Waves – Morphoder
Software Audio Processor
User’s Guide
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Chapter 1 – Introduction and Overview
The Waves Morphoder is a digital audio processor of the Vocoder type. The
vocoding engine allows two audio signals to be combined using one source
as a modulator and another source as the carrier. For example, using voice
as the modulator input and a synthesizer as the carrier, the result would be
that the synthesizer will “talk” and actually say the words spoken by the voice.
In the same way you can use a drum track as your modulator and the result
will be a rhythmic keyboard track in perfect sync with the drum tracks events.
Waves developed the Morphoder to offer outstanding sound quality featuring
great intelligibility and punctuation that is very easy to achieve. The Waves
Morphoder offers a built-in eight-voice polyphonic synthesizer that can provide
the carrier signal, and also the possibility to route other sources and designate
them as the modulator or carrier signal according to your needs.
By default the Morphoder will launch with the Internal synthesizer selected as
the Carrier signal and the track input as the Modulator signal. So if you insert
this plug-in over any vocal track, all you have to do is press play and play the
morphoder’s musical keyboard and it talks!
Classic vocoding is just one of the tricks this pony has to offer. The creative
possibilities with this plug-in are vast. There are many interesting sounds
possible. For example, you can use the Morphoder as an emulator for the
classic Electric Guitar TalkBox effect. Also radical pseudo-reverberation
effects can be achieved by modulating the internal noise generator.
Percussive keyboard tracks can be achieved literally by combining a keyboard
carrier sound with a percussive modulator. Rhythm guitar will also work
wonderfully.
More than just an audio processor or virtual instrument, this plug-in is actually
both, allowing you to “morph” any two signals into one with sonic clarity that is
beyond what we have heard in reference vocoders in software or hardware.
The Morphoder is indeed a high quality audio processor, but it’s also just a lot
of fun. Many of the people who heard the Morphoder immediately related to
its sound and a common reaction was simply a smile. We certainly hope the
Morphoder will make you smile too, and will provide you with a lot of useful
processing.
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Chapter 2 – Using the Morphoder
ROUTING YOUR SOURCES
To properly use the Morphoder within your favorite host application, the first
step is to identify your Modulator signal. This is important because the
Morphoder does not have means to generate an internal Modulator, although
it does have a built-in synthesizer to provide an internal carrier signal. When
you instantiate Morphoder on any track, that track’s signal will be routed as
the plug-in’s modulator signal. The modulator signal can be any signal such
as speech, drums, guitar or even rapid noise or bursts. This signal will provide
the Morphoder with means to construct a filter, which will then be applied to
the carrier. This will make the carrier sound a little bit like the modulator in its
dynamic spectral properties. In simpler words, the Carrier will adopt the
Modulator’s EQ.
Using the Morphoder within your favorite host application is quite simple.
When the Morphoder is instantiated it will load with its Internal Synth as the
selected carrier source and the track signal as the modulator. This is a
convenient starting point and once you begin playing, you should hear some
low-level modulated noise. If you don’t hear anything, that’s probably because
there is no signal present at the modulator input, or the signal is very weak. If
you have any meaningful signal in the track you should hear it modulating the
noise generator and clicking on any of the keyboard’s buttons should
introduce the modulated internal carrier sound.
The Morphoder allows you to route the modulator and carrier in other ways
such as using one of the track’s channels as the carrier and the other as the
modulator. In some host applications, one path or the other can be routed
through an external sidechain key (see the readme file to know which host
applications support external sidechain with your version of Waves
Morphoder).
ADJUSTING THE SOUND
Auditioning
The foremost condition for adjusting the sound is being able to audition it
properly. For this we recommend choosing a section that has signal in both
the Modulator and Carrier paths and playing it looped. Also, you can select a
portion that has a modulator signal and set the Carrier to the Internal
synthesizer, engage the sustain control, and press a note or a few notes on
the keyboard at the bottom of the plug-In.
Following any of the examples above, you should be hearing the Morphoder
output as set in the output section.
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Adjusting Character and Color
The first control to set is the Pressure control. This control will add gain to low
level signals until their energy nears the top bit and then begin to apply
compression. You can’t go wrong, just listen and set the amount of pressure
that sounds good to you.
The Formant ratio control initiates at 1.00 which is the natural Formant, in
which case the filter will be the same as “Learned” from the dynamic spectral
properties of the modulator. Higher values will make the whole filter slide up
the frequency range and the result will be a squeakier sound. For example,
“Aaaah” will become more “Eeeeh”. Lower values will have the opposite effect
and make the sound more boomy: “Aaaah” will sound more like “Ooooh”.
The Smoothing and Release controls both affect the time that it takes the filter
to adjust dynamically. The Smoothing is apparent when the modulator is
continued and the Release works when the modulator pauses. For speech
signals you can say that Smoothing is responsible for the filter decay
response within words while the Release is responsible for the filter decay
between words. The Smoothing value has a critical effect on the intelligibility
of speech where lower values provide higher intelligibility. The release control
resembles a reverb tail decay and can reach a value of infinity, in which case
the last filter shape will hold infinitely or as long as there is a carrier signal
present. Many times it makes sonic sense that both will have similar values,
but creative and special sounds can be achieved by having opposite settings
etc. It is recommended that you play around a little bit in order to get to know
these controls.
The Morphoder offers a 5 band paragraphic EQ to adjust the color of your
Morphoded sound. The adjustment can be carried out by dragging the grab
marker on the graph or by adjusting each numeric value box beneath the
graph.
In the Output mixer controls, jack up the gain in the modulator fader and
confirm that you are hearing the signal that you designated as the modulator.
Now apply gain to the Carrier fader and check that you are hearing the
incoming carrier signal.
Using the Internal Synthesizer and Keyboard Control.
Morphoder includes an eight-voice polyphonic synthesizer. It is designed to
be controlled via the mouse and the GUI keyboard, or by a MIDI Keyboard
controller. This functionality is not always available. It depends on the specific
plug-in version and host.
Click the GUI keyboard with the mouse to play notes. To the right of the
keyboard there is a sustain control that switches between normal mode and
sustain mode. In normal mode = Sustain Off, notes will start playing at mouse
click and stop at mouse release. In sustain mode = Sustain On, notes will start
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playing at mouse click and remain on until the next click on the same note, or
when switching sustain off. You can also Click and drag the mouse to get a
glissando.
The keyboard can be used to write automation and the written automation can
be further edited. If you want to edit the keyboard automation, it is important
that you understand the internal voices structure of this synthesizer.
Internally the synthesizer has eight voices. All voices share the same
synthesizer sound, and each voice can play a different note. From the editor
automation point of view, each of these voices will appear as an independent
automated parameter. The automation for each of the voices shows the note
this voice plays at any time, where the minimal value is note off and any other
value means the note is on.
When you play the keyboard using the mouse, the first note hit will activate
Voice 1, the second, Voice 2 etc. up to eight voices. When eight voices are
active, further clicks will not activate more voices and will be ignored until a
voice is freed. When you record automation you can later see the automation
curve for each voice separately and edit it further.
Chapter 3 – Controls and Displays
MORPHODER CONTROLS
The Morphoder GUI is arranged in five logical sections:
On the left is the Source selection controls section. This is the area where you
select the signal source of the modulator, carrier, and properties of the
internal synthesizer and noise generator.
In the middle is the EQ Contour Controls section.
To the right of the EQ Contour Controls are the Morphing Properties Controls.
Here you adjust properties of the morphing process related to time, frequency
and dynamics.
On the right is the output mixer section, including faders and solo/mute
buttons for each signal, and the output VU meters. Using these you can
monitor and adjust the final mix between each of the signals involved: the
original modulator, the original carrier, the morphed noise, and the morphed
carrier.
On the bottom is the synthesizer keyboard control.
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Source selection controls
MODULATOR SELECT: Track (for mono), Left, Right, Left+Right, SideChain
(where available). Default: Track.
This control allows you to select the signal to feed the Modulator input of the
Morphoder. The popup menu options will change according to the channel
configuration. For mono sources you will usually select the Track input as the
modulator signal. Where supported*, you will be able to route an external
signal similar to using a key or sidechain input. Stereo components allow you
to select the sum of the channels or just the Left or Right channels as the
modulator signal.
CARRIER SELECT: Synth, Left, Right, Track or SideChain (Where available).
Default: Synth.
This control selects the source for the Carrier signal input of the Morphoder.
The popup menu options are similar to those in the Modulator select popup
and will change contextually in a similar way with two exceptions:
• You will be able to select the Internal Synth as your
carrier, which will actually be the default state of the plugin.
• The Track input will show in Stereo allowing you to route
a true stereophonic carrier signal that does not apply to
modulator signal.
NOISE GENERATOR
The Morphoder offers a built-in Noise generator to “breed” the Carrier with an
airy sound. When mixed with the carrier signal, this can be very effective for
the sound of morphed speech sibilance. The noise generator is always
available and always on, but the amount of noise to mix will be controlled in
the Mixer section. The noise controls here are for filtering the otherwise
wideband white noise.
Filter: Hi-Pass, Low-Pass, Off. Default: Hi-Pass.
This control allows you to select the filter that you want to use on the Noise
generator.
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Freq: 16 to 16000Hz. Default: 250Hz.
This control specifies the cutoff frequency for the selected filter. For Hi-Pass
or Low-Pass this will be the frequency at –3dB rolloff of the slope.
SYNTH SELECT: Carrier 1 to 10. Default: Carrier 1.
The synth select popup control simply selects one of the 10 factory-provided
synth sounds. All of the provided internal synth sounds are provided as is, to
be shaped, warped and filtered by the modulator filter and envelope only. You
can use the Carrier solo button to audition the synth as stand alone, but keep
in mind that the sounds provided were specially designed to be vocoded and
the real reference is how they sound while they are morphed with the
Modulator rather than on their own.
TUNE: 220 to 880. Default: 440.
The tune control allows tuning the internal synth with a 1Hz resolution.
SPREAD: 0.0 to 1.0. Default: 0.0.
The spread control works in conjunction with the number of voices activated in
the synth. A spread of 0 will play the stereo carrier notes on top of each other
without any stereo spread. Activating spread will apply rotation to each voice,
spreading them across the stereo stage, depending on how many voices are
playing.
Sound Characteristics Controls
EQ Contour Controls.
The Morphoder offers 5 bands of EQ to set the color of the morphed sound
(note: the EQ acts only on the Morphed sound, and not on the original
modulator or carrier, even if they are mixed to the final output).
The Lowest band is a Low Shelf, the highest band is a High Shelf and the
three mid bands are bells. All bands have fully paragraphic controls and the
overall EQ curve is displayed in the Morphoder graph. The Q control adjusts
the Slope of the Shelf filters and the width of the Bell filters. The EQ controls
are all visible at all times and offer the same controls in five EQ band strips.
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G - GAIN: ±30dB. Default: 0.0dB.
This control sets the boost or cut gain of the filter.
F - FREQUENCY: 86 to 16020. Defaults: 1=258, 2=689, 3=1804, 4=4478,
5=11046.
This control defines the frequency of the specific band filter.
Q: 0.26 to 6.50. Defaults: Shelves = 2.00, Bells = 1.00.
The Q factor adjusts the slope for shelves and the width for bell filters. The
higher the value, the steeper or narrower the filters will be and vice versa.
ON/OFF: Default: On.
This control turns the specified band parameters on or off. It is handy for A/B
comparison of a certain filter’s effect on the overall sound contour.
Sound Character Controls
In addition to the EQ Contour controls the Morphoder offers 4 sound
properties controls to shape the sound.
PRESSURE: 0.0 to 50.0dB. Default: 20dB.
The Morphoder imposes on the carrier both the frequency and dynamics
contour of the Modulator. Thus, the dynamics of the morphed signal is
actually a superposition of the dynamics of both the modulator and carrier.
The Pressure control serves to gradually eliminate the modulator’s dynamics
contour. This is basically done by applying compression/limiting to the
modulator signal before morphing. We use the term Pressure because it best
describes the resulting sound quality of the morphed signal.
F
ORMANT: 0.50 to 2.00. Default: 1.00.
The Formant ratio control shifts the modulator’s frequency contour up or
down, before applying it to the carrier. Since the pitch property is set by the
carrier, this will mostly affect the formant of the modulator. For example, if you
are using a speech modulator, a value of 1 will be the natural formant while
higher values will shift the formant upwards and vice versa.
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SMOOTHING: 60 to 800. Default: 100.
This control defines how smoothly the filter tracks the frequency contour of the
modulator. Lower values sound more choppy but retain high intelligibility and
high values sound more reverberant and somewhat blur the intelligibility. We
found that the name “Smoothing” is perfect for this control as it describes the
perceptual effect of this control.
RELEASE: 50 to Infinity. Default :120.
Just like smoothing, the release control will set the time it will take the filter to
fade out in the absence of a meaningful modulator. For example, when you
have a modulator with long pauses, a normal vocoder will not output any
sound during the pause. With the release control, you can tell the Morphoder
how long to take in releasing the filter up to infinity, which will simply hold the
last constructed filter until the modulator returns.
Output Mixer Section
The Morphoder has a four-fader output mixer. Each fader adjusts the gain of
one of the Morphoder paths and has Solo and Mute controls for quick
monitoring and A/B auditioning.
CARRIER: –infinity to 0.0dB. Default: –infinity.
This control sets the Mix of the carrier source to the plug-in’s output.
MODULATOR: –infinity to 0.0dB. Default: –infinity.
This control sets the Mix of the Modulator source to the plug-in’s output.
NOISE: –infinity to 0.0dB. Default: –30dB.
This control sets the mix of the modulated noise generation to the plug-in’s
output.
MORPH: –infinity to +6dB. Default: 0.0dB.
This control sets the mix of the modulated carrier to the plug-in’s output.
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Keyboard Control:
KEYBOARD: Four octave Note On/Off. Default: all notes off.
The Keyboard provides an interface to play the Morphoder’s internal
synthesizer as explained in chapter 2.
SUSTAIN: On/Off. Default: Off.
This control switches between Normal and Sustain modes of the keyboard
controller.
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Waves Morphoder V5.0
MIDI control enhancements
In Version 5.0 the Waves Morphoder becomes a true virtual instrument!
In all supported host applications (*see list below), you can open the
Morphoder, assign a MIDI track output it, and "play it" live from a MIDI
controller, or from a MIDI track using pre-recorded MIDI data.
A new control labeled “MIDI” has been added to the left of the keyboard.
When the “MIDI” control is off, Morphoder ignores all MIDI communication
and performs exactly as it did in V4.
When the “MIDI” button is on, Morphoder adds the ability to connect its
internal carrier synthesizer to a MIDI control source. Please note that
automation recording of the keyboard will be disabled when the “MIDI” button
is on (in order to prevent conflicts and duplicity of MIDI and automation
information upon playback). However, automation reading of previously
recorded keyboard automation will continue as usual. Automation recording
of all other parameters will also remain the same.
You will notice that when “MIDI” is on, the GUI (Graphical User Interface)
keyboard will change its behavior in Sustain mode so that it will not be
possible to release a pressed key by pressing it again. Instead, you must turn
off the Sustain mode. (Simply click the Sustain button to turn it off)
The MIDI control supports the common commands of Note On, Note Off,
Note Velocity, Sustain Pedal and Pitch Wheel. The Pitch Wheel can go up or
down by 200 Cents (a whole step in either direction).
With "MIDI" on, Velocity is now available via MIDI only, so the GUI keyboard
plays all notes at the same volume, while with a MIDI controller each note will
play according to the note velocity played on the keyboard or from the
recorded sequence.
*The MIDI control support for Morphoder is implemented in:
• DAE – Native and TDM.
• VST – In accordance with the VSTi specifications.
• DX – In accordance with the DXi specifications.
• MAS – Digital performer native API.
• AU – Morphoder is controlled as an Audio Unit - Music Effect.
In most host applications the way to use this feature is straightforward and
also backward compatible with existing sessions.
Any instance of Morphoder launched will create a MIDI port to the host
application. After opening one or more instances, the relating MIDI ports will
show up as selectable MIDI track outputs.
What are you waiting for? Plug your MIDI keyboard or any other MIDI
controller into your computer workstation, and jam away with the new Waves
Morphoder V5.0!!!
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