Yep. I usually play all my vocoder lines live, but our track Meth Whore won't allow for it, cause I'm doin' other stuff and thems complicated chords to play, lol....so MIDI does the trick. Yeah...I dunno. I love the Alesis Micron, but I have a feeling the Ion vocoder is waaay better. Maybe I just gotta tweak some more...the thought of two MS2000s in the home is appealing, but I'd probably sell my keyboard version if I got the rackmount...can't decide WHAT the fuck to do.
Honestly, finding a good outboard vocal effects processing unit has become the BANE of my existence.