TC-Helicon

I love what these units do but they are not the easiest to work with. They state they are but as you start to want to edit the presets it becomes a bit challenging. The harmonizing is wonderful as is the presets. Following your tonic note is perfect. Now granted I use this in my studio and in that application I want to work fast when I need to edit a preset. I was doing some Queen effects and for some I like it and for some it was a bit over the top. I do recommend this unit. It does sound great. The phantom power engagement needs to be just a switch and it is too involved. It should have just been a button on the front especially on the mic stand version. It is rather intense and to much info in a small box. The best thing about this unit is the effected presets. You can start from there and to edit by touching the buttons it is easy but if you are going to start tweaking effects times and decay times or even the basic effects you will have to learn the unit really well. I don't think that it will be an automatic easy task as advertised. I was editing a preset that had auto tune effect reverb and delay and it took me some time as you have to hit the right buttons and then hit the mix button to adjust. It was not a plug and play and just start singing. I have a few bands that own them and they love them but have to get to know them. UTILIZATION Vocal effects. The manual is a bit confusing. As is the preset editing on the unit. I find that when your wanting to move around from preset to preset you are dealing with a great deal of issues. First you must learn the quick editing shortcuts and know them well in order to have any once of fluidity while using the unit. Second you must know a great deal about blending and uses of different effects and all the parameters that make up the one preset, otherwise you will be scratching your head. If you are not aware of what effect does what you can touch the effects buttons one at a time but that won't get you into the presets and editing parameters. I think a better manual and a quick edit feature would be better suited for this piece. SOUND QUALITY I use this for vocal effects in a studio only. I do not use it live. I like the long reverbs and the vocal choir effects. I love the choirs and some of the wild presets that is comes with although some are a bit dirty. For live I am sure it would be great but I am using it in a studio application and most would buy this unit for live sound or harmonies. OVERALL OPINION Good for the money. Sound quality is very good. User friendly it gets an average. Some companies assume that the normal musician would have an easy time editing with this unit but I don't see it that way as most singers are not familiar with blending effects and are not use to effects. I think the stock presets need to be more easy and more useful for live applications. For harmonies it is fantastic and follows every not perfectly.

This is a foot switch controlled pre amp, it comes with over 200 different presets and effects. The TC Helicon VoiceLive Play is affordable and easy to use. Using the VoiceLive has really added some flavor to a lot of the voices that I record with/for. You really just let the VoiceLive do all of the work. You don’t have to worry about programming sounds or functions. Its basically just pushing a button and let the presets blow you away. UTILIZATION The VoiceLive has no digital inputs and no digital outputs. Only XLR analog inputs and outputs for your vocals. If you need harmony to your voice or some pitch correction then you have came to the right place. The VoiceLive by Helicon will shock the heck out of you when you use it. It will provide you with clean and must have effects to your vocals that will take you from an amateur to a pro in no time. SOUND QUALITY It has a built in looper and a practice mode so you can work on your vocal accuracy until you can get better. The pitch correction is better than a lot of software pitch corrections that I have used, even some of the higher end ones like Auto Tune Evo. OVERALL OPINION All of the presets in VoiceLive are very good, some of them have multiple effects to them and you can press the hit switch then it will add some more effects to your voice. You can keep doing this to keep adding different and more effects to your voice. Just don’t get too carried away with too many effects because it can get sloppy fast. The practice mode is the best part of the device, it will show you your pitch and guide you to the right pitch. You will be able to see when your are off easily. It will help you become a better singer in no time. Even if you are not a singer and more of a instrument player who sings from time to time, this device can help you in so many ways.

The TC Helicon Voice Live Touch has vocal harmonies and effects as well as looping features for vocals or guitars tracks. It is very easy to work with the module due to the interface and build of it. I was able to pretty much just get the grasp of it after about 30 minutes of playing around with it. It did come with a manual but I never looked at it. It is very small and portable and sits great on my desk not taking up much room at all. UTILIZATION Getting it up and running took no effort. It was just a matter of working through the menus to get what you wanted to get to. The touch screen works great and it is very response. It is very easy to add effects and backing vocals to accompany my main vocals. I was able to loop up to 30 seconds of audio with this module and overdub/undo. SOUND QUALITY There are well over 200 presets on this module with 24 touch buttons that have LED’s. There is a touch slider, mic input level and headphone output level. There is a built in guitar tuner and FX section that is dedicated to guitars. I have used this unit many times and it has never let me down or had any issues. It is just the type of unit that I do not get to use a lot because I just don’t need it most of the time. OVERALL OPINION The Voice Live Touch only weighs about 5 pounds and is very portable. It didn’t come with a carry pouch or case so I had to purchase a general use gig bag to carry it in so it wouldn’t get damaged or scratched when traveling. You can use MIDI and USB connections with it to work with other gear and your computer. There is only one ¼ Pedal phone jack though.

The M harmonizer pedal gives you great effects to use if you sing and/or play a MIDI keyboard. I love the effects that are on this pedal, and the effects are not even the main function of this pedal but to me the effects are why I am so happy that I purchased it. There are 6 effects like reverb and modulation that you can use to put to your vocals. These effects are one of a kind and I have not heard another pedal that has effects like these. UTILIZATION This pedal can do some amazing things to your sound (vocals). We have not used it with a MIDI keyboard yet just because I don’t have the time right and now and a MIDI keyboard live act is not part of our current gig set up. But I plan on trying it out in the future, but just using it for the effects makes me more than happy. The last 6 live gigs/shows that we have had we have used this pedal the most. SOUND QUALITY You can set up your presets on this pedal so you can access them at any time and quickly. There are a few buttons on this unit and 4 knobs. I do suggest reading the manual just to know how everything works properly because it is unlike any other effects pedal that I have used or seen in the past. You can truly do just about anything with this pedal. OVERALL OPINION There is a Mic input, footswitch, and MIDI in Balanced XLR audio connections. There are two pedals on this unit and it is built for the stage! It is very durable and has rubber on the bottom to prevent it from sliding on the stage. This pedal will be used for many years to come, my only regret is that I wish I would have got this sooner like when it first came out but I was about a year and half late on purchasing it. But this now!

The Tone D1 by TC Helicon is a detune pedal that is very easy to use. It will allow you to have complete control over your vocals at the push of a pedal. You can do some really cool stuff with this pedal if you learn to use it correctly. This is the perfect way to get studio style doubling effects to your live performances. UTILIZATION It is very easy to use, you can plug your microphone directly into this pedal (it does have a built in preamp) and then start messing with knobs and watch what it does to your sound. We even use this in the studio because it can do some doubling that we cannot recreate in a real session and if you get creative with it you will do some amazing stuff with your voice. SOUND QUALITY The preamp is quiet and there are no problems when plugging your microphone into it. This unit is made to last a long time because it is made out of metal and underneath of it, it has rubber so it does not slide when using it on a hard surface. Like most of TC Helicons pedals you can plug it into your computer for support or for updates from them. OVERALL OPINION Overall this is a great doubling and detune effects pedal. It is very affordable and for anyone who is a live performer you almost have to have pedals like these added to your set up so you can get the sound you want on stage. This is a great value for the price and I am happy that I purchased it. We will be using it for many years to come and we have no worries of it ever not working for us because after using it just for a few weeks now we can tell it will hold up just fine. It is made for the road!

The Voice Tone R1 is a vocal reverb effect pedal that is very affordable. It brings studio quality effects right to your “foot” for a live show so you can easily switch back and forth to the vocal effects that you want. The quality of this pedal is great for the price and it gives you some great reverb types like ambience, theater, club, hall and a few others. UTILIZATION This pedal is very easy to use and set up because there is no set up process at all. There are only two separate knobs and a switch to activate the effects. It is very simple to operate, just put the style of reverb that you want and the amount that you want and you are done! SOUND QUALITY If you are going to plug your microphone directly into the box, you will not have to worry about any preamp noises because it is very quiet. It is ready to be used with almost any microphone and it can even be used to hook up to your PC via USB. OVERALL OPINION I did think that since it could connect to your computer via USB that TC Helicon would have done more stuff to make it better or update it over the web. But they really did not spend much time on making any changes so you could do anything special. It is mainly for a line of support in case you need help. They say there are updates but I have not tried to update nor have we got any alerts about an update for it. This pedal is made very well and will last you forever. It works great and will give you usable reverb quickly. The price is the most attractive part about this pedal. It is a must have for this price, and the main mic we used with it was just a Shure SM58 which is a cheaper microphone anyways.

The Voice Live Play GTX has been in my possession since June. I love the 2 voices (humanized doubling) and the (Natural Play) harmonies. The preamp is low noise and very quiet. The Play GTX is a smaller unit and it is pretty light and not weighing too much. It is very well built though and seems pretty solid. I have been using this a lot over the last few months and I have put the GTX through some bad situations. I have spilled stuff on it and dropped it a few times. It still keeps working and looks like nothing has ever happened to it. UTILIZATION It does come with a manual which I really didn’t like too much. It was boring and confusing, it did not help me understand the Voice Live Play GTX at all. I ended up just getting online to find out all of the beginner stuff that I needed to know. SOUND QUALITY It comes stocked with 200 plus presets and all of them can be easily customized and changed to your liking. The GTX has a headphone output and an input (Aux) for whatever you want, I mainly use it with a CD/MP3 player. It does have MIDI in and USB connection. OVERALL OPINION The Voice Live Play GTX will let you get a great sound on your vocals without having to double them a bunch of times. Doubling your vocals can get time consuming and get sloppy quickly, not to mention taking up a lot of tracks in your DAW. Just use the Voice Live Play GTX and let it do the doubling for you, if you want to use it with your guitar it has all of the effects you need like flange, chorus, reverb, EQ, delay and distortions. The best part is, you can go online and download a ton of more presets very easily. You will never run out of presets and new ideas with the Voice Live Play GTX.

The main effects in this unit are Vocal Harmonizing, voice doubling, pitch correction, Chorus effects, Some high quality reverbs, delays with tap tempo ability, a compressor, 3 band EQ and a Gate. Yes, these effects can be edited through a downloadable plugin off of TC Helicon's website. Yes, it is designed to be placed in a Effects rack. Well, its analog in the sense that it takes in your voice but the insides are all digital. No tubes in this guy. It has an XLR and a 1/4" input. Balanced 1/4" outputs, S/PDIF in/out, Midi in/out/thru and a pedal jack input. UTILIZATION Using just the hardware unit by itself, the editing can be a little bit of a pain. Its hard to really focus on one tiny LCD screen to accomplish a lot of work. Thankfully they have the Computer Plugin that makes is so much easier to do. The general setup is somewhere in the middle between Easy and Hard. It has a lot of options to mess with, especially when dealing with harmonies. You definitely need to read the manual to get a feel for this guy. I also highly recommend using the computer plugin. Its almost a necessity. The original manual, or Quick setup guide, doesn't give you nearly enough info to really open this unit up. Since its release, TC has uploaded a new, more in depth manual to its website. You need to download this. It is clear enough, but be prepared to do a lot of reading and learning if you want to master the Voice Works. SOUND QUALITY This is strictly for vocals. I have never tried to put another instrument into it and have no real need to ever try. TC Helicon is famous for there work with Vocal Preamps and effects and this unit stands up to that reputation. I don't think my voice has sounded better than when I use this unit. The mics are faithfully reproduced and the Pre amp is very transparent. I also want to mention that it generates little to no noise into the signal chain. The presets are fun to start off with, but if you really want to use this device, especially the harmonies, you need to program it. If you don't, your harmonies will sound off. You need to tell it what key, or what progression you are following. OVERALL OPINION I also own the Pedal that operates the unit. Having the foot pedal is my absolute favorite thing. You can use it to switch between patches, tap tempo effects and do something really cool...Harmony Hold. Basically you sing a note and have the harmonies come in. You hold down on the pedal and the harmonies hold their notes as you go on to others. What a brilliant Idea. It really adds a lot when doing a show and you are the only one that can sing. What I like least is the amount of time you need to spend learning this device. Its not an unbelievable amount of time, but it has a decent learning curve. But in the end, the time you spend will be worth every minute. The precision and quality is spot on. The reverbs are spectacular and the harmonies are extremely nice. A lot better than I expected actually, especially for the female reproductions. No, this is the first harmonizer I have really used. As for reverbs and delays, yes, tons of them. For vocals, this unit provides the best I have used so far. If something happened to this unit I would be very sad. At that point though, I would buy the new Voice Works Plus, just because of the added options.

The TC Helicon MP70 is a vocal dynamic microphone that is geared toward live performances. It has a frequency response that is perfect for vocals, giving them a warm but rich sound that is crystal clear. It is great with handling feedback rejection and also handling off axis noise that could be coming from other sound sources. This mic feels great in your hand, and for any live performer it is great to have a mic that just feels right in your hand and is light. This microphone can handle vocals coming into it from close or from a decent vocal distance from the mic (a few inches away). Either way you will get a great sound and it will really allow you to express your vocals much more if you can move the mic range to and from your mouth without it affecting the quality. OVERALL OPINION This microphone comes with a carrying case and a mic clip, the polar pattern is supercardioid plus it has a 1 year warranty from the company that starts the day that you made your purchase. This is a must have microphone for a serious performer that is on a tight budget. You can purchase this mic with a piece of mind knowing that it will sound great, feel great in your hand and it is covered by a warranty in case anything happens to it within the first year you are using it. If it is in your budget to purchase a few of these I would go for it because if you have more than 1 singer in your group, using these together will give you a great sound and everyone will be on the same page (same mic). For 70 bucks, this is a must have and it will give you a great sound that your audience will love. This is one of my favorite live mics!

The TC Helicon MP 75 is a vocal microphone that is made for live performances. It is a super cardioids dynamic microphone that is great with feedback and noise rejection. The reason that this microphone is so good is because it is made for vocalists that use the microphone very close to their mouths. On a lot of other microphones that I have used in the past; if the microphone is too close to the vocalist’s mouth it will cause a world of problems and during a live set that is the last thing you need. This microphone handles that great, it has a steel windscreen grill on it that is heat treated. OVERALL OPINION This microphone is made for vocalist and vocalist only, during a sound check we did some testing with it on a few instruments and it did not respond to well. The sounds of vocals through this microphone are crystal clear and warm, they sound big and that is perfect for a club or live setting. If you are a singer you will love this microphone because it gives you controls right on the microphone that you can change anytime you want. You can take full control of your vocal effects right from the button on the microphone without having to stop the performance or anything. This is a singers dream; the button will enable vocal processors like VoiceTone Singles and Create XT. Being able to control your effects for when the verse or chorus kicks in is crucial to some sets and for ours it really was. Because we do not have a engineer team to take care of all of this things and we needed to be able to do it quickly ourselves. This microphone has armed us with the tools we need to do a great live show without any hassles. If you are a singer I highly suggest getting this microphone and learning to work the microphone control circuit. You will thank me later.

The TC Helicon Intonator is a pitch correction plug in that cost 250 when it first came out. It is a real time pitch correction software and can get rid of all of your off pitch notes in your vocals. The pitch correction with Intonator is very easy to achieve and you won’t need a manual to do it. I have never seen the manual but I am pretty sure that it came with one though. Using the Intonator you can change the pitch of your vocals with big intervals in between and it will still come out clean. Sometimes when shifting pitches or changing the intervals too far apart your vocals will get really distorted, but with the Intonator they actually still come out pretty clean. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE I never had a problem with the TC Helicon Intonator with my Windows XP system, that has 256MB. You can also use it on a Mac if you have 10.2 or higher operating system and 256MB. You can run Intonator as the host or as a plug in. I have never used it as a host, and I understand that your computer specs must be better if you want to use it as a host and not a VST with Power Core. OVERALL OPINION This software is a great value for the price, I think it has come down since the time it first came out. I have been using it for a while and never had a single issue with it. The sound quality of the pitch correction is almost glitch free, which is pretty good because I have pushed this software to the limits of pitch correction and everything sounds great and is in real time. It will depend on which host you use when using Intonator as a VST. Some of them can make this program glitch big time. I had several issues trying to use it with some of my DAW programs on my XP computer. But I am happy that I chose to purchase the TC Helicon Intonator because it has given me some of the best pitch correction for vocals that I have heard.

Stompboxes for vocalists in four flavors. These were review units provided to MGR by TC Helicon. VoiceTone T1 - Adaptive EQ and Dynamics ($129 USD street) VoiceTone C1 – HardTune and Correction ($169 USD street) VoiceTone D1 – Doubling and Detune ($149 USD street) VoiceTone R1 – Vocal Tuned Reverb ($149 USD street) MGR used the Singles in a club setting using a common rhythm section but five different singers: a male who cut his teeth on metal and had a bit of a, shall we say, dynamics problem; a more blues-oriented singer with plenty of grit to his sound; and three females singers who ran the gamut from Sade sweet to Grace Potter and the Nocturnals raunchy. As described above, our metal maven likes to perform full-out and peppered his vocals with some sludge metal gutteral utterings as well as some screams that would have made Robert Plant proud. Normally, a soundman would have to ride this singer's channel non-stop to avoid overload. But. connected between this singer's microphone and the snake, the VoiceTone T1 Adaptive EQ and Dynamics did a masterful job of not only keeping his vocals to manageable dynamic level, but also of giving them a very even tone. From croak to scream, the vocals sounded surprisingly even, yet still passionate. Next up we installed the VoiceTone C1 HardTune and Correction on our Sade-clone female singer, who requested that we channel Cher's AutoTune vibe. This we accomplished with ease by tweaking what we quickly came to call the pedal's 'gender-bender' knob and using Hard Tune setting. A more subtle tuning correction effect is available by turning the tuning knob more counterclockwise, but in our case, we wanted over-the-top, and the VT supplied it. By far the most fun we had with any of the Singles came when we plugged in the VoiceTone D1 Doubling and Detune. The D1 had us lining up to try our hand at its various settings, all of them based on doubling effect that has the added benefit of TC's research into the fine art of making one voice sound like two or more. Back in the 1970s, my band had one of the first vocal doubling units, and it was always a crapshoot to find a setting that added depth and thickness without being obvious. TC seems to have solved that problem with the D1, which includes not only standard double-tracking effects but also Octave Up, Octave Down, and a very cool Shout setting that must be heard to be appreciated. Last up on the test platform was our old-school bluesman, who insisted that he had no use for AutoTune, doubling or EQ. 'Just give me reverb!' he demanded. And the VoiceTone R1 Vocal Tuned Reverb delivered. We all know what reverb sounds like, but the R1 took 'verb to new level with 'Vocal Tuned Reverb,' which optimizes eight preset reverbs for use on voice. Included verbs are Hall, Plate, Theater, Club, Room, Studio, Ambience and Arena. If you can't find your perfect reverb in the R1, chances are it doesn't exist. No problems found. Easy to use and a variety of effects at affordable prices. Standard heavy-duty style stompbox housing. heavy duty switching plus jacks plus power supply connector. With the VoiceTone Singles line of stompbox effects pedals for vocalists, TC Helicon has hit a home run. Any singer -- from a rock band frontman who wants to experiment and control his own sound to a solo songbird who can't afford the luxury of a soundman to add effects to her voice -- will love these units. They're easy to use, rugged, yet attractive and affordable. But in this case, hearing is believing. We encourage you to visit the VoiceTone Singles website or a great NAMM video demo to hear them for yourself. Up to four VoiceTone Singles can be connected together with the TC Helicon VoiceTone Singles Connection Kit to form the ultimate vocal processing chain. The kit includes a 12V power supply, 3 x DC daisy-chaining connectors, 3 x short XLR cables. <img src="http://www.musicgearreview.com/dbpix/voicetone-singles2.jpg" /> This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com