The Guide to Vocoding

This guide's goal is to walk you through the process of vocoding a line of dialogue from a metrocop to sound like their leaked beta counterparts.

This guide is based around FL Studio and the Vocodex FL plugin, which unfortunately; aren't free.

If you dont have them, then I'm sorry, but you're kind of outta luck since this guide is made around them. Hopefully it may still provide some useful insights regardless.


This guide assumes the following:

• That you have at least a basic understanding of how FL Studio works and it's general layout. If you do not, go watch some tutorials on it, get yourself familiar with FL Studio and it's UI, and then come back.
  
  
• That you have a very basic understanding of how sound files work. If you know what a sound's sample rate is, then you're good to go. If not, you should be ok but feel free to do some learning later.
  
  
• That you have a basic understanding of Source engine modding. If you know how to extract the retail voice lines for the metropolice, you're golden. Otherwise, take some time to learn and understand the Source engine's directories and file systems. Look up some tutorials on extracting sound files for Half-Life 2.
  
  
• That you have the Half-Life 2 Beta: Mega Build on hand for voice samples and such.

As for the Half-Life 2 leaked files, if you don't have those, you will be perfectly fine. You'll just have to find your own samples to use.

Other wise, if you don't know or have anything else, you might still learn a thing or two, but will probably end up very lost.
And in such case, you can scroll down to the bottom of this description where you'll find the fl studio project files for the beta metrocop and combine soldier vocoder voices. Just download and extract them to a folder, make sure the sound files are in the same folder as the .flp files, and then load up the project and boom.

Thanks to u/Trivvy for their guide and explanation on reddit that helped me figure things out!

And credit to Barion for doing this in the first place!

You can check out their video that uses it, here.

If you wish to skip:

FL Studio Project FIles

[drive.google.com]

The Tram Ride (Beginning Notes)

This guide will walk you through the whole process of using FL Studio's Vocodex plugin-in to recreate the civil protection's vocoder effect from 2003.

Before we go, lets quickly discuss different keywords here:

• Sample: This is simply referring to a sound file that we will be using in FL Studio.
  
  
• Carrier Sample: The sound file that contains a good example of the effect that we want. We will be using it later in the vocoder. In this case, it will be a cut cp's voiceline from 2003.
  
  
• Vocal Sample / Unprocessed Sample: The sound file that we want to vocode. In this case, it will be a retail cp's voice line.

I recommend you create a folder to hold the project file, the sound file you wish to use as a carrier for your vocoder, the sound file you wish to vocode, and the final product sound file.

Now lets begin!

The Beginning: Finding the Right Sample

First things first, lets find ourselves a good audio clip of the effect we wish to recreate.

For this tutorial, we'll use the "mc1que_career.wav" voiceline.
It's clean, it doesn't have annoying radio clicking sounds added in and the effect we want is clearly heard in it. This is our carrier sample. This is what we will be getting the noise we want from.


You can find this in the leaked version of half life 2. However, if you don't have access to this sound, you'll have to simply find some other sound to use a carrier.

In the context of this guide, it doesn't matter what you use. Since no matter what sound you use, you will be going through the same process anyways.


Move your sample into that folder I told you to create earlier. Rename the sample if you wish.

If need be, clean it up a bit using audacity and cut out anything that you don't want to be apart of the effect.




Now that we have our sample, lets load up fl studio, and set up a project.

Setting Up the Project and It's Tracks for Vocoding

Start by adjusting your sample rate in the audio settings.
Ensure it is 44100hz. Anything higher will not work in Source. Anything lower will sound crusty.

Now create a basic project without a limiter.















Delete the pre-included samplers. Don't worry about the kick sampler, we'll delete it later.















Setup your tracks to look like the image below.










Green will be the raw voiceline you want to vocode.
Blue will be the noise from the processed sample from edison used as a carrier in vocodex.
Red will the finished final product from the vocoder.

Essentially, the blue track will hold whatever the noise is that you want the vocals in the green track to sound like. Which will then be output through the red track.

Track 1 will not have any actual part in the vocoding process, it's only purpose is to allow us to use Edison. Which you can delete from this track after you're done processing the sample. Or you can do the whole Edison process in another project and then use the saved sample in the vocoding process, however you want.



Once your tracks look like the image above, sidechain both tracks 2 & 3 to track 4.
Then turn down the output to master track for both tracks 2 & 3. Only track 4 should be outputting sound.



























Now the project and it's tracks are setup and ready to go!
Time to get the sample ready.

Processing the Sample Using Edison

Now it's time to load that sample of unprocessed dialogue into Edison.

This will essentially extract the noise that we want in the voice line and make it fit for use as a carrier in the vocoder.


Start by adding Edison into track one.


















Then click on the floppy disk icon to open the file menu. Select "Load Sample."
















Select the sound file you want, and it will be added into the Edison editor.

Now from here, we want to blur the sample.















Then copy the settings and the graph from this image.






















Then accept those settings.

Now we move onto equalizing the sample.
















Then do the same here, copy the settings and graph.




















Accept the settings.
The carrier sample is now ready.

Take a listen to the final product and see if it has enough of the noise you wish the vocoder to use. If it doesn't sound right, simply go back and pick a different sample and/or play around with the blur and equalizer settings.





We will now save the sample as a file for use as a carrier in our vocoder.





















Save it as a WAV file and name it something like "betacp_carriersample".

Alright- we're done here.

Now we move onto adding and configuring plug-ins.

Adding the Plug-ins and Copying Settings

Now it's time to add in the needed plugins and configure them to match the settings used for the beta cps.




Start by dragging and dropping the carrier sample we saved earlier onto the playlist. Set the carrrier's audio clip to play on track 3, the blue track; since it is noise.













We can now delete the kick sampler as well as Edison from track 1.

Now we will add the Vocodex plug-in to track 4, the red one.

Once done, copy the settings of the vocoder and the track equalization to match the image below.

























track 3, the blue one; uses only the flanger plugin. Copy it's settings to match below, then set flanger's mix level to around 0.35.












Now for track 2, the green one; we will use the EQUO and fruity REEVERB 2 plugins. Match their settings to the image below. Also match the track's equalizer graph as well.

We're almost done, finally!

Now we just need to discuss how to actually vocode the audio and then export it for use in the Source engine.

The Finale: Vocoding the Audio Sample and Exporting It

Now we can start vocoding things!

So lets go over how to do exactly that.





Begin by finding the line of dialogue you wish to vocode.


Put it into the same folder as before. Name it vocals if you wish.


Simply drag the file onto the playlist. Then set the vocal sample's audio clip to play on track 2. The vocals track.
Ensure that both audio clips are enabled by checking the dots to the left of each one. They should both be green.













If you dont already have the carrier sample on the playlist, do so now. Try to make sure the end of the carrier sample mostly matches up with the end of the vocal sample. Any area left out on either track will simply be silence. Splice the carrier and loop it like in the image if you need to.














Now press play.

You should hear the voice with the vocoder's effect now playing.
If not, go back and retrace your steps.

Now just render the voice line as a wav file, and you're golden!
Remember, the sample rate for the file must be 44100.

If you're mass processing files, you don't want to vocode about 400 files and then realize that they're all 48k instead of 44k. Trust me. It hurts.

Final Thoughts

I'm not an FL Studio professional.


There are probably better ways to do this. I'm just sharing my way of accomplishing this recreation.

See what you can make by screwing around with all the settings. I've only given you a foundation to stand on here, feel free to mess with it and see what happens. Maybe you'll get closer to the original effect?

In which case, feel free to share in the discussions below how you did it!

This should be considered a good starting point. Not the end-all be-all.

Once again, thanks to u/Trivvy for their guide and explanation on reddit that helped me figure things out!

And credit to Barion for doing it in the first place!

So thats the end of the guide. Happy vocoding!

[graymainer]

not sure, idk how to hook up the plugin into a realtime voice changer. but if you could find a way to hook it up to one, then probably. but idk how to do that.

I did manage to do this by using a combination of Cantabile (to sample and vocode), voicemeeter (to modify my audio), and foobar (to play a sample for Cantabile to pick up).
but idk remember exactly how i did it, i think i followed some kind of tutorial about vocoding with voicemeeter maybe.


Not sure. but good luck tho. lmk if you learn anything about it

[✙]

will Vocodex plugin work in real time voice changer?

[graymainer]

sorry, idk. i also wondered that too, and unfortunately i couldn't figure it out either. i have to imagine that fl studio at least has support for it some where though.

[банан]

can I batch process voice samples? I can't seem to figure out how to do this

[graymainer]

Yeah, it be that way sometimes. garrys mod and a lot of other games are infested with joke guides. about 5% of which are actually funny.

Glad it helped you though!

[SillyQue]

this genuenly helpful GUIDE dosent even have enough ratings to have the stars at the top of the page, and yet "HOEF TOGH GHERBT FRETRE STARAM POOISDTS" is at the top of the feed (i think its called the feed, although honesly im not sure what its called)

[graymainer]

I've given you the project files, and i tested them beforehand. So if it's not doing something right, then i'm sorry but there's not much i can do from here.

[Suspicious Radio Station]

Is there anyway to make it not sound like 4$$?
Whenever I use it, It is really hard to understand.

[graymainer]

Sorry, but i'm not familiar with vb cable.

[Mistah Coco]

Can you give some advice on how to use vb cable with it.