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TC Helicon VoiceLive Vocal Floor Processor |
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The TC Helicon VoiceLive is a vocal processor with a set of foot switches that allow you to change parameters live while singing and hand's free. This is great for guitarists and keyboardists or for vocalists that want to have more control over their voice effects. This is also great for live applications or in the studio use. It has a stereo output so you can pan/position the harmony voices across the stereo image. It runs at 44.1 kHz or 48kHz sample rates and 24-bit depth. The VoiceLive does more than just harmonies. It comes with a high quality Microphone preamp with phantom power, a 3-band EQ, Compressor, Pitch Correction, Digital Delay, and TC Electronic Reverb. All this in one unit that is controllable using your feet or via MIDI. This is the basic signal flowchart: 3-band EQ->Compressor->Pitch Correction->Lead Voice Thickening->Harmony Generator->Tap Tempo Delay->Reverb TC Helicon is probably the best sounding intelligent harmony generator. The pitch correction and doubling algorithms are right up there with the leaders. This effect really sounds good for creating a wide assortment of harmonies from the "Boy Band" sound to the "Big Country" and Western sound. If you are the only one in your band that sings then you need this. If you want to make 2 or 3 singers sound like a choir of singers then you need this. You can create up to 4 additional voices that are based upon four harmony logic algorithms. These algorithms allow you to vary the amount of intelligence pitch selection for the harmony voices. It uses TC's Hybrid Pitch/Voice Shifting TM algorithm that has excellent pitch shifting in formant shifting (gender based). At the center of all of this is what TC calls a voice-trained pitch-detection algorithm that is human modeled. This gives the effect a more natural and "Human" sound to it (Formant). The VoiceLive's Pitch Correction is fairly transparent and is probably as good as the Antares version. It also uses the voice-trained pitch detection algorithm that can use any scale and custom made scales. It comes with quite a number of the most commonly used scales. You select the scale and sing and it will auto-correct the pitch. You can change the amount of pitch correction and the attack setting to match your musical style. The footswitchable controls allow you to change presets and modes using 8 footswitches. There are 4 different modes upon which you can use. The first is the Preset mode which is probably the easiest but requires more planning. You can change the key and scales. The Song Mode allows you to store your songs and navigate through them in a stepwise fashion. The direct mode is more for free form. You can change to any preset which is what most people do. The Voice Mode allows you to toggle any or all of the 4 harmony voices on or off by pressing the switches located on the footboard. The foot controls also let you set the tempo of the delays (Tap Tempo) and do what is called a Harmony Hold. Harmony Hold does just that it will hold the current harmony until you press the switch again. It is made to stand up to the punishment of being on the road. The mechanical construction is great. You should keep it in a case or a minimum keep the box. I would recommend getting it a road case. It has both an XLR and 1/4" instrument inputs. The XLR input has +48VDC phantom power as well as -20dB pad, Attenuation control, and limiter. The mic preamp is pretty decent. Its base on a Burr Brown INA163 Opamp as is the Limiter circuit. This is an optical limiter that has is transparent which sounds especially good on vocals. It will reduce the volume when the maximum output is reached. You can control the limiters output level. It has a dynamic range of over 100dB and a frequency response that is very flat from 20Hz to 20 kHz. The THD is very low: 0.0013% at 1 kHz. You can select from using a 1/4" dynamic type of mic or XLR input as well as a line level input. The Limiter is used to keep the output from clipping. This is needed because as you add more and more voices the gain is increased and clipping can become a problem. TC Helicon put a VOSTM limiter that will protect the output and your speakers as well as not let the volume of voices get too far above that of the rest of the band. There are two balanced 1/4" outputs which can also be run as unbalanced line levels. This allows you to plug it into either TRS inputs (Tip Ring Sleeve) or into your consumer level mixer. Features
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