I’ve made lots of tests this afternoon and while I was removing the delays, I realised that increasing the feedback / drive still does something strange (metallic and glassy) to the sound when used with higher parameters. It’s probably a bit CPU consuming, but when used in conjunction with the Robot Voice, it adds some strange personnality to the overall result, So the Feedback thing has been kept. But of course, it’s probable that users that need more CPU cycles will delete this and the associated Hydras.
-deleted- (No, there was nothing nasty here. I just tend to get lost in details 
) 
Your setup and fine and outstanding the way it is. Sorry, if I dived a bit too deep into this. 
… no problem.
it’s true that I’m a bit worried about the CPU% usage of this chain. In a dubstep music production, 140BPM, it’s won’t be a problem. But in a breakcore / dnb 280BPM track… 
There should be a method to reduce the chain size, and to reduce also the CPU.
When I check for example the Wikipedia reference for Formants, they say that [b]most often the two first formants, f[sub]1[/sub] and f[sub]2[/sub], are enough to disambiguate the vowels.
[/b]Vowel (IPA)
Formant f[sub]1[/sub] Formant f[sub]2[/sub]
i 240 Hz 2400 Hz
y 235 Hz 2100 Hz
e 390 Hz 2300 Hz
ø 370 Hz 1900 Hz
ɛ 610 Hz 1900 Hz
œ 585 Hz 1710 Hz
a 850 Hz 1610 Hz
ɶ 820 Hz 1530 Hz
ɑ 750 Hz 940 Hz
ɒ 700 Hz 760 Hz
ʌ 600 Hz 1170 Hz
ɔ 500 Hz 700 Hz
ɤ 460 Hz 1310 Hz
o 360 Hz 640 Hz
ɯ 300 Hz 1390 Hz
u 250 Hz 595 Hz
What about testing those filters ? And by the way, you can see that there are more formants than AEIOU there. Reducing the 4 filters to 2 filters will logically allow me to remove 2 LFOs, 2 Inertial Sliders. It would also allow me to reduce the size of the left “keyboard control part” (25 keys, that’s maybe a bit large and the notion of “cycles” looks redundant in the end)…
Amazing work, respect
I had that ‘IOU’ pattern from the older Bit_Arts xrns stuck in my head for months
Hey dwarde thanx !! …and now that I’ve spent more than 2 days on it, I’ve got my own YAWEIEOH pattern stuck in my own mind, lol… 
Hey renoisers !
After a few more hours on it, I’ve improved the precision of the « aeiou » vowels and reduced a bit the required ressources.
Here’s the Easy Formants v2.5 FINAL 
it’s a 100% native, fast, and easy to re-use trick
Features
- optimized formants filters system
- high precision vowels (x2)
- a bit more CPU friendly (5% Faster)
- simplified keyboard based formants control
- improved file size (2K lighter)
- formants feedback control
- auto Q
- auto bot voice mode (robotizer)
- RExciter ™ powered
DOWNLOAD HERE.
FAQ
How to install it in my own song ?
- Right-click somewhere on the Track DSP chain. - Select Device Chain => Save As… - Select your target directory and give a name to the chain. - It must have the .XRNT file extention. - Then when you edit your song, right click somewhere on your Track DSP tab. - Select Device Chain => Load… - Find your .XRNT file, load it. - That’s all. Yep.
What input sounds / samples does it require to work well ?
- SAW based samples (oblique waveform) with notes/tones within a range of 300 to 3400 Hz in the Renoise spectrum.
How to modify Formants ?
- Formants are « Keyboard Controled ». Both the Qwerty and the MIDI keyboard can be used. - Use the C-0 to D#1 Keys to modify formants while the music is played. - You can modify them while you record notes, or play LIVE, with your QWERTY or MIDI keyboard. - Go into the Sample Keyzones. - Modify your Sample Layer so that it doesn’t use notes from C-0 to D#1. - By this way you’ll be able to both play your sample & control the filter in the same track.
How exactly did you placed formants on the low notes ?
- Formants are composed of 1 cycle of ‘ieawyuw’ vowels fragmented in 16 different notes and subtle differences.
[indent]C-0 ==================================> D#1
i – y – e – ø – ɛ – œ – a – ɶ – ɑ – ɒ – ʌ – ɔ – ɤ – o – ɯ – u
[/indent]
- you’ve got to use your ears to know these vowels !
How to sound lika robot ?
- Completely drag the Humanize slider to the left.
I don’t like the robot sound. How do I delete it ?
- Drag a bit the Humanize slider to the right. - Or uncheck « Bot Voice »
What is the Feedback parameter ?
- This is something that adds some personnality to the sound. - Warning, too high parameters will produce a glassy/metallic effect, that is stange, but however interesting.
What is the Auto Q parameter ?
- The Auto Q parameter slightly increases the Q factor of bandpass filters when formants deal with higher frequencies. You can switch it off if you want to use the Bandwidth slider like a Wet/Dry signal slider.
My filtered sound is poor compared to yours.
- It’s logical. Some harmonics have been removed by the chain. Put the *Exciter DSP and the end of the road, and raise the DSP sliders to revive the original sound. - Try to use a SAW based bass samples, because it’s the closest from the male human vocal typical base waveform.
Credits
- Bit_Arts - initial inspiration, additionnal tips - Wikipedia - for giving us a proper frequency table - The Bellows – Invisible Melodies- kRAKEn/gORe – Inertial Sliders(Secret Formula Device Powered) Trick
have fun with Renoise !
kurtz/lapiNIC
this is top quality, fantastic work!
Hey thanx midi_error 
You can get a new example of how using the device chain in a song [here] (the .xrns module can also be downloaded).
Awesome, thanks! Robot a-capella!!!
This is simply amazing, why didn’t i notice this earlier? 
I’ve been playing with this toy all day now and i ended up with making my own version.
It’s a very simple and stripped down version of what KURTZ has made. It’s a lot less advanced, but very simple to tweak to make some nice effects.
I’m really no audio tech, but i think it sounds cool so i thought i’d share it.
I hope it’s ok i post it here KURTZ, i couldn’t have made it without your Easy Formants.
Formant Wannabe
thanx the bellows ! indeed, this version keeps the same logic (using the multitap filters) ; the control of the effect is based on a direct key-tracker+hydra scheme (you dropped the inertial sliders) ; the way to deal with it isn’t that obvious at first and the overall result may look a bit too robotic sometimes, but anyway, you can perform some cool & strange fx with it, and the very good point is that it’s far more cpu friendly than all my previous works.
Wow I’m glad someone bumped this! I’ve been trying to make formant filters manually but I really suck at it. Nothing I came up with was remotely useful. Can’t wait to get home from work and try this!
Freaking sweet!
Your easy formants is much better for making voice like sounds, but i found it a bit difficult to get it to do what i wanted even if it is capable of doing it. I didn’t really understand much of the inertia bit so i tried to strip it down so i could understand better what was going on.
Bass Quacker is probably a better name for my version as it doesn’t really speak very human like, but sounds more like a duck making noises. 
I wrote a short note in the song comments on how to make variations in the sound, i tried to make it easy to use and understand, but maybe not?
Of course when i say easy to use i mean easy to use for the effects it can do, not so much real voice simulation. 
Using LFO’s on the parameters i mentioned can be very interesting, i’ll see if i can make a version demonstrating it. I managed to make some robotic wovels with it.
Is there any easy way to explain to me how those inertial sliders work?
The secret of vocal modulations is that they are slowly morphing. For example when you say “hey you!” the transitions between mouth states are sweet and slow.
So if you want to emulate the human vocal tractus then you have to make transitions between DSP states slower.
When you deal with the *Filter native DSP, a parameter called “inertia” does the job and it’s hardcoded ; but in the native *MultiTap device, there isn’t any “inertia” parameter at all.
And using this MultiTap Device for creating a Formant Filter, by default, will result more in a “robotic voice” than a human voices, why, because robots slice their vocal expressiveness in some predefined states, that are changed without any transition.
That’s why adding some Inertia in the MultiTap Sliders is so important.
kraken/gore used the Hidden Formula Device to make it : thanx to this, all your automated sliders can behave like the typical intertia slider.
You put it “between” two meta devices. Check it [there]. You just have to copy the script in the clipboard and paste it in a chain.
But using this special Fomula Device between your 2 hydras and your 2 multitaps will probably make your cpu usage a bit more intensive.
Anyway, your technique gives pretty interesting results, indeed, especially on the bass domain where we’ll always searching new sounds and new perspectives.
Thanks KURTZ!
I have used the Easy Formants in SDC77. I’m not that good at it yet, but i managed to get some cool “monster voice” out of it, some half decent choir effects and lot of noise.
glad you could use it successfully
(btw I need to hurry, I even didn’t started anything and the deadline is … near)
Ooh, can’t wait to see your .xrns for that. I tried and failed to get good choir effects out of it, I want to see what you did.
I probably shouldn’t call it choir, i think one of my earlier muddy mixes made it sound a bit like a choir, but now it sounds mostly like a noisy robot/monster/man trying to burp along. 
It can sound a bit like throat singing at some points though.
Anyway, the track is a bit distorted and very noisy, so the way i have set it up is probably not very suitable for more normal techniques.
Yes you need to hurry up kurtz, not many hours left! 