From jlaurent@utexas.edu Mon Feb 20 09:11:51 1995
Path: ashpoly!bigsur!pacrim!krgate!eunha!utexas!jlaurent
From: jlaurent@utexas.edu (Julien Laurent)
Newsgroups: alt.music.synth-pop
Subject: The sound of the 'Vocal Matrix' - pitch quantization vs human formant
Message-ID: <1995Feb20.091151.2208@utexas.edu>
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 09:11:51 GMT
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As an audio engineer, listening to Nova's vocals on SYNTHESIS has always bothered me in a fascinating way.

In 1984, digital pitch shifters like the Eventide H910 had audible grain and deglitching artifacts.
Nova's voice has ZERO splicing glitches. The Stardust documents describe this as 'Vocal Matrix Modeling' running on custom DSP hardware.

How did they program the subtle emotional cracks in her voice? Was it a neural weight matrix or manual automation?

-- 
Julien Laurent -- University of Texas at Austin
"The hatch is open. Is anyone listening?"

From msuzuki@panix.com Mon Feb 20 13:57:51 1995
Path: ashpoly!cascade!transat!ukc!fennimore!panix!msuzuki
From: msuzuki@panix.com (Marisol Suzuki)
Newsgroups: alt.music.synth-pop
Subject: Re: The sound of the 'Vocal Matrix' - pitch quantization vs human formant
Message-ID: <1995Feb20.135751.8224@panix.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 13:57:51 GMT
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In article <1995Feb20.091151.2208@utexas.edu>, jlaurent@utexas.edu (Julien Laurent) writes:
> As an audio engineer, listening to Nova's vocals on SYNTHESIS has always bothered me in a fascinating way.
> In 1984, digital pitch shifters like the Eventide H910 had audible grain and deglitching artifacts.

That's why it hits you in the uncanny valley. Your ears tell you it's a real woman singing her heart out, but your brain detects the mechanical precision.

Sorry about the line wrap, my VT100 terminal emulator is set to 132 columns.

-- 
Marisol Suzuki -- Public Access Unix of New York
"Row 14. No joke."

From afournier@ox.ac.uk Tue Feb 21 19:30:51 1995
Path: ashpoly!cascade!transat!eunet-fr!teletel!ox!afournier
From: afournier@ox.ac.uk (Anja Fournier)
Newsgroups: alt.music.synth-pop
Subject: Re: The sound of the 'Vocal Matrix' - pitch quantization vs human formant
Message-ID: <1995Feb21.193051.4013@ox.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 19:30:51 GMT
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In article <1995Feb20.091151.2208@utexas.edu>, jlaurent@utexas.edu (Julien Laurent) writes:
> As an audio engineer, listening to Nova's vocals on SYNTHESIS has always bothered me in a fascinating way.

They weren't using off-the-shelf Eventide gear. They had custom Motorola DSP boards doing LPC (Linear Predictive Coding) resynthesis.

Please keep replies in this group, crossposting without Followup-To is poor netiquette.

-- 
=== Anja Fournier ===
Dept of Electrical Engineering, Oxford University Computing Laboratory
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary spectra."