This guide will walk you through the whole process of using FL Studio's Vocodex plugin-in to recreate the civil protection's vocoder effect from 2003.

• Sample: This is simply referring to a sound file that we will be using in FL Studio.
  
  
• Carrier Sample: The sound file that contains a good example of the effect that we want. We will be using it later in the vocoder. In this case, it will be a cut cp's voiceline from 2003.
  
  
• Vocal Sample / Unprocessed Sample: The sound file that we want to vocode. In this case, it will be a retail cp's voice line.

I recommend you create a folder to hold the project file, the sound file you wish to use as a carrier for your vocoder, the sound file you wish to vocode, and the final product sound file.

Now lets begin!

First things first, lets find ourselves a good audio clip of the effect we wish to recreate.

For this tutorial, we'll use the "mc1que_career.wav" voiceline.
It's clean, it doesn't have annoying radio clicking sounds added in and the effect we want is clearly heard in it. This is our carrier sample. This is what we will be getting the noise we want from.


You can find this in the leaked version of half life 2. However, if you don't have access to this sound, you'll have to simply find some other sound to use a carrier.

In the context of this guide, it doesn't matter what you use. Since no matter what sound you use, you will be going through the same process anyways.


Move your sample into that folder I told you to create earlier. Rename the sample if you wish.

If need be, clean it up a bit using audacity and cut out anything that you don't want to be apart of the effect.




Now that we have our sample, lets load up fl studio, and set up a project.

Start by adjusting your sample rate in the audio settings.
Ensure it is 44100hz. Anything higher will not work in Source. Anything lower will sound crusty.

Now create a basic project without a limiter.















Delete the pre-included samplers. Don't worry about the kick sampler, we'll delete it later.















Setup your tracks to look like the image below.










Green will be the raw voiceline you want to vocode.
Blue will be the noise from the processed sample from edison used as a carrier in vocodex.
Red will the finished final product from the vocoder.

Essentially, the blue track will hold whatever the noise is that you want the vocals in the green track to sound like. Which will then be output through the red track.

Track 1 will not have any actual part in the vocoding process, it's only purpose is to allow us to use Edison. Which you can delete from this track after you're done processing the sample. Or you can do the whole Edison process in another project and then use the saved sample in the vocoding process, however you want.



Once your tracks look like the image above, sidechain both tracks 2 & 3 to track 4.
Then turn down the output to master track for both tracks 2 & 3. Only track 4 should be outputting sound.



























Now the project and it's tracks are setup and ready to go!
Time to get the sample ready.

This will essentially extract the noise that we want in the voice line and make it fit for use as a carrier in the vocoder.


Start by adding Edison into track one.


















Then click on the floppy disk icon to open the file menu. Select "Load Sample."
















Select the sound file you want, and it will be added into the Edison editor.

Now from here, we want to blur the sample.















Then copy the settings and the graph from this image.






















Then accept those settings.

Now we move onto equalizing the sample.
















Then do the same here, copy the settings and graph.




















Accept the settings.
The carrier sample is now ready.

Take a listen to the final product and see if it has enough of the noise you wish the vocoder to use. If it doesn't sound right, simply go back and pick a different sample and/or play around with the blur and equalizer settings.





We will now save the sample as a file for use as a carrier in our vocoder.





















Save it as a WAV file and name it something like "betacp_carriersample".

Alright- we're done here.

Now we move onto adding and configuring plug-ins.

Now it's time to add in the needed plugins and configure them to match the settings used for the beta cps.




Start by dragging and dropping the carrier sample we saved earlier onto the playlist. Set the carrrier's audio clip to play on track 3, the blue track; since it is noise.













We can now delete the kick sampler as well as Edison from track 1.

Now we will add the Vocodex plug-in to track 4, the red one.

Once done, copy the settings of the vocoder and the track equalization to match the image below.

























track 3, the blue one; uses only the flanger plugin. Copy it's settings to match below, then set flanger's mix level to around 0.35.












Now for track 2, the green one; we will use the EQUO and fruity REEVERB 2 plugins. Match their settings to the image below. Also match the track's equalizer graph as well.

We're almost done, finally!

Now we just need to discuss how to actually vocode the audio and then export it for use in the Source engine.

Now we can start vocoding things!

So lets go over how to do exactly that.





Begin by finding the line of dialogue you wish to vocode.


Put it into the same folder as before. Name it vocals if you wish.


Simply drag the file onto the playlist. Then set the vocal sample's audio clip to play on track 2. The vocals track.
Ensure that both audio clips are enabled by checking the dots to the left of each one. They should both be green.













If you dont already have the carrier sample on the playlist, do so now. Try to make sure the end of the carrier sample mostly matches up with the end of the vocal sample. Any area left out on either track will simply be silence. Splice the carrier and loop it like in the image if you need to.














Now press play.

You should hear the voice with the vocoder's effect now playing.
If not, go back and retrace your steps.

Now just render the voice line as a wav file, and you're golden!
Remember, the sample rate for the file must be 44100.

If you're mass processing files, you don't want to vocode about 400 files and then realize that they're all 48k instead of 44k. Trust me. It hurts.

I'm not an FL Studio professional.


There are probably better ways to do this. I'm just sharing my way of accomplishing this recreation.

See what you can make by screwing around with all the settings. I've only given you a foundation to stand on here, feel free to mess with it and see what happens. Maybe you'll get closer to the original effect?

In which case, feel free to share in the discussions below how you did it!

This should be considered a good starting point. Not the end-all be-all.