Review: TC Helicon VoiceLive Rack
All the T-Pain-Andrews-Sisters power of VoiceLive in your FOH rack.
6 December 2011
Review: Guy Harrison
TC Helicon a division of TC Electronic dedicated to ‘your voice’ introduces its latest offering, the VoiceLive Rack. Bringing all their technologies into one box is not a new concept for TC Helicon as this was done previously with its VoiceLive Extreme. While that product was performance orientated with its floor mounting and footswitches, á la a guitar stompbox for the vocalist – this time TC Helicon brings its vocal technologies to the FOH mix position with the VoiceLive Rack.
Designed to be used live as a fully featured vocal channel, the VoiceLive Rack packs a lot of punch into its 2U chassis. Although the VoiceLive Rack can be configured as a ‘send and return’ effect, its true power lies when utilised as a vocal channel using the onboard mic pre. The reason being that where the VoiceLive Rack excels is in its pitch-based effects which, quite simply, cannot be used in a send and return configuration. While on the subject of pitch, the VoiceLive Rack also boasts a ‘guitar/music’ input from which the harmony generator can take its pitch cues. Very nifty indeed! Add to this Touch Control and a supplied MP-75 microphone with an onboard button for controlling the effects and we have a very unique offering.
THE PRESETS
Right. Time to switch this baby on, plug the MP-75 microphone in, and cruise the presets. Instantly, TC Helicon capably shows the wares of the VoiceLive Rack. The very first preset is called ‘Another Brick’ and, well, who could resist belting out a few bars of this seminal classic! This preset uses the Double, Harmony and Reverb blocks and while slightly overdone was convincing. The next preset: Kanye Lockdown. Here we get some trademark Kanye action utilising three processing blocks. HardTune is taking care of the very deliberate Cher-style pitch correction, with some Transducer to get the high-pass 456Hz filter processing. This processing is able to be inserted in different routing positions. In this particular Kanye preset it’s inserted after the lead vocal on the send to the other effects, ie. Delay doing some ¼ & 1/8th-note triplet delays. The result? Hey presto, I am Kanye! [You only need to check out Guy’s DIY preamp video on the AT YouTube channel to observe what a miraculous transformation that is – Ed.] Complete with big metallic sounding delays that duck while I sing, then pop up at the end of my phrases. And I can’t sing out of tune no matter how hard I try. Okay, maybe if I really try…
After 10 minutes of wading through many harmony-style presets and finding myself singing ‘When I went down to the river to pray’ from the Coen Bros O Brother, Where Art Thou? film, far too many times, I came to the conclusion that the presets are very well programmed. The harmonies are often convincing, if slightly overcooked – I guess TC Helicon doesn’t want to leave anything in the locker that may impress.
I found one very handy feature to quickly modify a preset: tweaking any of the small rotary encoders brings up a screen that allows you to balance the ‘Voices’ (ie. harmonies) and the Reverb/Delay levels against the dry vocal. Sadly, the latter are only available on the one knob – separate reverb and delay levels would be very useful. That said, this does provides a quick way to knock the effect levels back a little on the fly. These controls are global, so flicking to the next preset keeps the settings – great if using the VoiceLive Rack live.
HARMONY TRACKING
Next I had a quick play with the harmony tracking feature. The VoiceLive Rack has the ability to track an input, be it guitar, aux or MIDI and use this as the reference for its harmonies and pitch correction. Sound fraught, but in practice the chord recognition was very fast and the ability for the harmony engine to track from something other that your voice opens up another world of possibilities. The Guitar Input can be routed to the output and has its own independent processing by way of reverb, compression, UMod & three-band EQ. The aux input can also be routed to the main outputs – handy for backing tracks etc, in a one man band or duo.
NEED TO KNOW
DECLARED INTEREST
I’ve got to confess that I’ve been dead keen to get my hands on the VoiceLive Rack for some time as I’ve been doing some FOH work for a band whose album is heavily driven by harmonies and delays. I was looking to the VoiceLive Rack to bring some of those flavours to their live shows. So off into the VoiceLive programming world I went, searching through presets and modifying them to suit my needs. With 238 presets on offer the Wizard button is a welcome relief. Here you can refine your preset search using keywords such as Harmony Below, Octaves, Long Ambience, Tap Delay, HardTune etc. With the use of up to three keywords you can find what you’re chasing quickly. Recalling any preset out of the revised preset list is easy with a second press of the Wizard button. My list of preset candidates selected, it’s time to get under the hood of this beast.
Editing is simple. Copy your preset to an empty location, and turn off the effect blocks you don’t want. Touch and hold any block you want to edit and the Edit window appears. Navigate to the relevant parameter line with the big knob and tweak the setting with the small knob. Simple and effective. The depth of programming within each block is extensive – you’ll find all the settings you would expect and a few extras.
The harmony block is particularly worthy of mention with settings for Voice Gender, Humanisation, Smoothing (which allows for pitch correction on the harmony voices), Portamento (glide time), seven different vibrato styles, settings for choir styles and voice doubling, and you start to understand how this unit goes about its work – there’s plenty of depth.
IN STEP
Then it’s time to save your tweaked preset in the new location. A handy feature is the ability to have steps within each preset. The idea is that, say, you have a particular song where you want to use a distorted megaphone voice for a chorus and at the same time reduce the reverb level. Rather than have to create a separate preset you just hold the Step button within your current preset and a step is created. Within this step you can now turn on the Transducer block by touching it, open the Reverb Edit page, reduce the reverb level and store again. Now you can step back and forth between the two steps, turning the Transducer on and reducing the reverb level with the touch of a single button. Up to 10 steps are available and you can change as many settings as you like within each step. Very powerful stuff.
The VoiceLive Rack’s performance is outstanding. I must admit, I was apprehensive at the thought of touch controls but in practice found them to be excellent. Being able to touch the Delay block to send phrases or words to the delay was seamless. Touching in the Doubling and Harmony for choruses was a cinch. I really can’t fault this unit. Admittedly, this style of programmable effects will not find a home in all styles of music but if pop or hip hop is your bag (and you’re not afraid to get your hands ‘dirty’ with some editing) then some outstanding results can be achieved. Ideally, I’d love the touch controls to be backlit for low-light FOH conditions. Which, I guess, goes to show that you can have everything and still want more.
