What is Vox Humana?

Comments · 81

• UT

  @utdgrant · 1 month ago

  The Polymoog 280a Vox Humana sound actually has three independent LFOs. One for sawtooth rank vibrato (pitch modulation), one for pulse rank vibrato, and one for pulse rank PWM. Vibrato depth is surprisingly high.

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• _M

  @_marlene · 2 weeks ago

  Again and again I find, in my lil personal journey along vintage music tech, that the real wellspring of all vintage synthesis is the organ!

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• BO

  @bobtronic73 · 3 weeks ago

  Really cool sound, thanks for the breakdown. Gonna try this myself.

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• KE

  @Keith-k1e · 4 weeks ago (edited)

  The Poly Moog was basically a Divide Down Oscillator Based Synth Like Electronic Organs and String Ensembles of the 1970&apos;s, , Doesn&apos;t Actually Use VCO&apos;s Like most synths of its Era &nbsp; <br>Hence it has One Master Oscillator for the Saw Rank and One Master for the PW Rank each with its Own Independent &nbsp;LFO that cannot be synced together Hence The Vibrato for the Two Oscillators are never at the same Rate Depth or Phase Ever Which Adds To The Complexity of The Ensemble Effect giving it a Huge Sound &nbsp;(Impossible For Doing Regular Vibrato like your Oberhiem Though)<br>And it has 73 Voice Cards One for each key for the Envelopes Etc So Its Fully Polyphonic &nbsp;<br>Now the Keyboard Doesn&apos;t do a Modern Keyboard Style Split &nbsp;But you can Do Offsets so the PWM LFO Depth for the Lower Section can have an offset for The Depth and initial PW mark space Ratio &nbsp;So you need to Lower the Depth of the Lower Section to stop it getting too mushy as the Rate the PWM LFO is set is Quite High and also move its initial position more to the Pulse than Square &nbsp;So this sound really needs 3 Independent LFO&apos;s to get Right Ok &nbsp;Plus the Filter can also have an offset for the lower half of the Keyboard and it should be slightly Lower for a Darker Sound &nbsp; I&apos;m not Sure How many &nbsp;LFO&apos;s your Oberhiem Has ????? &nbsp;But For Full Authenticity 3 is absolutely required <br>Plus The Reverb is also a Big part of the sound &nbsp; Medium Bright Plate in the 2 to 3 Seconds decay Range and very wet But The Biggee Here is getting the pre Delay Right &nbsp;You need to tweak it so the Reverb Tail is 180 Degrees out of Phase with the Dry Signal and Voila &nbsp; Gary Numan Is Conquered &nbsp; <br>I personally use a very Flexible Soft Synth Like U-he Zebra 2 or Steinberg HALion to do these as there is no shortage of LFO&apos;s in those beasts and with there extremely Flexible Signal Path its very easy to recreate some of the More Unusual and Quirky Poly Synth Designs of the Earlier 1970&apos;s &nbsp;that were discontinued after the Prophet 5 came out in 1978<br> &nbsp;<br>Right Some Values, &nbsp;Saw Rank Pitch LFO 4.7hz depth 33 cents &nbsp;PW Rank Pitch LFO 5.5hz depth 36 cents &nbsp; PW LFO 0.5hz same for whole keyboard with Lower Section 50/50 initial MS ratio (basically a Square Wave) &nbsp;LFO Mod Depth 50%<br>Upper Section 62/38 MS Ratio (So slightly off Centre PW Wave) &nbsp;LFO Mod Depth 60% &nbsp;The Offset split position is Lower ends at F2 upper starts at F sharp 2 &nbsp;The Upper Section Filter Cutoff 5300hz Lower Section 900hz and the detune between the Saw and PW Ranks is 7 cents &nbsp;<br>Now these figures are for the Steinberg HALion 7 and HALion Sonic Soft Synth Engine and will probably not translate exactly to Other Synths but it gives you a Good Starting Point<br>All 3 of the LFO&apos;s are using Triangle Waves but Sine would be good if your synth doesn&apos;t do Triangles <br>PS As the Poly Moog uses Divide down Oscillators rather than VCO&apos;s they Don&apos;t Drift and have Fixed Ratios so no Random Pitch Variation per Voice So reduce any Vintage Modes and Detunes to there Minimum if possible, &nbsp;<br>And as for Filter Cutoff variation Trim on the Poly Moog it is per physical key Rather than per Voice (73 Voice cards Remember ?) &nbsp;So its not as random as the Voice Allocation System on Post 1978 style analogue poly synths with limited poly so adjust to Best Advantage and Taste Ok &nbsp; <br>PPS Just a Thought if your Synth has only 2 LFO&apos;s so you cant do the separate Saw Osc PW Osc Vibrato rates and Depths and still keep PWM on the menu rather than leave out the PWM another way of getting complex Vibrato is to use an Effect processor referred to as a Ensemble Unit which is basically a Chorus on Steroids to Complexify the Vibrato Pitch Mod &nbsp; Good Luck

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• SE

  @sedumjp · 2 weeks ago

  The ASM hydrasynth has a recreation of the Vox Humana sound, the patch name is &apos;Vox Numana&apos;. &nbsp;And that wins the patch naming competition for this decade...

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• RC

  @rcarlberg · 1 month ago

  It always amazes me, the pioneers with their modular Moogs had to first figure out how to make a sound before ever creating music with that sound. &nbsp;As OCD as I am, I always got caught up in that first step and spent hours/days/weeks just playing with the sounds.

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• TH

  @thema3v6 · 1 month ago

  Nice vid on the origins of the Vox Humana. One thing that adds to the sound is the filter resonance that is at max value, if I see it correctly.

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• MI

  @Michel-r6m · 3 weeks ago

  Gary Numan 😃👍

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• OR

  @organfairy · 1 month ago

  It was quite common in the early 1980&apos;s to have a &quot;Choir&quot; or &quot;Vocal&quot; voice on electronic organs. My favourite is the one from Technics&apos; E66 - I have the portable C-600 version. I believe they were made with a &apos;vocal filter&apos; that has two or three bandpass filters to give the note an &quot;AAAAAAAAAHHHH&quot; character to a sawtooth wave. But the first electronic &apos;Vox Humana&apos; instrument was the Trautonium invented in 1930. According to Oskar Sala, who continued to develop and play it until his death in 2002, the inventor Friedrich Trautwein wanted to imitate the filter characteristics of the human mouth and he came pretty close - at least for something made in 1930.

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• AS

  @Ashfaq9914 · 2 weeks ago (edited)

  Great video. I have the original polymoog keyboard. This is a brilliant recreation of its vox humana preset 👌

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• JA

  @jamespuleo3269 · 4 weeks ago

  Thanks for posting.<br>First time checking out your content ~~~<br>Brooklyn NYC, Thurs Sept 3rd, 1 a.m.

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• RI

  @rickharper3940 · 3 weeks ago

  on old pump organs [harmoniums] vox humana meant &quot;human voice&quot;...

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