JNeffLind wrote:joeyluck wrote:I use a little bit of all my vocoder options:
BV512
Paresec
Predator
But my favorite is probably Bitspeek.
Hey Joey. I'm dubbing you the resident vocoder expert since there don't seem to be any other likely candidates. I'm curious if you know how to get what I think of as the "classic" vocoder sound (as heard in Daft Punk's stuff).
Though I am not Joey, and I am no "expert," I would say I do know a few things around this subject. Daft Punk is actually a bit tricky because even though most people think DP uses a vocoder, most of the time they are actually using a Rocktron talk box and Roland's VP-9000 rack. There are few things that can emulate the cleanliness and "sound" that Daft Punk has (it has been said that they spent over a week working on the vocal track for Game of Love), and truly it is part of what makes them so famous.
Outside of Reason the only VST option to get you "that sound" instantly is iZotope's VocalSynth, which features a "talk box emulator" and is the closest thing I have ever heard to coming close to instant "Daft Punk" vocals. Inside of Reason there is not much to get you there, but here are some suggestions to try. Inside of Neptune there is actually a fairly decent vocal synth feature, and utilizing that will give you more of a Imogen Heap sound, but is useful to mix in for the clarity of the synthesized vocals. You can pretty much throw the stock BV512 Vocoder Reason has straight in the garbage, as it is truly dated, limited, and the filters are just too harsh to give you anything smooth and silky like what Daft Punk uses. The stock Vocoder in Reason is, however, useful if you want vocals like Battlestar Galactica's Cylon vocals, but if you are not really going for a sfx route the BV512 is a bust. Parsec features arguably one of the best vocoders in Reason, and when combined with Neptune's vocal synth you can get some very pleasing results (the trick to getting Parsec's vocoder to sound smooth is to reset the device and only use one side of Parsec & to keep the filters as simple as possible). Predator's vocoder is more for the aforementioned BG Cylon sound and certainly nothing to really write home about (it reminds me of the Korg MS2000B's vocoder, whispy and airy with not enough sine waveform to make it smooth and shine). Nothing really sounds much like the old Roland vocoders in Reason if you're wanting the late 80's / early 90's epic rap instrumentals, and that is part of the reason why I think if a developer were to work on this it would be a huge hit in our community. And again, much of what we normally attribute as a "vocoder" sound is not actually a vocoder but is actually a talk box being expertly performed by bands like Daft Punk, Chromeo, etc.
If you need exact parameters for the above mentioned settings just let me know and I can help you the best I can!
That being said, it was for this very topic of finding a good sounding vocoder that I decided to venture out to Ableton-land and grab VocalSynth as my companion in this journey, and I have not regretted it a single second.