I’m new to Ovox and I’ve done a little testing, but I am overwhelmed by all of the adjustments/controls available in the interface. I have contacted Waves support about this, but I will try looking for suggestions here, too.
I have a MIDI track in Cakewalk with notes to my melody already entered. Then I recorded singing words for that melody in an audio track. I want to send the audio from that track to Ovox and have the pitch of the notes controlled by the notes I entered in the MIDI track. I got that part working by adding Ovox as an FX in the audio track and then selecting Ovox as the output for the MIDI track. I am blown away. Now my vocals sound in the Ovox internal synth at perfect pitch as directed by the MIDI notes.
The point I’m trying to improve is I want to hear the words more clearly. I know one possible solution is to have a copy of the vocals and mix in some of the unprocessed vocals. I don’t want to do that. In some cases I may record my vocals at a lower pitch before having Ovox adjust them to the notes in the MIDI track.
I’ve been playing with the controls in Ovox and it’s getting better but the words are still a little fuzzy. Can you give me some suggestions for how to clear up the speech/words of the vocal singing in Ovox?
Yeah intelligibility has never been strong suit of synth vocoders. Part of the trick is how you use the “unvoiced” elements. I think this is represented by the Sibilance control in Ovox.
Basically it should control the amount of percussive consonant sounds that get mixed in. Sounds like K’s T’s B’s. Blending some of that back in can help a vocal sound more intelligible.
Another trick you can try is instead of blending a copy of the original track, as you’re trying to avoid, you can blend in a version that has everything below 4-5Khz filtered out. So all you get is those upper percussive and S style sounds. This won’t help much with lower plosive sounds though, like B or even P.
So another thing to try is putting a noise gate on it and try to let just the peaking transients come through with a quick and attack and release setting. So what you end up with there is a stuttery consonant thing that you can blend in.
Simon. Thanks for the tips. I will try to play with those ideas. I also experimented some more with OVOX and it looks like the Correction/Voice dials at the bottom let me mix in dry vocals within OVOX itself. I tried using the Notes correction setting and that seems to auto tune my vocals to the MIDI track that has the notes I am singing. That’s really what I want and it seems to work pretty well. So I am playing with mixing in wet/dry vocals with correction with just enough wet vocals to give more musicality and character to my weak vocals. That’s what I’m after more than getting a robot sound. Do you have any idea what settings might take the electronic buzz off the voice that I hear sometimes in OVOX? I also tried contacting Waves Help but they responded that they can’t help me with that since it’s not a technical problem. They said I just need to play with OVOX to see how it works. You’d think they know they product enough to answer those kinds of questions. You’ve been more help than they were.
Yeah that was an odd response from Waves. When you think about it though, it’s a pretty big company and even though many or most of them may be musicians themselves I’m willing to bet not everyone uses everything. You might have just been unlucky enough to get the only guy who doesn’t use Ovox. 
The electronic buzz noise might be a the Harmonic and/or Noise control being set too high, or it could be the Formant Filter section. Try turning the controls down one be one until you can isolate it. Don’t forget to check both Left and right side since Ovox has two synth sections.
I have played with it some more and while I can’t control it in some ways that I want, I found that it does a good job of cleaning up my voice as an auto tune. It even does a good job as auto tune alone if I turn off the synth and just use my vocal track. I also have Melodyne auto tune, but I regret that purchase now as Ovox does a better job of using an external MIDI track to tune my voice to the specific notes I want to sing. It sounds a little robotic, but it’s not bad. It’s a lot cheaper than hiring a professional singer and it’s a lot better sound than my old creaky vocals.
I remember fighting with ovox. I love the plug-in, but I remember having similar struggles as you have described.
I think I used to make sure to put a noise filter like a waves NS1 and a strong deesser before ovox on the chain. I think I used to play with different EQ settings before it on the Chain as well, as ovox can be pretty sensitive.
But, I am not a great singer and my space can be a little noisy so may have been more of a necessity for my particulars.
This is typically not an Ovox issue, but its an issue that stems back to the early days of vocoders. Its a limitation of the technology.