Electrix Warp Factory
The Ultimate Vocoder (1999)

 

Rackmount Midi digital Vocoder with DJ live features released at the end of the nineties.

The Warp is a pretty simple vocoder with many real-time controls that be used with either internal carrier (oscillator) or external one.

EFFECT RACKMOUNT MODULE intuive panel: no display but only 5 buttons and 7 big knobs - sounds like "tweak me, tweak me!".

panel terminal connectors:
- Midi interface
- Midi channel selector
- RCA stereo + jack main out
- RCA stereo + jack signal input
- switch for input between phono and line impedance / RIAA
- formant input with 10 /+4 gain switch.
- pedalswitch input for bypass.

Front panel terminal connectors:
- XLR micro input

 

 

VOICE hardware machine based on physical modelling algorithm instead of traditional multiband analog filtering. The vocoder principle is based on 2 basic A-B elements:
- Source is the sound to be shaped
- Formant is the signal to shape the source.
The interface is split into 3 macro sections:
- Formant input (1)
- Formant Warp (2)
- Mixing section (3).

FORMANT INPUT first section allows to choose the FORMANT sources and the relative gain optimization, according to 3 LED-meters: green and orange indicate optimum source levels while red means that input is overloaded. Special LINE ES source mode simulates the letter sibilant (like "S") with a gated white noise aimed to preserve speech intelligibility.

 

FORMANT WARP this section models the signal with various functions:
- BAND optimizes the process for either high or low frequencies - e.g. drum loops
- GENDER changes harmonic content of the formant without chancing the fundamental pitch of the musical source
- Q is the amount of filter resonance
- ORDER sets the filter algorithm 's resolution and precision
- ROBOT PITCH is an internal oscillator with variable frequency
- NOISE amount of white noise for sibilance control
- FREEZE BUTTON temporally freezes the formant shape until it is released.

 

MIXING this section allows final signal settings:
- SOURCE KILL auto-gates the signal if no incoming formant are detected
- EFFECT MIX balances between dry and wet
- BYPASS the function speaks for it self (can be assigned to external switchpedal).

 

MIDI & MEMORY all functions are mapped to Control Change # FULL LIST
It is possible to save a sound configuration using Midi sysex dump since there is no memory for storage.

 

 

 

RELATED FAMILY:

	Electrix filter factory - special double filter
	Electrix MoFX - dedicated to modulation process

 

 

 

VST PLUGIN there is no official VST plugin, however a lot of VST will do the same job, here's some exemples of both freeware and commercial stuff:

	name	price	demo
	-TAL vocoder -VOCOVEE -ROBOTRONIC	FREE VST
	-VOCODEX -SONIVOX -MORPHODER	COMMERCIAL VST

 

 

AUDIO DEMO

demo1 demo2 demo3 internal carrier ROBOT warp freeze

sibilant noise Q tweak pitch1 pitch2 gender tweak

VIDEO CLIP SELECTION Video1 video2 warp with Roland TR505