Roland AX-7 as vocoder?

[SpockIOm]

Hi All

I'm new to playing keys via midi, so before I drop money on an exercise in futility, I wondered if I were to run a microphone through the midi in on my AX-7 and play through my midi out via ipad as normal would I have a crude vocoder?

Sorry if this is a completely stupid question, but if you don't ask you'll never know!

Cheers

 

[Ted Nicoson]

Microphones output analog audio (in other words: "sound"). A MIDI-IN connection accepts only digital data that is designed to instruct keyboards or sound modules how to make their sounds. MIDI is not sound. MIDI is sort of the electronic equivalent of the slotted paper rolls that go into a player piano. Those paper rolls can in no way be considered "sound" themselves, but they do instruct the piano how to make its sounds. So, NO, you can not connect your microphone to your AX-7's MIDI circuits.

Vocoders accept analog audio voice data from a microphone and analog audio sound from another device (usually a keyboard) and use that second signal to "modulate" the voice signal. Vocoders can be separate standalone units, or they can be built-in to a keyboard, but even if built-in, they still just modulate one analog signal with another analog signal. The analog signals may be converted to digital before the modulation process, but the modulated signal is still converted back to analog for output. So the overall vocoder is still analog in and analog out.

 

[SpockIOm]

I suspected it wasn't possible, but thank you for explaining to me why not!

 

[happyrat1]

You could turn an AX-7 into a vocoder quite easily simply by adding one of these to it.

http://www.tc-helicon.com/products/voicetone-synth/