Voder

Voder
Type	Communications Gear
Tech Level	TL–5
Cost	Cr1500
Size	2 liters
Weight	2 kg
Reference	Hivers TBD.

A Voder (from Voice Operating Demonstrator) or vocoder (a combination of vocal and encoder) is a technological device that can generate the sounds or auditory vocalizations of the oral-aural languages of various sophonts.

Dozens of models of various abilities, complexity, and price can be purchased on worlds throughout the Imperium of TL–9 or better. Pre-electronic voders are available below TL–9, but tend to be species-specific and far less flexible devices.

Voders are often paired with Language Translators.

Not all sophont species were created equal and many possess wildly different sets of vocal chords or biological oral apparatuses. In many cases, it is simply impossible for one sophont to approximate the speech of another so technological were created to fill these needs. Some species possess no vocal apparatus at all, such as Hivers, in which case the voder fulfills a need that the species did not originally evolve naturally.

In other cases, such as that of humans and vargr, voders are widely used by personnel with sophisticated language needs, who don't want to operate with the handicap of their native vocal apparatus. While very similar, human and vargr vocal cords cannot approximate the full range of each other's speech.

The first voders in almost every civilization occurred before the advent of electronics. Most were specialized musical instruments often resembling elaborate whistles. Some are mechanical devices of ingenious complexity. Many of these early devices were and are just as effective as later more sophisticated devices using higher TLs.

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Voder. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Vocoder. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of Wikipedia is available under the Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• J. Andrew Keith, Marc W. Miller, Loren Wiseman. Hivers (Game Designers Workshop, 1986), 37.