Trying to use the "Vocoder" effect

[digiday]

Hi all,

Now I'm trying to use the "Vocoder" effect... yes, I want to be like Jeff Lynne of ELO (The Electric Light Orchestra) in the 1978 hit, "Mr. Blue Sky"... listen to the sample of this song using an actual Vocoder machine on this Wikipedia page... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Blue_S ... d_sections
and see this link about what a "Vocoder" (Voice Encoder) was originally built for and the room sized machine that it was in 1943... now it's a little digital filter in Audacity... cool... if I can use it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder

I have posted a screenshot of what I am getting when I try to use this filter/effect... also, I did a search for "Vocoder" on the Audacity wiki, but it doesn't find much of anything except a link to "Download Nyquist Plug-ins"... the word "Nyquist" is in the message that says "Nyquist did not return audio" that I get when I try to use the Vocoder effect on a pre-recorded voice sample that I'm testing with...

VOCODERfilter.jpg

Please scroll to see all of this screenshot above.

The Vocoder interface in Audacity says, "...Vocoder only works on unsplit stereo tracks. For best results, the voice should be in the left channel and white noise (from Generate > Noise) or some other carrier wave should be in the right channel."

Since I don't know what an "unsplit stereo track" is, I am not following these guidelines as of yet.

Does anyone out there know about the "Vocoder" effect?

"♫♫ Mister Blue Sky, Mister Blue Sky, Mi-ster Blue Sky-yiy ♫♫".

Thanks,

digiday

[Gale Andrews]

Wiki is for tips and advanced tricks but not the reference for the software which is the Manual (instructions to use Vocoder in that link). The vocoder in 1.3.12 needs an unsplit stereo track and you have to add a carrier wave like noise in the right channel to vocode the left channel with. An "unsplit" stereo track is a track that says "stereo" to left of the waveform, not "left" and "right" as it would if you clicked in the track name of a stereo track and and chose "Split Stereo Track".

1.3.13 alpha has IMO a much more user-friendly experimental vocoder called "Easy Vocoder" that doesn't need an additional carrier wave and works on mono and stereo tracks (i.e. it can give you a true stereo vocoded track that preserves left/right information that was in the original). It does also work on "unsplit" stereo tracks.



Gale

[digiday]

Thanks Gale,

I'm getting into this now... I did a search in the Audacity manual and somehow didn't get or didn't see the info about the Vocoder.

Your robot like efficiency in answering my question and providing relevant links and information about the Vocoder effect and the Audacity alpha release is reminiscent of the Vocoder robot sound itself... "THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE... DANGER, DANGER, DANGER, WILL ROBINSON"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_does_not_compute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger,_Will_Robinson

If I install the v1.3.13 alpha Audacity, will that overwrite my v1.3.12 beta version?

Thanks,

digiday

[Gale Andrews]

I did a search in the Audacity manual and somehow didn't get or didn't see the info about the Vocoder.

Search on the Wikis (the Manual is a wiki too) does need improving but it seems to find Vocoder OK:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Spec ... ch=vocoder

If I install the v1.3.13 alpha Audacity, will that overwrite my v1.3.12 beta version?

No. 1.3.13 is a zip file, so not installable. The only way it will affect 1.3.12 is if you change a Preference or other stored setting while using 1.3.13. 1.3.12 would then use that setting when you run it, but Vocoder would not change your settings. Note that if you add a "Portable Settings" folder to the 1.3.13 folder, then 1.3.13 will write its settings there and 1.3.12 will ignore them.

If you prefer, just download the Easy Vocoder here, put it in the "Plug-Ins" folder inside your 1.3.12 installation folder, then restart 1.3.12.



Gale

[digiday]

Wow, thanks again Gale,

"THAT DOES COMPUTE... SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY, GALE ANDREWS!"...

I think I'll try the "Easy Vocoder" plug-in... once I buy a new mic...
click here to read about my cheap old mic that doesn't work on almost any computer


Also, not sure if you already saw this post...
click here to read about how great Audacity is as reviewed by a digial detainee/inmate

digiday

[GLaDOS996]

I got a problem. One time, I tried to do vocoder. Like it said. One sound must be on the left side (mono) and the other side must be on the right side. The music project had the same length, but it always says "Sorry, can't apply effect on stereo tracks where the tracks don't match." WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?

Audacity people, PLEASE HELP ME!

[steve]

I got a problem. One time, I tried to do vocoder. Like it said. One sound must be on the left side (mono) and the other side must be on the right side. The music project had the same length, but it always says "Sorry, can't apply effect on stereo tracks where the tracks don't match." WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?

Audacity people, PLEASE HELP ME!

Is that the exact error message?
At what point does that message appear?

[GLaDOS996]

This happens when I used the tempo effect to match the audio from the original.

Just saying

[steve]

This happens when I used the tempo effect to match the audio from the original.

"This happens" ?
What happens?
You get some sort of error message?