That said, BV-X has a few tricks up its sleeves that I feel can help achieve a similar sound. Some particular things I kept in mind and settings I used:
- With a real talk box, your goal is to only shape the vowels with your mouth, but not produce sound of those vowels, because that will pick up in the mic and sound funky. However, you do need to produce the consonants, so those come directly from your mouth. So with the assignment of Pitched/Unpitched -> Mod Level, your voice can come through when the signal is unpitched. This is a little different than Noise Auto as it's the dry signal of your vocal.
- Something else to consider with a talkbox is the little bit of sound bleed from the synth/guitar. Even with the tube in your mouth and the end blocked, you can always hear the sound resonating inside the vinyl tube. So I have the Modulator Level targeting the Carrier Level (because this patch is setup for Auto Mode). If you disable Auto Mode, just dial in a little bit of the Carrier Level. Ideally, this carrier bleed would probably run through a separate filter/IR and not be as clean. Maybe we can get separate outputs for the carrier and modulator?
- I used the Vintage mode. I like it. It's set to 13 bands with the Band Resonance dialed in. I think it sounds beefy and juicy lol
- I used the small room reverb at the lowest decay setting to create space and a presence. Unlike a vocoder which is a direct sound, a talkbox has to be recorded into a mic.
- The comb filter is doing a little something, but not too much. I'm still playing with that.
- Modulator level is also targeting the the Wave Shape. I'm still playing with that as well.
One of the biggest tricks to remember when trying to emulate a talkbox is to put something in your mouth!
It could be your toothbrush, candy stick, or even a vinyl tube if you got one!
Anyways, let me know what you think and what you would change and feel free to post your talkbox patches here!