Reaper vs. Tal-Vocoder II

[GaryG]

Ok, a quick tute in case anyone ever needs to use TALs awesome Vocoder within Reaper. TAL Vocoder II is cool in that it just uses the left and right channels for the modulator and carrier rather than any fancy side-chaining malarky. Obviously this could be useful for any plugin that uses a similar scheme. Also this is the simplest 101 way of doing it, you can play with having everything on one track if you like. I like things simple.

I'm using the Reaper 5 pre-release in case you're wondering about the GUI...

Kai, firstly create three tracks with your carrier (typically a harmonically rich synth), modulator (speech...) and the vocoder itself (don't forget to click the Input Mode button so it receives external audio). I've also created a fourth folder track so I can keep everything tidy and together:

a.PNG

Route the carrier and modulator tracks to the vocoder track by simply dragging the IO button (ROUT in R5) to the destination IO button.

Open the IO on the Vocoder track and pan the carrier hard left and modulator hard right:

d.png

That should be it:

https://soundcloud.com/lighthugger/vocoder-demo

[artao]

Open the IO on the Vocoder track and pan the carrier hard left and modulator hard right

You can also route the carrier channels 1 & 2 out to the vocoder's channel 1 in, and the modulator's 1 & 2 out to the vocoder's channel 2 in. ... Reaper. SO many ways to do the same thing. :mrcool:

[GaryG]

Yep, which is why it can be very frustrating at times. Especially when you group tracks together within folders (multi-out drum machine for example). Often lost a voice and struggled to get it back again. That's something I like with Ableton, grouping drums or tracks seems intuitive and just works. Probably not as versatile as Reaper but I find myself wondering just how much use do I make of that versatility?

[artao]

I have discovered that, using an external carrier wave, that I can no longer "play" the vocoder. Is this normally the behavior or vocoders that use two external inputs? If so, I'll need to re-think my approach to using them (with samples -- obviously, if I use an external synth input, I can play the vocoder that way).

[GaryG]

You mean you want to play it live in the classic way of playing your synth while singing in a mic? Yeah, that should work... Will dig out my mic and have a play later if I get the chance.

[artao]

You mean you want to play it live in the classic way of playing your synth while singing in a mic? Yeah, that should work... Will dig out my mic and have a play later if I get the chance.

Well, not singing, per se ... rather just playing the carrier to pitch the modulator, if that makes sense. I can play TAL Vocoder 2 using its internal "synth", but not using an external carrier.