most of the technical gobbledygook is in the non-music-related section. Raindog469 21:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I see, thank you for the clarification and I apologize for not noticing that this had been mentioned before. I suppose the creation of Vocoder (musical instrument) would be better justification for the list, but unfortunately I can't lend a hand because I don't know enough about them. I just know I like vocoders used in music. :) --Nullcherri 05:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Other voice effects (!?)

I feel the article should focus on the vocoder. A link to an article on audio effects for voice or whatever might be good, but including information on the use of ring modulators and comb filters for making robot voices in an article on vocoders seems way too off topic to me, particularly as neither is likely to be confused with a vocoder. -- Oarih 05:27, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, we should split this article. We also need to check whether there are similar articles, or sections within them, regarding such topic.Dr. Who 11:01, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree too.--feline1 11:29, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree three! Leaving the section's intro paragraph as is, listing the various other things frequently confused with vocoder, and then a prominent link to the detailed page would be ideal. There seems to be a lot of agreement around this idea, so I'll check back in a few days and then do it myself if it hasn't been done already, s'ok? --Arvedui 11:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

• Makes sense. The title should be something like "robotic voice effects". The purpose in this article is to list the various effects that get confused with the vocoder more often than not. So I wouldn't say it's off topic but has grown a little too comprehensive for this purpose. Arru 19:43, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

• On second thought, maybe this is not such a good idea. People mistake talk box and autotuner for vocoders all the time, as well as the other ones in the rare cases they appear. They sound similar enough that it's not possible to describe the vocoder sound unabigously without comparing to these other effects. 70% of what is said in that section would still have to be said in the vocoder article after a split. (ie. name of effect and at least one most famous example of application) Arru 19:52, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

• I disagree here... listing the frequently-mistaken devices and including a link with more information on all of them should be fine. As for telling them apart, I think it's enough in the main article to mention that it's frequently confused with [these other things] (maybe even specifying a few particularly well-known non-vocoder examples). Beyond that, giving a decent list of positive examples of what it IS and what it sounds like, including notable usage-examples, should be fine for this article. Especially when combined with a prominent sectional link to the split-page. Right now the long list of non-vocoder details in the middle kind of distracts from the rest of the article. --Arvedui 11:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

So, is there some other way of distinguishing vocoder from other robot effects, or should the split proposal be put to rest? Arru 10:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

How about this: create the 2nd article; in this vocoder article put (in a larger font / box) something like: "Other devices used to create "Robotic voice effects" are sometimes confused with the vocoder: see article (link 2nd article).
As for verbally describing the sounds, audio samples of each would be much more ideal. There are lots of freeware plugs to do vocoding and talkbox.

I really like both of these ideas! The sound-sample suggestion in particular is great. Now who wants to do them all up? :D --Arvedui 11:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

While I'm here, I think the article is not too good as it stands; it has a "written by committee" feel. The section on vocoder theory is quite unclear (why discuss human vocalizing??). A block diagram of a basic vocoder would help: Jim Aitkin has one here for example.
I realize people would like to get musical instances in this article ... and some towards the end seem appropriate ... but really, it needs to concentrate on the hard job of describing a vocoder so more people can understand the idea. Basically it boils down to filtering out envelopes of one sound, and imposing them on a second sound. Twang 07:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

This article also seems to confuse the vocoder with other effects. For example, "O Superman" (Laurie Anderson) was, I believe, an Eventide Harmonizer, rather than a Vocoder. Same with "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap (it's a harmonizer, but not necessarily an Eventide).

Vocoder examples

Recent edits to the article seem to have revolved around adding examples of vocoder use in the pop music world. While a few examples are OK, Wikipedia is not about lists for their own sake, and there should now be a limit on the number of vocoder examples given in the article. Further additions may be removed or placed on a new page, as they are not adding to an understanding of the subject.--Ianmacm 14:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The Voder

I searched for voder hoping to find information about The Voder, and was disappointed to find that it redirects here, with no mention on the page about that device. How come? Homer Dudley is mentioned, but The Voder is not. Decoder24 02:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Try: http://www.wendycarlos.com/vocoders.html

or: http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/vocoder/

Vocoder in musical context prior to the 1970's

... can be found i.e. here [2] on the Internet Archive's OTR section. This link features three 15 minute episodes of the first radio show of comedian Henry Morgan ("Here's Morgan"), produced somewhere between 1940 and the 1950's. In the first of the three episodes (after approx. 13:00), a very typical polyphonic vocoder "choir" application can be heard (apparently recorded 1942!), as well as a short monophonic line in the second episode.

This may not be important for the article, but it shows that musical vocoder application as we know it didn't start with Wendy Carlos or Kraftwerk. Musical application in "non-popular" music variety was not uncommon before (Stockhausen?), not only in the electronic music studios which came up after the war and quite some broadcast stations owned a vocoder. I was pretty amazed to find such a typical sound in such an early example in this radio show, which is published under CC "Public Domain" and hence can be used for demonstration on WP. 213.39.209.232 07:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

This sounds to me like a Sonovox, and not a vocoder.

But this article is conspicuously lacking mentions of Peter Thomas for the theme to Raumpatrouille (1966), and Bruce Haack's Electric Lucifer (1970). 75.49.251.170 (talk) 08:31, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Darleks did it before the Cyclons in battlestar galacticta

I'm sorry, but it's a total sham that this article states that the cyclons (in Battlestar Galacticta used ring modulation, but fails to make any mention of daleks using the same method, since 15 years previously. It's obvious therefore that Daleks should have predcedence over cyclons in the section where it's stated, with cyclons having bein mentioned as "also using this method to give them their distinctive voices". Agree? -User:TOMNORTHWALES

List of vocoder users

This section was removed because it was becoming unencyclopedic (see WP:INFO). The section was messy and trivia based, and was without proper prose style. There is no need to list every artist, album etc using a vocoder. --♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 20:55, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

General Comments about this article

In "Vocoder Theory", the first sentence of the second paragraph references "this basic carrier wave". A "basic carrier wave" has not been introduced.

Also, the second paragraph claims that the process "results in a series of numbers". First, this could describe any digital process. Second, the following paragraph states that there are analog vocoders.

How about a discussion of the use of vocoders in digital telephony?

213.255.230.3 (talk) 18:19, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Vocaloid2

Does the Japanese Vocaloid software series count as a Vocoder?