The other day, I received a shipment of a few pedals from TC Electronic to evaluate and review. I wrote a review of the MojoMojo Overdrive Pedal yesterday and this evening started evaluating the TC Helicon VoiceLive Play GTX vocal and guitar processor. Out of all the pedals I received from TC Electronic (I received four total), this pedal – or should I say unit – was the one that was going to be real important to me, because I use a vocal processor for my solo acoustic gigs for harmonies. For the last few years, I’ve been using at DigiTech Vocalist Live 4, and I still love it. But it’s showing its age now, and is pretty beat up, considering I gig with it weekly, and I’ve been getting nervous using it as of late.
My interest in the VoiceLive comes not only from needing a new unit, but also from listening to the demos out there, and also seeing/hearing its sibling, the VoiceLive Touch in action at a live demo done by Christine Havrilla, one of TC’s American demo artists (she’s the chick with the great voice in all the demo videos). What struck me about the VoiceLive technology then was how natural the harmony voices sounded. While I dig my VocalistLive box, I have to admit that the harmonies can sometimes sound almost chipmunk-like; but I wasn’t hearing any of that with the VoiceLive. So I was absolutely excited to receive the shipment because I finally had a chance to try out the unit myself, and see if I could get it dialed in so I could use in my gigs this weekend (I have three).
I “cheated” a bit before I hooked up the unit this evening by reading the manual online earlier this afternoon to get myself familiarized with the control possibilities; there are LOTS! But as I messed around with it tonight, while having read the manual was useful, with how easy it is to access all the parameters, I could’ve saved myself some time. It really is that easy to use!
The VoiceLive Play has 235 presets based upon various popular songs. Presets aren’t my thing, so instead of using the, I paged through presets and found three presets that would work with acoustic guitar. I then edited them, removing most of the vocal processing (I did keep some compression because that’s always a good thing), then tweaked the modulation effects so all the normal voicings would be the same. I would then construct harmonies for the “Hit” button. I also matched the guitar settings for two of them so I could switch between them in a single song. For instance, one of the presets has a single vocal harmony with “Hit” activated, while the second preset has two voices of harmony plus a doubling voice.
I edited these so I could switch between them mid-song, as some songs have sections that only require a single harmony voice, but other sections may requite more. A good example is the Eagles’ “Peaceful Easy Feelin.'” I recorded a sample of that:
I was concerned that I wouldn’t have the ability to switch presets mid-song while keeping “Hit” active as I was able to do that with my Vocalist Live 4. But the fact that I can do that with the VoiceLive is a HUGE plus. In fact, that might’ve been a deal-breaker for me if I couldn’t do that because having to tap dance from the preset selector to the Hit button would make things difficult while playing.
With respect to sound quality, the VoiceLive absolutely shines. The problem I’ve always had with my Vocalist Live 4 is that the guitar processing absolutely stunk. Admittedly, I’m not too impressed with the dirty amp models in the VoiceLive, but I’d never use them. But the mere fact that you can finely adjust the guitar sounds is absolutely huge for me because it means that I can choose not to use my pedal board with the unit. Sometimes I play in places where real estate is a premium, and having a couple of floor units – however small – takes up valuable space. For my larger venue gigs, I’ll probably still bring my board because my modulation effects are way better than the onboard effects of this unit. But the effects here are good enough. This coming weekend, I’ll be playing three gigs, and even though there will be space, I’m going to make it a point to not bring my board. From what I can tell so far from this unit, it’s going to work just fine with my Fishman SA220 SoloAmp.
Another place where this unit shines is in vocal doubling. With my old unit, I never used it because it did not sound at all natural. You can tell that a lot of work went into getting the VoiceLive’s vocal processing to a very high quality. Even recorded direct into my DAW, the vocals sound natural. Plus, there are all sorts of params that you can adjust that affect vocals; a big one for me being compression. Apparently, TC modeled their compression after a very well-known compressor (don’t know the name, but they mention it). I personally don’t use much compression, maybe 2.1 – 3.2 to 1 compression so I can retain dynamics, but it’s a necessity to have at least some, especially when playing in an open environment. Here’s a short clip of the Beatles’ “In My Life” that demonstrates the fantastic doubling and light compression:
All in all, my initial impression is simply this: I see a VoiceLive Play GTX in my immediate future and beyond!
Guitar Gear 
The Eagles “Peaceful Easy Feeling” demo had awful harmonies. You can hear the digitizing clearly on these words, “time” “anyway” “feeling” “all ready standing” “whooo whooo” what caused this, because unlike your review says, it doesn’t sound natural at all. The doubling, on the other hand, sounded perfect. I have the VocalistLive 4 too and use the doubling on it which, as you mentioned, doesn’t sound natural. I am looking at the VoiceLive GTX as a replacement for the VL4.
It’s definitely a bit tricky to get it right, but after over a year using the VoiceLive GTX, I’m glad I made the switch. I still use the harmonies, but have learned to turn them down. You can hear that they’re there, but that digitizing is significantly reduced. It took a bit of tweaking and experimentation to get it just right, but it has worked great for me.
Thanks for the feedback!
You mentioned specific compression settings…are those for vocals? Where do you find the menu that controls compression?
Jansen, there’s no way to directly control compression. It’s preset with the vocal settings. I keep it in the lighter settings; usually using the Norm+Warmth setting with my rig, but for the restaurant I play at, I always use Normal, then add more compression with the on-board compression on the mixing board.
FYI, after over 400 gigs with it, it finally died on me last weekend. I’m seriously missing it.
Died!? That isn’t good, did you contact TC Helicon? Curious to see if they provide any remedy.
I’m looking at the GTX/VL3 to replace my Roland VP-7, a unit I had such high hopes with. The GXT is no better, still that heavy digital processed sound. The VL3 online demos seem to have solved that issue to a good degree. Just wondering if you’ve A/B’d the GTX and VL3 and is it worth paying the big bucks for a bit better harmonies/better pre-amp.
You have an awesome voice, I’d recommend turning down the harmonies quite a bit more so they just hang like a thin screen rather than a wall of sound…thanks for the review and samples!!!!
If you move the pitch correction to 50% and change the harmony to a looser setting it sound very realistic without that digitized hard tune in the harmonies
I now use a Harmony G XT, and with that unit, I turn the harmonies down – maybe about 9:30-10 on the dial, and it sounds pretty good. While it uses the same harmony algorithms as the VoiceLive, it must have a slower processor because tracking can get a bit tricky with it. But it works pretty well just the same.
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