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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.