Go Deeper With Pentagon, The Hidden Vocoder

Pentagon has been around in the soft synth world for a long time. If you’re a SONAR user you’re probably familiar with its prowess as an analogue modeling synth. What you might not be familiar with, though, is that it can be used as a vocoder, too.

Check out the CakeTV video below on how to setup and use Pentagon as a vocoder.

So, what is a vocoder, anyways? In a nutshell, its a form of synthesis that uses multiband filters and an envelope follower to reproduce human speech. It was developed in the 1930s as a way to encode speech for transmission and was picked up by musicians in the following decades.

Nowadays its a common effect that creates those robotic, metallic, synthesized vocal sounds that have been on so many electronic, funk, hip-hop, and pop records over the years.

Pentagon does a good job of creating those types of sounds, but with a twist. Its got more of a ‘synth’ sounds than most vocoders. In other words, the vocal really sounds like the synth preset that its being filtered through, and this lends itself to a large, textured, multi-layered tone.

As seen in the video above, the best way to dial in a particular sound is to go through the presets, find somehting close to what you want, and then remove some of the effects like Delay, Chorus, etc.

SONAR has many more deep features waiting to be discovered. Check out our CakeTV Go Deeper page to learn more.