YaYaYa Ya Ya "Secret" disclosed--Clips Added

[Transmogrifox]

I was messing around last night with my envelope filter and some effects on my computer.  I discovered my SoundBlaster Audigy comes with a great array of digital FX--one of them being a ring modulator.

I turned the ring modulator on and started playing through it with my filter on the front end set on real high resonance, and I started hearing this "YaYaYaYa" vocal sound coming out, very similar to Digitech's yaya sound.

A little more tweaking revealed that the best yaya happens with a ring mod carrier  between about 1900 Hz and 4 kHz (depending on how "deep throated" your yaya man is), with a high-pass filter on the input signal with a cut-off off about 3-4 kHz (I don't know the order digital filter the SB Audigy uses).  The envelope filter was set to bandpass response with a high Q setting on the input of the whole thing.

It makes sense why it works, since a narrow bandwidth filter limits the magnitude and number of non-harmonic crossterms are generated by the ring-modulator.  The high-pass filter on the input further reduces the lower frequency content, which tends to generate more noisey sounds common to ring mods.

I read in a digitech manual about their yaya being a phaser and a wah modulated together (and I would assume in reverse to eachother, where their center frequencies cross at the "ya" frequency).  Who knows, maybe they did use a ring mod and don't let anybody know.

Either way, there is one way to go about it.  Make a ring modulator and an envelope filter and use the EF in front of the RM.  Set the RM to about 2 kHz and use an EQ or something to roll off the lows starting at around 3 to 4 kHz.

[Zero the hero]

Have you tried it with analogue effects?
I'll try your solution with my maestro ring modulator, the maestro filter and my ten band graphic eq.

[Paul Marossy]

Is that anything like the "eeyah eeyah" setting on the Zoom 9030?

[JimRayden]

I had a digitech once, and i must tell I love that YaYa, even though I didn't appreciate it back then. It's be real cool to have the YaYa sound once again, but in analogue form this time.

---------
Jimbo

[Transmogrifox]

Have you tried it with analogue effects?
I'll try your solution with my maestro ring modulator, the maestro filter and my ten band graphic eq.

I'm interested in the outcome.  Tell me how it does.  I think I'll get out my breadboard soon here and see if I can get it to work as an all-analog system, then perhaps put together a schematic for all y'all.  I can't think of any reason it wouldn't do the same thing with an analog high-pass filter and ring modulator.  It does produce the "ya ya" without the HPF, but the HPF helped clean it up a lot.

PJM:  I haven't ever tried the Zoom "eeyyaa".  I was getting a "yeah" and an "oh yeah" sound out of this by putting the envelope filter in reverse sweep and futzing with the range and sensitivity parameters.

[Paul Marossy]

Transmogrifox-

Record a sound clip sometime, and I'll tell you if they sound they same.  :wink:

[Transmogrifox]

Hey PJM-

Here's the yaya effect:

www.geocities.com/transmogrifox/yaya.mp3

Here's a clip that more or less demo's my DIY envelope filter:

www.geocities.com/transmogrifox/atecnosaved.mp3

(EDIT: Damn geocities!  If the link doesn't work, try again later.  The page seems to be down for whatever reason right now--pm me with an email address whoever is interested in hearing the samples and I can send them that way if this isn't working)

It's a kind of a cheesy pseudo techno piece, but it showcases a broad range of sound capable out of the pedal.  Just for information, the only instrument used was a guitar.  The drum beats were done by Hammerhead, a freeware beat program that is downloadable from download.com.  The bass-line was done without any detuning, merely set the filter in reverse sweep and added some of the 'rectifier trash" into the signal.  I used a Vox V810 (modded to perfection, of course) in the send loop in my filter pedal, so the different straight-up distorted guitar sounds were processed with the envelope filter sensitivity on 0 and the center frequency set with my "set point" knob so to use the envelope filter as a 3-band parametric EQ (It's based on a state-variable filter design with the high, low, and bandpass outputs sent seperately to a summing amplifier with pots to control the mix level).  This is probably my best illustration to date of the EF.  It makes me wonder why more of the popular envelope filters didn't incorporate the 3 band mix.  I think MUTRON had a version with a single knob for high/low balance, but the ability to add some mids, or mixing small amounts of lows and highs to a mid peak give some very rich  wah wah sounds as well as some very synthy sounding filter sweep sounds.

Now I ended up saying more about the wah wah that I used to drive the ring mod with than I did about the combined yaya effect.

In conclusion, I had the wah filter set to a very standard high-Q bandpass setting that is easy to accomplish with any envelope filter or auto-wah worth it's weight in beans.  I think you need a Q greater than 10 to start to hear a distinguished "Ya-Ya" vocal sound.  A standard wah wah pedal is probably on the weak side for this.  I think mine was pushing somewhere between 30 and 50.  I have not tested the actual Q value over the theoretical, and I know that op amp active circuits do start to significantly deviate from the ideal op amp approximation when you try to approach Q values much greater than 30.

[Paul Marossy]

Transmogrifox-

That's similar, but more dynamic. The Zoom 9030 would always do the same "eyaah" sound at the beginning of anything that crosses a certain threshold in terms of the amplitude of the signal it's receiving.  

[puretube]

:wink:

[jmusser]

If you came up with something that would make that sound, I would love to make one. I have lead a sheltered life where effects are concerned, and have never heard anything like that. The one sample that would play, sounded like someone doing it on a talk box. Very realistic! I was kind of wondering if the Gargletron could be modified to do that somehow. I drove that thing with a Punch-In-The-Face, and done an excellent Bow Wow type sound. Sort of the start of "It's My Life". It was fair by it's self, but the Fuzz in front really brought it out. Of course since I don't know what I'm talking about with the Gargletron circuitry, It could be like asking "could you move that electrical outlet a foot to the left" in a finished house.

[Transmogrifox]

I was just reading the build report on the Modulatron and was thinking that's a good springboard for the design--just need a good narrow bandwidth filter (and I think the standard biquadrature constant bandwidth version is the key) and then add a good high-pass filter to the Modulatron and I think we'll have this.  Since the modulatron is slightly different from the digital ring mod I was using (sine wave), I may need to resort to a quadrant multiplier chip.  The AD633 is going for $7.10 at Digikey right now.  A little spendy for an IC, but still reasonable compared to the other costs that go into building such a pedal.  I think I should just put in the time and get a project for this together.

[jmusser]

I definitely think you should, and while you're doing that, I plane to take a week or so, and learn how to pronounce "biquadrature constant bandwith", and maybe the rest of the year to figure out what it actually means! :lol: