marcedwards

Agreed! Also, context matters. How and where you’re listening matters.

Thank you! What are you working on? Sounds interesting.

Yes! Not sure how many times I’ve watched that, but I will watch it at least once every time someone posts it.

Yeah, owning their masters was a very smart move. I was surprised they rented the Sennheiser instead of buying one. Having said that, they don’t come up for sale very often.

Ah, cheers! I’m in Australia, and it seems like Alto won’t ship here. I’m sure they’ll appear on a store that does ship to me soon.

Thank you!

I feel like that’s a theme for Arturia’s plugins. I have their 1176 compressor and some other stuff. They’re nice, but use tons of CPU and can be a bit flaky at times.

Did you buy one? I think it’s very likely I’ll get a VC16, but they’re not in stock anywhere I purchase from yet.

You may already know this, but Junkie XL/Tom Holkenborg has done some great film soundtracks, too.

Awesome! That would have been so good. I saw them just once — the Alive 2007 tour. Was a great day.

I really, really like Human After All. It’s probably their second most cohesive album, given how much they used the DigiTech Talker and DigiTech Synth Wah all over it. (Second to Random Access Memories in terms of being cohesive.)

Yeah, there’s a few, and I probably should have included more plugins. I don’t mind the built in Ableton vocoder. The built in Logic Pro one is a bit average. I like the XILS 201 plugin, but it’s not as nice as many of the hardware vocoders I tested. I guess it depends what you‘re after and how much vocoder you need.

(Note that the XILS 201 plugin requires iLok. I think iLok sucks.)

Thanks! I’ll give it a listen. Number of bands doesn’t necessarily dictate the quality of results — the Electro-Harmonix V256 has 256 bands, and it’s not even in the top 5 out of the vocoders I tested, imo.

We’re working hard on it! It’s going to be good. There’s some more info on this page: https://bjango.com/mac/skala/

Thanks. :)

Thanks for the talk link! I’m going to try writing some harmonizer code next, so your video is right up my alley. I believe IVL’s algorithm also isn’t FFT-based. That makes sense, given the CPU power around on consumer tech at the time.

As for Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: It’s difficult to know for sure without comments from Daft Punk themselves, but the DigiTech Talker has such a unique, throaty sound, and it’s all over the Human After All album. My confidence varies with my guesses, but Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is one of the more confident ones, given how distinctive the Talker is. They also used so much DigiTech gear, especially on that album.

Hopefully they’ll see the article and let me know which bits are wrong.

Yep, I’ve read that as well. The workflow and sound of the VP-9000 make me think it’s not what they used. It’s just so cumbersome to use, and it sounds pretty bad, and to my ears doesn’t match the results. The covers using DigiTech Vocalist EX models match so, so closely to the original songs.

It’s hard to know without an official word from our favourite robots, but I think you’d struggle to get the sound of any Daft Punk song out of a VP-9000. I’m really not sure where that rumour started.

I almost bought a VP-9000 to test, but sonically it’s so far off, I didn’t bother.

The Oblivion soundtrack is amazing! Love it. I’ve listened to it so many times. I haven’t seen the movie yet. I should do that.

There’s rumours they’re working on more material. I wouldn’t blame them for telling the world they’ve broken up, just to take the pressure off. I can live in hope, right?

That gives me something to research! I’ve only scratched the surface of IVL’s algorithm, but intend to look into it further.

Yep! The Sennheiser and Ultimate VoIS are in their own league. There are some other rare high-end analogue vocoders that I would have loved to include in the comparison, but I don’t know anyone who owns them. The EMS vocoders are supposed to be amazing, too.

I can’t speak on Dromedary Modular’s behalf and I think rising parts costs have been an issue, but buying an Ultimate VoIS should be a fair bit cheaper than the Moog vocoder.

Absolutely. Hopefully there’s at least one more.

Surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it

Did you listen to the example audio in the video? Soft synths and digital emulation can be absolutely amazing these days, but the VSM201 and Ultimate VoIS are in their own league. It’d be pretty easy to pick them out from a blind test with other vocoders.

Oh, it also might be of interest that the IVL algorithm isn’t FFT-based. I think their harmonizers sound better than the rest, so maybe FFT isn’t the best way to go.

Kai Krause wrote the VSM201 manual and helped sell it at Sennheiser?! You’re blowing my mind. I didn’t expect that info today.

Thank you! Your kind comment helps. :)

I wonder how many are still in working condition today? Can’t be many. I’d love to see one in person, one day.

And now you have some scaling factor values to match things easily.

Pasting UI images into team chat apps is pretty common, and the apps I’ve used have some pretty serious and ongoing issues. Not fun when others are making decisions based on those images.

Yep, yep, yep. Getting better quickly, but regressions are common, too.

(QuickLook on macOS hasn’t shown correct colours for a while now. FB12602125 and FB13475690 if anyone from Apple is reading this and wants to take a look!)

You’re conflating the tools with user errors. Photoshop, Resolve, and Blender aren’t doing it wrong because some users do it wrong.

I agree, but defaults also matter. I’d like our tools to not assume everyone’s an expert, which means the default should be to provide good results. Photoshop can definitely work with linear profiles, and the 32-bit mode is good when you need it.