Native Instruments Vokator DXi

30 years as semi-pro/serious hobbyist. Home recording on P4 with 1 gig of RAM, mostly with Sonar, some Fruity Loops and Orion Pro. Self composed music

Here is the rub...it is VERY difficult to configure this...I've still been unable to use it beyond fooling around; since I bought it as part of the NI Komplete package, I'm not devestated, but the customer support is rediculous, and the manual is inadequate.

Since I've not been able to get it working right, it's a bit difficult to say

I love some of NI's programs...but this isn't one of them. If you get it as part of Komplete, it's a worthwhile addition, but given their total lack of customer service, I'd be hard pressed to recommend it by itself.

I've been involved in music and computer technology for 3 decades. I use Vokator in stand-alone mode to create unique sounds for my sampler, and in DXi mode in SONAR to mangle audio in realtime. I'm focusing on imaginative pop instrumentals, and I decided to buy Vokator to add a new sonic dimension to my musical arsenal.

Vocoding, in general, takes lots of computer processing power, so I wouldn't recommend using Vokator unless you had a powerful computer. Vokator frequently crashed on my Windows 98, Pentium 3 computer, but it works well on my Windows XP, Pentium 4 computer.

Vocoding is performed by combining the phase and pitch information from two different sound sources, A & B. I'm still not sure how vocoding works, and I suspect I'd have to have an audio engineering degree before I fully understood it. Suffice it to say that vocoding can really mangle your audio.

Overall, Vokator is complicated and feature-laden. Vokator provides many techniques and settings to affect the vocoding, and fortunately you can select which techniques are shown/hidden in the UI. The UI is mostly clean and pleasant, but some knobs and buttons are difficult to comprehend, and it is sometimes unclear how to use and bypass some settings.

MIDI automation seems to be supported for each knob in the UI.

The manual has the usual Native Instruments quality, i.e., some wrong info and outdated screen shots (I assume Vokator was still being developed while the manual was written).

Vokator is a cool toy for getting unusual sounds, and fun if you're just randomly trying stuff to see what happens, but it's probably not easy to use if you had a definite sound in mind.

Sound quality, as usual in a Native Instruments product, is very good.

Vokator is probably the most feature-laden vocoder available.

Vocoding is a way to mangle your audio. You'll have to decide if vocoding is appropriate for your music. I suspect experimental musicians will love it, whereas mainstream synth players will find it baffling and not worth the money. I consider it one quiver in my arsenal, but it certainly doesn't replace my usual synths and samplers.

Some irritating things about Vokator:

* Sound source A provides some ways to include sounds, and sound source B provides some other ways to use sounds, but there is no real reason why both A and B couldn't both provide ALL ways to use sounds. For example, there is no way to use samples as sound sources in both A and B. This is a stupid and unnecessary limitation.

* In standalone mode, there is no way to record the audio output, i.e., there is no audio recorder. This means that Vokator is not truly useable as a sound design laboratory, unless you use a third-party audio recorder such as SoundForge. Native Instruments already bundles an audio recorder with Absynth, so there's really no excuse why it wasn't included in Vokator.

* When using a preset that doesn't use a sample as a sound source, the preset still requires you to save the sample name with the preset. This means that every time you load the preset, you have to wait for the sample to be loaded, even though you don't need it.

* In the synth mode, you have to use a synth morph preset, which is the combination of 5 single synth presets that you can morph between. Unfortunately, you can't just use a single synth preset. Morph presets are a good idea, but overkill for what I usually need, so they are needlessly complicated. The user should be able to use a single synth preset if they want, and morph presets should be optional.

I'm giving Vokator an 8. It's a great first attempt at a world-class Vokator, but some irritating things about the UI should be improved.