Using Pentagon vocoder in X1?

Hi. i never actually used pentagon for vocoding sense i use tal_vocoder. I found this video on how to set it though. http://www.youtube.com/wa...WdYrxXo0xA   i hope this helps.

It works and there's instructions in the forum somewhere. I tried it, but I don't remember the magic incantation to make it work. 

4. Insert a MIDI track into the project and route it to Pentagon

Seth Perlstein [Cakewalk
]

It's actually quite simple ...

1. Drag and drop Pentagon from Browser to FX bin of desired track
2. In Pentagon, left click on the name of the synth, where it says 'Pentagon' towards the bottom
3. Choose 'Voice Modulator' from the list and turn it ON.
4. Insert a MIDI track into the project and route it to Pentagon
5. Tweak Pentagon to find the desired sound

Now you're ready to process audio through Pentagon and trigger it from your keyboard via MIDI.

SP

So first of all, thank you for the response!  At least now I know I was on the right track - it wasn't clear until reading your post!


I am not finding it "quite simple".  Which means we are having very different experiences here, and maybe many other users the same way.

All of your instructions are fine except step 4:

"Insert a MIDI track into the project and route it to Pentagon."

When I have tried to do this, the list of allowed routes are to synths that show up in the browser, but not the synth that's embedded in the FX list.  I.e. "Pentagon I [Track 2]" IIRC.  So either the naming convention is too ambiguous, and I just didn't try all the names (but I tried everything plugging away at this for quite a while), or there's a bug.

I'll revisit it and maybe can make it work.  But I found step 4 enormously confusing.

Thanks again.

From and earlier SOS article


It's A Vocoder!

PI makes a decent vocoder. I don't know why Cakewalk don't do more to promote this feature, but here's how to use it.
Each of the oscillators can use a custom waveform in addition to the 14 standard ones.
1. Do not insert Pentagon into a track using the Insert / Soft Synth command. Instead, right-click in an audio track FX bin and go Soft Synths / Pentagon I. We'll call this the audio/instrument track, as it has characteristics of both.
2. Create a MIDI track to drive the audio/instrument track and assign its MIDI output to PI.
3. Assign the audio/instrument track input to your mic audio-input source (ie. from your audio interface).
4. Set the audio/instrument track Input Echo to 'On'.
5. Call up the PI patch you want to use as the vocoder 'carrier'.
6. Click on the PI logo and go Voice Modulator / On.
7. If you want a more 'voice-like' effect, click on the Pentagon I logo and go Formant Filter / On.
8. Speak into the mic, play your keyboard, and voila — instant vocoder!
You're not limited to using a source plugged into a Sonar audio input to do the vocoding. For example, one of my favorite tricks is to load a drum part into the audio/instrument track and use that to modulate whatever patch is selected in the Pentagon I. You can also manipulate the filter, LFO, VCA and other controls while all this is playing. In fact, you can appear to 'gate' the vocoded signal by setting a short amplitude decay time on the PI amplifier. This causes the patch sound to decay rapidly; when there's no signal left, there's nothing for the mic or other input to vocode, so you won't hear what's happening at the input.

Fred

The synthrack and dropdownlist have the same order.

huminado


Very cool!  It works!  Hooray!  :)

Here's what I learned:

If you have more than one Pentagon I softsynth in the browser (for whatever reason), there's no way (that I can see) to tell which one is assigned to the FX channel of the audio track.  In the FX channel it just shows up as "Pentagon I", not "Pentagon I 1" or "Pentagon I 2", or you see it named as "Pentagon I [6: Track 6]".  So when assigning the MIDI output, it seems to be guesswork at that point.

Rename the synths in the Synth Rack and those names will show up in the list of available track I/O.

SP

I found out why this just muted my tracks. It was unclear to me that there had to be midi notes in the midi track. I guess the vocals basically just control volume on the Pentagon and it has to have some midi notes to play. I thought that it would somehow get the note information from the audio but this is obviously note the case. Thx, Mike F.