XILS Vocoder 5000
The XILS Vocoder 5000 emulates the sophisticated filtering techniques and incredibly complex circuitry of its analog counterpart to achieve the same organic sound, precision and clarity.
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Let Your Music Do The Talking… Clearer And Better Than Ever
In the 1970’s, a company called Electronic Music Studios, or EMS, was truly at the forefront of synthesizer technology. The company’s first commercial unit, the VCS3, proved to be a huge success, and would go on to grace to catalogs of some of popular music’s most creative and innovative artists throughout the 70’s and 80’s. Artists such as Pink Floyd, The Who, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Brian Eno and Hawkwind used the VCS3 to take their musical productions in exciting and groundbreaking new directions.
EMS built upon the success of the VCS3 by releasing numerous versions of a follow-up model, the “Synthi”, including one, the Synthi KB1, a single prototype unit that was sold to the progressive rock group Yes. Then, in 1976, EMS re-established their market dominance with the EMS Vocoder 5000.
Vocoders came to prominence in the late 70’s, and can be heard on a lot of Kraftwork’s pioneering material from that era, as well as the ELO classic “Mr Blue Sky” and STYX’s worldwide hit “Mr Roboto”. A Vocoder is an analysis and synthesis system used to reproduce human speech. It split sounds, usually vocals, into their component frequencies, so that they can be re-synthesized in extraordinary new ways. And EMS’ Vocoder 5000 is widely acknowledged to be one of the most powerful and versatile analog vocoders ever created.
Vocoders mainly fell out of fashion in the 80’s and 90’s, yet still managed to find their way onto several worldwide hits such as “Pony” by Ginuwine, “Intergalactic” by The Beastie Boys, and most recently “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk. Which is why it was the perfect time for XILS to resurrect this piece of synthesizer history in an exciting new way, with features that were simply not possible in 1976, such as additional filter types, more slew rate modulations, two LFOs (one more than the original), additional oscillator waveforms, an improved speech input detector, a keyboard for playing melodies or chords, and much more. Essentially, XILS have taken a unique and already-legendary synth, and made it better than anyone could have imagined.
Introducing The XILS Vocoder 5000
XILS Labs’ Vocoder 5000 plugin is based on the EMS Flagship Vocoder, widely considered to be one of the greatest and most versatile analog vocoders ever made. The extensive filter bank in the Vocoder 5000 is one of the best you could hope for, to help you deliver the exact sound you’re aiming for, from subtly changing the gender to a voice, to an all-out robot voice effect.
How Does The XILS Vocoder 5000 Work?
A Vocoder is a synthesizer which accepts an external sound source, a musical instrument or prerecorded signal, so that you can process it, with or without the keyboard, into a huge variety of sounds. Human voice, the most variable sound of all, can be fed into the Vocoder, so that you can alter its pitch, tone, vibrato, and other characteristics, allowing you to synthesize an entire choir from a single voice, or create melodies from ordinary speech. This flexible digital plugin offers advanced features that its analog ancestor could not have offered in its time, such as more Filter types, more Slew Rate mods, more Freeze mods, 2 LFOs ( the original had none ), detailed FM and PWM, more oscillator waveforms, an improved input detector, gate input and more. And if that’s not enough, it also comes with plenty of great presets to help you find exactly what you’re looking for.
Why The XILS Vocoder 5000 Is Such A Big Deal...
- A Matrix Patch Area (22×22 or 20×20)
- Two Synthesizer core
- Two oscillators per core, modelled from the EMS VCS3 oscillator
- One noise per core
- Two LFOs per core
- One VCA-ADSR per core
- One 22 bands filter vocoder
- One 20 bands filter vocoder
