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TC Helicon VoiceLive Play GTX
Summary: Great vocal processing PLUS great guitar processing all in one convenient box. Pros: Superb vocal processing giving the singer powerful processing tools and very natural harmony voices. Guitar processing is top-notch. Output is super-quiet with no line noise whatsoever. Cons: With such excellent sound quality, my only con is that there aren’t more harmony voices. Though of lower quality, the DigiTech Vocalist Live 4 has four voices of harmony, which opens up lots of possibilities. But note that this is just a nit, and definitely not a deal-breaker for me. Price: $349.00 Street Features:
Tone Bone Rating: 4.75 ~ Used this unit all weekend long, and despite my minor misgivings about having only two harmony voices max, the sound quality of this unit beats the crap out of my DigiTech Vocalist Live 4. |
I’m tired. Three gigs in three days, and some coin in my pocket, and I’m a pretty happy man as well. But I didn’t realize I was as tired as I was until I sat down for a little dinner and started writing this article. Part of me not noticing my exhaustion is due to the inspiration I got from using the fantastic TC Helicon VoiceLive Play GTX. It’s amazing what good sound quality can do for sparking inspiration. For the first time in the hundreds of solo gigs I’ve done over the years, I was completely satisfied with my sound.
Guitar-wise, I was already covered, but vocally, I always knew my rig was lacking. But it was usually good enough, and I knew that the real solution was to simply add some other gear like adding a side-chain to my PA and insert vocal processing units. But being a solo artist, the thought of lugging more gear around just didn’t appeal to me, so I did my best with what I’ve had for several years, hoping that someday I could get a unit that had all the vocal processing I needed in a box. That someday arrived on my doorstep last Wednesday.
I didn’t get a chance to start playing with it until last Thursday night, and I spent a couple of hours dialing in a few presets that I would use for my gig on Friday. And after my gig, though I knew I had to make a couple of tweaks to the presets, I was completely sold on the unit. One of the servers at the restaurant that I work at on Fridays is also a professional singer, and she commented that my sound was “different” than usual. When I queried what she meant by that, she said, “It sounds so much better. So clear and present. It’s gorgeous.” That was all the affirmation I needed!
The first thing I noticed when I started my gig was the three-dimensional quality to my sound. I use a Fishman SA200 SoloAmp as my PA and acoustic guitar amp. It’s a six-speaker array that has great sound dispersal. But Friday night was the first time I felt that it was being used to its full effect. As I mentioned, there was a three-dimensional quality to my sound. I didn’t have to even turn up very loud. The sound was being dispersed as it should be. I think a lot of that had to do with the compressor in the unit. With effective compression, the “tighter” sound seems to project much more, and that is exactly what was happening as my signal issued from the SoloAmp. I didn’t even have a lot of compression dialed in; only 2.7 to 1, which is pretty light, but it was enough to squeeze my sound just enough to make my sound much more full and rich.
Fit and Finish
The VoiceLive Play GTX is a really small unit, measuring about 8″ X 6″ X 2.” It’s uncanny how much power this unit packs with such a diminutive footprint. But I absolutely DIG that it’s so small because it fits in my cord bag! This means that unlike my DigiTech Vocalist Live4, I don’t need a separate gig bag to transport it! On top of that, the metal housing is absolutely rugged, so this unit is totally gig-worthy, and for the amount of gigs that I do per year – I do over 100 gigs a year – I have no doubt that the unit will stand the test of time and the rigors of gigging.
The switches are top quality, and they’re extremely smooth; maybe a bit too smooth. I wish that the toggles had just a little snap. The problem that I have with smooth switches is that it’s easy to press the switch and not know that you’re pressing it. I had a similar issue with my previous unit. But I can understand the reasoning behind it in that in a quiet environment, a the click of a toggle might be a bit distracting.
The LCD screen is very easy to read, though as with any LCD, it can be a bit difficult to read in direct sunlight.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Presets
One thing the manufacturers tout with their vocal processing units – and TC Helicon is no exception – is the number of “artist-inspired” presets. My DigiTech Vocalist Live 4 had 50 factory presets and 50 user presets, which were essentially copies of the factory presets but were editable. To me, that was fine because it gave me enough examples to use a reference points for editing. The VoiceLive has 235 presets, and the demonstrators do a great job of showing what the presets can do. But frankly, I don’t give a crap about the presets. There are a couple of reasons for this.
First, I’ve got great amps and I know what I want out of them. The amp models in the VoiceLive are actually quite good, but I personally would never use them. Same goes for guitar effects. There are some very nice guitar effects in the unit, but I have some incredible pedals like my Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay that simply kick ass over onboard effects.
As far as the vocal settings are concerned, being experienced at recording, every singer requires different settings to optimize the qualities of their voice. For instance, I’m a second tenor/baritone, so while I can sing fairly high notes, my tonal color is darker than a full tenor. From a mixing standpoint, I almost always have to have the lows rolled off slightly and require less compression. Presets rarely, if ever, work for me because they’re set for an average. So given all of that, I end up editing a few presets, and use just those in my performances. Such was the case with the VoiceLive Play.
Ease of Use
From my perspective, ease of parameter editing is the “secret sauce” of the VoiceLive Play GTX. TC Helicon must be so confident of this that the only documentation they include in the box is a connection diagram. The user manual and preset list can be downloaded from the TC Helicon site, but for basic setup, you don’t need a manual. The only thing I used the manual for was finding out how to get to the fine controls for the effects, and that just takes pressing the Effects “soft” button twice. Other than that, the editing interface is easy. The LCD screen layout is below:
To access an editing screen, you simply press one of the six buttons, called “soft buttons” on either side of the screen. That will bring up the screen associated with the soft key. Most screens have multiple pages which you can scroll through using the arrow keys. Parameters are adjusted with the control knob in the center. Once in a parameter editing screen, you enter edit mode for the parameter by pressing the soft key next to the parameter. Parameters show up as labeled rectangles on either side of the screen. What absolutely cool though is that the soft keys will light for only the parameters you can edit, providing a great visual cue that indicates what’s editable and what’s not.
Sound Quality
As if making it incredibly easy to set up and dial in, the sound quality of the unit incredible! I already described the three-dimensional nature of the sound, but on top of that, there are no errant artifacts or line noise that issue from the unit. It’s dead quiet. But to protect against that, the unit also has a little ground lift switch on the back to protect from ground loops or differing ground references in power sources. Here are a few example clips I recorded direct into my DAW:
Eagles: Peaceful Easy Feelin’
Beatles: In My Life
James Taylor: You’ve Got a Friend
If you do hear any noise, it’s from my microphone pickup ambient noise, but there is no line noise whatsoever. Note that in all the clips, it is the raw sound of the unit. No processing occurred in my production software at all. In the last clip, I noticed that it sounded a little processed. That was fixed at my gig on Friday by removing the chorus effect on the vocals.
I’ve evaluated several vocal processing units, and occasionally sounding like chipmunks with the high harmonies is unavoidable, but I found that the VoiceLive does a much better job of blending vocals than other units I’ve used in the past and generally has a much more natural sound to the harmony voices.
Overall Impression
Save for only have two harmony voices, which I also said wasn’t a deal-breaker for me, this unit ROCKS THE HOUSE! I’m simply blown away by sound quality, but also from the fine control over all aspects of the presets. This unit is going to go on my list of game changers for sure!
Guitar Gear 
Your clips are great as usual…
Did you ever try the Harmony GXT, I have one and am wondering how they compare..
[audio src="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4612032/Marry%20Me%201.mp3" /]
I’d love to play a duet with you some time.
Thanks, Chris. As far as the Harmony GTX is concerned, I’ve never tried it myself, but it was a unit I was considering, then TC came out with the VoiceLive series (my first experience was with the VoiceLive Touch). In either case, I think both units use the same vocal processing algorithms.
Did you write that song? Pretty cool! And it would be cool to do a duet sometime.
That’s Marry Me by Train or at least my bastardized version of it. I just thought it was a decent representation of me with the Harmony GXT..
Thanks.. I don’t have any online that I’ve written yet….
Thanks for the review. I noticed this as a new product that Guitar Center was selling and wondered how it stacked up against similar products. I know TC is a good company and reknowned for it’s low noise equipment. Just didn’t know how they were with developing good vocal harmony circuits. I may spring for this one.
TC Helicon has been developing vocal harmony stuff for a few years now. They just don’t advertise their stuff much. Go figure. In any case, you should try to audition the unit at GC. As I mentioned, what has sold me on it is the editing features and ease of editing. The sound quality is almost a given.
Have you tried the VoiceLive without the guitar effects? Costs less, but I wondered if there are any extra features in the GTX unit that would still make it better for vocals or overall sound.
My friend has that unit. Same vocal effects as the GTX. He plays in a band, so it made sense for him to have only the vocal processing. Since I play mostly solo, I wanted the option to have onboard guitar processing.
Heya Goofy, thanks for the review!
A little trick for you: If you use the Oct Up, Oct Dn combinations in the doubling block, you can get close to the effect of 4 harmony voices. Assign both Oct doubling and Harmony to the hit button and you’ll be able to engage them simultaneously.
I tend to mix in the Oct voices a little quieter than the harmonies, but they can really thicken things up. Same goes for adding in a little bit of uMod Clone or Wider too.
-Craig (TC-Helicon)
Ah… nice tip. For one of my patches, I used loose doubling which really filled it out, but it didn’t occur to me to use the Octave. Great tip! Thanks!
I play mostly finger style James Taylor type music and I’ve heard both YESes and NOs when I’ve asked people whether or not units like these can read chord changes for creating vocal harmonies when picking. What’s your experience with this? One of your clips suggests it might work.
I have the Voice Live GTX. It tracks just about anything you feed into it, whether full chords or appegios and finger picking.
Having played with it for several months now, whatever instrument signal is feeding into the unit, it will try to harmonize. With fingerstyle playing, I always make sure to activate harmonies a little behind the beat so that I’ve picked the strings that will make up the chord that I’m currently playing.
One thing that I’ve found is a challenge with all the harmonizers I’ve worked with is harmonizing over an F#m chord. The VoiceLive does it better than most, but for some reason, harmonies with that chord always seem a little “off.”
Can you also create your own presets for guitar effects only and vocals untouched?
Yes. I edit patches where I won’t be doing harmonies specifically to get certain effects when I’m using that patch. I have one patch that I use for singing “Halleluiah” where I removed all the harmonizing but edited the guitar effects to have delay and a touch of reverb and chorus.
Unlike my old DigiTech VocalistLive 4 that had a whole bank of user presets, the GTX doesn’t have that. You have to edit the patches that are there which is a bit of a pain. But luckily you can add individual patches to a “faves” list, and only the those that you set as a favorite will be in that virtual bank. I’ve edited about 7 or 8 patches that I use for all my gigs. Only four are meant to be used with harmonies, while the rest I set the vocal settings the same and change up the guitar effects.
Sure, it take a couple of hours of tweaking to dial in your sounds, but it’s worth it. When I first got the unit, I took about an hour and found just three patches that would work, edited them, then used the unit that very night for a gig. Since then, I’ve only added a few patches, so it’s definitely not a cumbersome thing.
Also, to keep the sound as natural as possible, I NEVER use pitch correction. I’m not often off key, but pitch correction actually makes me chase notes. Not good. 🙂
Hi,
Can you use it as a recording tool – with the usb port. eg to make youtube recordings with great sound?
w
I don’t why not. The recordings above were made direct in. The vocal processing is awesome. For recording, you’d maybe want to dial in the vocal settings a bit, but it’s pretty good out of the box.
what kind of microphone are you using. i tried a condensor and it gave me problems when I use the “HIT” button, it would distort the guitar. I switched to the ambient (built in) mic and the problems went away. Now I’m trying different mics to see what works best.
Are you using a mic for your guitar? Never did that, but for vocals, I use a Sennheiser e835 dynamic mic. Also, before you get a mic, make sure to check the input gain knob on the left side of the unit. You can easily overdrive the unit if that is set too high.
I just purchased a TC Helicon Voicelive Play GTX (GTX) and even before delving into its features I ran into a small issue. One of my guitar pickups – but only one – produces static when conneted to the GTX through my Line6 G50 wireless system (G50).
B-Band UST/SBT > G50 > GTX > Soloamp = No Noise
K&K Trinity > G50 > GTX > Soloamp = No Noise
Fishman Matrix UST > G50 > GTX > Soloamp = Noise
Fishman Matrix UST > GTX > Soloamp = No Noise
Any idea why this one pickup would act up through the G50 wireless but not when cabled directly to the GTX?
That’s certainly weird. Wonder if it’s a grounding issue with that pickup.
Thanks for the review! Definititely got some questions answered. Am still looking for this one: when outputting to a DAW on a pc through USB, i want to have a separate output for guitar and voice.
In the manual i read this works for the XLR outputs, however, do you/does someone know if this works for the USB connection as well? (e.g. vocals with all vocal effects to left, guitar with all guitar effects to right.)
I’ve actually never tried it with the USB. But there are actually two ways to output guitar. You can do dual-mono, which is through the XLRs, and that will use the on-board guitar effects. Or, there’s a guitar-thru 1/4″ jack that you can use to go out to your own effects. The on-board effects aren’t too bad, but I personally prefer going through my own pedal board, so I use the guitar-thru almost exclusively.
As far as the USB port is concerned, I don’t think the USB can be used to hook up to a DAW; at least I’ve never read it or saw it in the manuals.
Thanks a lot for your reply.
At TC Helicon, i read that the USB port does support audio (among other stuff, such as midi). Therefore i think it can be hooked to a DAW by USB: if that wouldn’t work, what use is there for audio (and midi) over USB?
My reseller even specifies streaming and recording through USB, but we all know how resellers work, so i can’t be sure here.
And you are absolutely right to say that the manuals don’t mention this – i have found nothing clear, just like you.
option 1:
*USB on the TC Helicon Voicelive Play GTX inherits the settings for the XLR outputs*
This would be perfect.
option 2:
*There is no useable audio on the USB interface/it somehow cannot be connected to a DAW by USB*
I’ll need a mixer or a external soundcard to connect the XLR outputs to my laptop/DAW (whether just from the TC Helicon Voicelive Play GTX, or from a combination of that and those of my own pedal board)
A lot of extra cabling, some extra $$$ to be spend… Not the best outcome, but hey… it’s my laptop that has those crappy analogue inputs.
option 3:
*There is audio on the USB interface and it can be hooked to a DAW, but it is always outputting stereo without considering the source input (both vocals and guitar are left and right)*
This would still not be too bad. I think i can hook up the USB interface to my laptop/DAW for vocals, and then use the THRU to hookup my guitar to my own pedal board, and finally use a “Rockstar” 1/4″ jack-to-usb to hookup my my pedal board to a second USB-port on my laptop/DAW.
Because using the THRU requires extra cabling, and reducing the number of cables is sort of what i’m looking for, i still hope that option 1 turns out to be the right one… but i think it will be option 3.
I have also asked TC Helicon for clarification. If that’s helpful advice, i’ll let you/other readers know.
Thanks again!
Definitely helpful.
TC-Helicon has responded, and they are clear: the USB OUT is always the stereo-mix and there are no routing options for it within the VoiceLive. In my novel above, it comes down to option 3.
My reseller told me in addition that the settings such as Dual Mono only apply for the guitar, mic and aux inputs. So if someone wonders if the USB IN might be routed left or right to the XLR out: it can’t be done within the VoiceLive.
However, on a sidenote, and still according to my reseller: if you’d use a DAW to send sounds to the USB IN, your DAW would allow you to choose from 3 different outputs for the VoiceLive which would correspond to left, right and stereo. The VoiceLive would retain this, obviously. But it’s not what i’m after, and I can’t confirm if this is true.
As soon as i have all equipment (IF i get it, am still looking for alternatives), i’ll figure out if indeed i can still use USB for everything according to option 3 in my earlier post.
Hi there. You mentioned the Compressor in the Unit. Is there a way to control the compression? From what I have seen you can only turn on and off the “adaptive” tone that controls compression. I own one of these and would be very excited to figure out how to control compression…
Thanks
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