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Need vocal processor/harmonizer info please.


Bobby1Note

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How many of you are using harmonizer processors/pedals,,, and what's the best way to go when getting into these things for the first time? I've only taken a passing glance at these things, so I haven't a clue about what's good, and what's not.

I recently glanced at two units, both of which were by T.C. Helicon if I'm not mistaken. One was a compact pedal,,, going for a few hundred $$, and the larger unit was over $700. The salesman told me the larger unit "sounds much better/ more realistic" than the smaller unit. Would you guys agree?

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Hey Bobby
I use and old Vocalist II and love it. I might add that I use it a lot and the thing has AT LEAST 300 gigs on it. I'll use it until it dies and I have no desire for anything else. To tell you the truth if this one dies I'll simply go back and buy another one. You can check out some of the harmonies with it on my website if you want. You can find them on Ebay now for $185 like the one here. If you have any questions let me know.

Digitech Vocalist Live II

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I use a harmony m with my keyboard because it takes the midi from thekb for the harmonies. Mostly I just use it to thicken the vocals. I only use the harmony ability sparingly, less is more. I expect the same applies to most of the other boxes as well. I thought about the larger helicon unit but for me (amateur) it was just not worth it and to be honest, the harmony m is fine for my needs.

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I Have the old TC helicon VL version 1
It sounds pretty good to me.

I compress my voice and not the harmonies so I can play with the dynamics a bit
I don't auto tune my voice but I do the harmonies.
The variable delay on harmonies
It has 4 parts but I've never used more than 2 live
It sucked when I first got it and then the harmony control guitar came out, it became a whole new pedal
I use it as a table top to change presets and activate it with the foot pedal.
I've used an old DOD acoustic1 for years but I think I'm going to start using the instrument processing function in the TCH

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Thanks for those responses guys. I'm going to do a bit more research I guess. I watched a rather interesting video on the T.C. Helicon VoiceLive II, and was quite surprised to see just what these units are capable of. I'd like to get beyond my first impression, to see if this is a unit I could really use,, and enjoy long-term.

One question that comes to mind is; can you control the volume of the harmonies, to get more of a back-ground harmony-vocal effect? When I was watching the VL-2 video, I just got the impression that it would feel weird to have a harmony vocal that's as bright, or as loud as the lead vocal, when there's only one performer on stage.

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Quote Originally Posted by Bobby1Note

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One question that comes to mind is; can you control the volume of the harmonies, to get more of a back-ground harmony-vocal effect? When I was watching the VL-2 video, I just got the impression that it would feel weird to have a harmony vocal that's as bright, or as loud as the lead vocal, when there's only one performer on stage.

 

I'm sure it's the same on all of them so I guess the answer is yes. I know the Digitech does and the TC is probably much more expensive. I never use more than one voice- it's usually the 5th and it's normally just under the lead vocal. For me it just seems a little "hokey" when a whole bunch of vocals pop in. Out of the couple hundred tunes I do there's exactly two that I use 2 additional voices. One is Alice in Chains- No Excuses and the other is Seven Bridges Road and I've played them both probably once in the past year. wink.gif
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I had a Digitech vocalist 4 for a few years, and in March I got the TC voicelive play GTX when it first came out. Both these units are good, but I like the VL play GTX because it added guitar effects. Most of the newer units, listen to your chords, and the harmony follows. I believe they all have the ability to adjust the volume of the harmony, and I agree that "less is more". I heard one guy recently, that just got a vocalist 3, and his harmony was overpowering his vocal and it sounded weird and unnatural.

With the TC VL play GTX, I am able to pre-program my backing tracks via midi to control the preset selection (patch), and toggle the harmonies on/off at the appropriate times, eliminating the need to hover my foot over the pedal. makes my life so much easier!

I was under the impression that the TC presets are the same as their more expensive unit. The VL play GTX is $349, and if you don't need the guitar effects the VL play is only $249

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Started using the voicelive play gtx and for a numbnuts like me its complicated enough so am glad I never went for the far more complicated offerings. However in retrospect I would have bought the cheaper voicelive play as I simply can't get used to the effects and end up using my zoom.

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Quote Originally Posted by Mike McLaughlin View Post
I had a Digitech vocalist 4 for a few years, and in March I got the TC voicelive play GTX when it first came out. Both these units are good, but I like the VL play GTX because it added guitar effects. Most of the newer units, listen to your chords, and the harmony follows. I believe they all have the ability to adjust the volume of the harmony, and I agree that "less is more". I heard one guy recently, that just got a vocalist 3, and his harmony was overpowering his vocal and it sounded weird and unnatural.

With the TC VL play GTX, I am able to pre-program my backing tracks via midi to control the preset selection (patch), and toggle the harmonies on/off at the appropriate times, eliminating the need to hover my foot over the pedal. makes my life so much easier! I was under the impression that the TC presets are the same as their more expensive unit. The VL play GTX is $349, and if you don't need the guitar effects the VL play is only $249
Mike you're not allowed to chime in on stuff like this- you have THE BEST setup around so it's not fair to compare. wink.gif
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Hi Bobby,

I am quite in agreement with Mike. The VoiceLive II costs ~$800 street, and as Mike says VL GTX is ~$349 (I have seen cheaper on E-Bay). Main difference besides all the extra stomp buttons on the more expensive unit, is that it has 8 voices and the GTX has only 2 harmony voices + an additional 1-2 voices for doubling. All voices on GTX can be gender bent. I like GTX because you can control harmony voices from your guitar, or by midi from a keyboard. Neither of which you can do with the less expensive VL Play unit.

There is a guitar Input and a Thru (which allows you to have your guitar audio enter the unit and be used for controlling harmonies, but not be processed by the machine, if you prefer to process it somewhere else as I do). There is also a mixer section if you want to quickly adjust your levels so you don't overpower the lead vocals etc. It is also easy to control the harmony levels on the fly. VL Play and GTX are exactly the same except GTX has the additional guitar EFX and GTR input/ MIDI In. Hope this is of some help.
Funky

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Is it possible to add a volume-pedal to some of these units?

I checked out a few more videos on these voice-processors, and I'm really divided about getting one. A LOT of the videos just sounded wayyyy too overdone, but I did find a few rare ones which sounded pretty darned good. I'd definitely be in the camp of "Less is More".

Last time I was at the music store, I believe the smaller unit I looked at was called the "Harmony G-XT",,,,( I may be wrong about that name.) I don't recall seeing a "Play GTX". Is the "Play GTX" a newer version?

I'll call the music-store shortly (50 miles away). My regular sales-guy starts work at noon today.

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I've been using the Boss VE-20 for the past year and while it does sound good, the harmony function doesn't work very well. It is not a guitar-through unit so you have to set custom "key of" patches for the tunes where you want to add harmony. When I go into the setting to change key nothing happens. The harmony never fits to what I'm singing. Perhaps my unit is broken. Beyond that, it sounds great. Paid $250 when it came out, now I see it prices around $270.

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In the past I've owned:

Digitech Vocalist Live 2
TC Helicon Harmony G-XT

I got rid of the Digitech the first time I head another performer using a Helicon

I got rid of the Helicon right away after a show or two because my clumsy feet kept hitting the flat button above the harmony on/off button and changing the patch mid song.

I then sprung for the Helicon Voice Live 2 - and for many of the above reasons in other posts - still use it for both my acts (full band and acoustic trio). Is it perfect? nope. Is it worth $800? I think so.

I also bought a used Harmony G - to keep in my bag as a spare. My bass player recently started to use it in both my acts.

I'm a Digitec fan for guitar processors - but the Helicon vocal procesors are superior - in my experience.

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I guess it's pretty evident by now, that I've never used one of these processors, nor have I used back-tracks, so, please bear (bare?) with me if I ask some silly questions, or if i repeat a question (something doesn't "sink in").

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Not silly questions... Useful for you!

To answer your question, VoiceLive 2 allows for an expression pedal so that you can affect volume from the pedal. the VoiceLive GTX has a pedal input, but that is for a Switch3, which is an additional 3 foot switches to control the looping functions and other things. That costs $49, but really expands what you can put under foot control but unfortunately not volume. VoiceLive 2 is also $800. Do you need 4-8 harmony vocalists with your music? GTX is $349. Only 2 harmony voices. It actually has superior guitar processing than the more expensive unit...including amp modelling, distortion and delay which the VL 2 does not. Both units allow you to control harmonies with your guitar input, and just go "thru" to control those harmonies if you want to do the guitar processing somewhere else.

Go on with the questions...this will be helpful to your learning curve and could save you lots of $ in the end. I would ask Mike McLaughlin's opinion when you get down to a decision, as he seems to be in the best position to tell you the strengths and weaknesses of the Digitech and TCH units

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Quote Originally Posted by Bobby1Note View Post
Is it possible to add a volume-pedal to some of these units?

Last time I was at the music store, I believe the smaller unit I looked at was called the "Harmony G-XT",,,,( I may be wrong about that name.) I don't recall seeing a "Play GTX". Is the "Play GTX" a newer version?
Yes it's new, the voicelive play and Play GTX came out in March.

Not sure about a volume pedal. There is a external pedal that's optional, but I think it's for looping.
Quote Originally Posted by DrFunky View Post
Hi Bobby,

I like GTX because you can control harmony voices from your guitar, or by midi from a keyboard. Neither of which you can do with the less expensive VL Play unit.

There is a guitar Input and a Thru (which allows you to have your guitar audio enter the unit and be used for controlling harmonies, but not be processed by the machine, if you prefer to process it somewhere else as I do). There is also a mixer section if you want to quickly adjust your levels so you don't overpower the lead vocals etc. It is also easy to control the harmony levels on the fly. VL Play and GTX are exactly the same except GTX has the additional guitar EFX and GTR input/ MIDI In. Hope this is of some help.
Funky
The VL play without the guitar or keyboard, will use the aux in backing track to establish key, if no aux input, it will use "room sense" mics built in.

VoiceLive Play listens to your music. Using Auto Key technology it senses and adapts to your MP3 recordings using the aux input or the built in RoomSense microphones so that harmonies and pitch correction fit perfectly with your music.
In the GTX version, it will first check your instrument, then midi, then aux, then room.

NaturalPlay is the voodoo we do inside the VoiceLive Play GTX to figure out which key your music is in. If you plug in a Guitar or Keyboard to the INST In, NaturalPlay will look there first for key/scale info. Next, it will look at the MIDI input. Finally, it will look at the Aux input and RoomSense mics.

Once the GTX
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Quote Originally Posted by n8cJohn

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I then sprung for the Helicon Voice Live 2 - and for many of the above reasons in other posts - still use it for both my acts (full band and acoustic trio). Is it perfect? nope. Is it worth $800? I think so.

 

Obviously you know quite a bit about these devices and I'm not ragging on you or anything. I just couldn't see spending $800 on a harmonizer.
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It's not just a harmonizer (if you just wanted a harmonizer you could get the Eventide Pitchfactor for $500). VL2 is a complete vocal channel with pitch correction, compression/ adaptive tone/ noise gating/ de-essing, then vocal effect blocks, Guitar effects Ins/ outs, then 8 voices of harmony. It is worth the money as a lead vocal channel alone (also has additional 2 voices of doubling on the lead vocal with tight or loose humanization). All these voices can also be gender bent if you like

I did not get the VL2 because I don't need 8 voice harmony- some do. The TCH Play GTX was better for me as the price was $349 and I like the 2 voice harmony. Actually its guitar effects are vastly better than VL2. So the question Bobby had was would the harmonized voices overpower the lead vocals? My answer based in the TCH units (I can't say anything about Digitech's voice gear), is that you can program the levels of the lead vocals and the guitar EFX & output, and each Harmony voice and pan them where you want and even change genders in the harmonized voices. finally there is a mixer section that lets you make changes on the fly. Pretty cool I think! Still if I had $800 burning a hole in my pocket I would want the VL2 because of all of its instant foot switching power.

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I started out on the DigiTech Vocalist Performer, where you have to preset the harmony and key choices and then dial them up on a mic-stand mounted unit. I still use it when I'm playing keyboard, since the DigiTech Vocalist Live 2 that I use when I'm playing guitar doesn't seem to work very well with my keyboard.

I love the ease of use of the VL2, but I do use it sparingly, for the most part. One of the few exceptions is when I do "Barbara Ann" by the Beach Boys as a solo singer, but that's mostly for the novelty effect.

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Quote Originally Posted by DrFunky View Post
It's not just a harmonizer (if you just wanted a harmonizer you could get the Eventide Pitchfactor for $500). VL2 is a complete vocal channel with pitch correction, compression/ adaptive tone/ noise gating/ de-essing, then vocal effect blocks, Guitar effects Ins/ outs, then 8 voices of harmony. It is worth the money as a lead vocal channel alone (also has additional 2 voices of doubling on the lead vocal with tight or loose humanization). All these voices can also be gender bent if you like

I did not get the VL2 because I don't need 8 voice harmony- some do. The TCH Play GTX was better for me as the price was $349 and I like the 2 voice harmony. Actually its guitar effects are vastly better than VL2. So the question Bobby had was would the harmonized voices overpower the lead vocals? My answer based in the TCH units (I can't say anything about Digitech's voice gear), is that you can program the levels of the lead vocals and the guitar EFX & output, and each Harmony voice and pan them where you want and even change genders in the harmonized voices. finally there is a mixer section that lets you make changes on the fly. Pretty cool I think! Still if I had $800 burning a hole in my pocket I would want the VL2 because of all of its instant foot switching power.
Yep, I have VL1 It needed programming before they came out with the harmony control for guitar but once I tried it, I took the hit on a slightly used Dig.VL2

It gives vocals a nice, professional presence and you can tweak it forever. I want to work up something Barbershopesque but haven't done it yet.
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Well, I went into Montreal today, and got a brief look at a few processors. Unfortunately, we had no time to try them out, but I'll be going back into the city again next week. In the meantime, I'm going to scour our local Craigslist and Kijiji ad's, to see what's available, and it'll give me time to do a bit more research.

I came VERY close to telling the salesman, "I'll take that new VL-2" wink.gif

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