Several synthesists have shared their first audio demos of the new Moog Spectravox analog synthesizer & vocoder.
The synth is the subject of Moogfest’s $1500 Engineer pass, where synthesists build a new synth and learn about its design under the guidance of Moog engineers.
The video above, via RPLKTR, explores using the synth’s state variable filter, with vocoding set to off.
The following video, via loopop, explores some of the sonic possibilities of the Spectravox:
The next video, via Portrait Of Sound, offers more of an informal demo of the new synth:
If you’ve used the Spectravox, share your thoughts – and links – in the comments!
The vocoder is ntelligible, but not too intelligible. Its about right. I wonder how much its based on 900 series, and how much it could be based on the Kraftwerk vocoder.
I don’t like any of the demos. How hard can it be to vocode a drumloop with a pad sound?
Robotvoices, meh.
It’s noisy & grungy, with cool formant sweeps and can do interesting things shaping the output of any synth.
You can modulate the filter cut-offs at audio rates, to create unusual FX.
This makes it a great and unique (mono) effect if these are things you enjoy.
But if you want pristine high-quality vocoding I suspect digital is the only reasonable way to go unless there’s some way of modding & poly-chaining 4 SpectraVoxes to get a 32-band vocoder! 😀
Can it be modded to add a stereo mix knob + CV input, for example routing even/odd filters left & right such that they sum to mono, but you can widen the mix? That could be quite interesting.