Tronformer

[sinewav]

...but is there anything you could tell us about it musically, such as the pitches?

Not so much, musically. The first oscillator is playing C1 and that is modulating a second oscillator playing G#1. The end result is neither pitch is distinguishable due to the frequency modulation.

Last night I saw another youtube video of a guy doing this in Ableton Live and he pretty much did the same thing the Reason guy did. After the synth they both run the sound through chorus for "smoothing?" I imagine slightly changing the wave shape of the amp LFO would do the same thing. And then each guy runs the signal through a vocoder, but I'm guessing the original designers probably used a comb filter if they used anything at all. My imagination says in 1984 the synthesis was much more simple and raw and the resulting uniqueness of the sound was due to the unique hardware. So, I don't mind that my attempt doesn't sound the same, I'm just interested in breaking it down.

[Phytotron]

They did use vocoders for the voices, but not the transformation effect, as far as I know. Incidentally, that bit I quoted was taken from here: tfwiki: Transformation. I also just realised that my dumbass put the same youtube URL for both sounds. Here's the link I meant to put, to the clip that features the increasing (alt-mode to robot mode) effect.

Yours sounds pretty darn close, closer than the ones I've seen in the videos you mentioned (I think I ran across the same ones while originally looking for the above examples). You can hear how the pitch of yours is similar to Optimus Prime's in that clip, but is thicker. Did you check out those TFCog collections? From the G1 collection, the attached clip sounds most similar to yours. One thing I noticed yours definitely needs is some reverb.

[sinewav]

One thing I noticed yours definitely needs is some reverb.

Yeah, good call. I dropped a super tight reverb on it and a world of difference was made (I'll add that to the diagram). I'll try to make a better one with a better synth and reverb later. There is more that can be done. I'm just trying to stay as simple as possible.

Edit: Played around a little more. It seems you need to adjust the period of the 2nd oscillator to make it mesh with the delay better. Thickens up the sound a lot when you get them together.

[delinquent]

Just a thought: perhaps each instance of the noise could be shortened, and then the number of instances multiplied by, lets say, 2, and the pitch expanded each way? I think that might suit the transformation more.

[sinewav]

Just a thought: perhaps each instance of the noise could be shortened, and then the number of instances multiplied by, lets say, 2, and the pitch expanded each way? I think that might suit the transformation more.

Ok you go do that buddy and get back to be when you got something to listen to.

[sinewav]

Thread revived!

I just discovered there is an actual transforming lightcycle toy out there. It's made by a third-party fan-run transforming robot toy designer, non-affiliated with the licensed stuff. Unfortunately, the toy is part of a combiner set that costs over $450, so needless to say I won't be getting one of these. Still pretty cool though!

Vehicle Mode
Robot Mode

[Phytotron]

Looks to be made of plastic. For that price I would expect proper die-cast construction. It's a lost art.