Voice Operated reCOrDER. A signal processor (considered one of a family of analysis synthesizers) that imposes the amplitude envelopes of one input (control) signal upon a second input (program) signal. In the most common application, someone speaks into a microphone to provide a control signal; the amplitude characteristics of the speech elements are superimposed on an input instrument, giving the latter a “talking” quality. Vocoders use a bank of bandpass filters to dynamically analyze the frequency spectrum of the control signal and thus continuously derive the amplitudes of the component frequency bands. The resulting amplitude envelopes are used to continuously control the operation of another, identically tuned bank of filters. Any program signal applied to the input of this second bank will be shaped by the amplitude envelopes of the control signal, yielding the same spectral characteristics as the control input.