Waves Morphoder

The vocoder has gotten a lot of attention lately. In fact, most people talk about using auto tune and cranking it to snap to the grid, but the vocoder has been doing a similar effect for almost 70+ years now. It's not exactly a heavily used plugin in today's world, but it can still be very relevant for those almost robot-like voices. This plugin takes the normal vocoder and gives you two different signals to work with. It helps make this one of the more versatile vocoders out there. The plugin contains adjustments for modulation channels, internal carrier channels, noise filter high pass/low pass, noise filter frequency, synth adjustments, tuning, spread, gain, frequency, pressure, formant, smoothing and a ton of stuff that will take forever to list. I've never read the manual, and I probably should have because this is ridiculously versatile. The plugin is easy enough to enable on your DAW -- just put it on whatever buss you want to use it on.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

Waves is the king when it comes to things such as stability and overall performance. For one, this plugin doesn't take up too much RAM or processing power, and that's a big plus considering a DAW can have tons of different plugins and virtual synths running at any time. The plugins are all cross platform compatible, so anybody with an OS X or Windows machine can run these without any problems. I've never experienced a single issue while running this plugin when it came to things like stability and overall performance. There is one issue, however, that I did come across. These plugins are 32 bit inside of OS X. For me to utilize these in Logic Pro, it needs to run a special bridge application as my DAW is a 64 bit DAW. I'm not a huge fan as to how Logic Pro implements this, and I'm hoping that Waves updates these later on. I've been using the Mercury bundle for the past half a year or so, and it's been awesome.

OVERALL OPINION

I don't use a vocoder often, but it definitely has its place for those almost "Cynic" style vocals and whatnot. I find it a bit refreshing to go back to these older techniques when newer things like auto tune and whatnot are dominating the industry today. Try it out and you might mind that it's perfect for what you're looking to do while staying original in today's world.

I didn't have any problems installing the Waves Ltd. Morphoder plug-in as it was just as easy to install as most plug-ins out there.  It only took a few minutes and I didn't have any compatibility issues or any other problems.  The interface of the software has a decent amount going on, but everything is clearly labeled and I was able to figure out everything rather quickly.  The software has a variety of parameters including a graph that has five bands of EQ, as well as settings and parameters for a modulator, a carrier, as well as sections for noise and a synth.  The output section has parameters for carrier, modulation, noise, and morph, and also has parameters for pressure, formant, smoothing, and release.  I haven't seen the manual for this plug-in, so I don't know if it would be helpful or not.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I've never had any problems running the Waves Ltd. Morphoder as it has always run smoothly and stably for me.  I am currently running the plug-in on a Mac Book Pro that has a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM.  I run the plug-in in Pro Tools LE 7.4 that runs with a Digi 002R audio interface.  This set up has always worked fine for me, and as long as you have an adequate system to run your sequencer, I don't think that the Waves Ltd. Morphoder will give you much trouble at all.


OVERALL OPINION

I've been using the Waves Ltd. Morphoder for about a year and a half or two years and it is definitley a good vocoder.  It is easy to use and has a lot of parameters to insure that you will have total control over your sound.  It is cool to have the keyboard right on there as it makes it easy to get the pitches that you want.  The price of the plug-in isn't all that cheap but isn't expensive either.  It is priced right and is a plugin that I would definitley recommend for those who are interested in getting an in depth vocoder plug-in.