Musikmesse: TC-Helicon today announced VoiceTone Synth, described as radical vocal processing in a pedal.
VoiceTone Synth brings together a collection of extreme exotic and contemporary sonic effects, including jagged HardTune effects (Auto-Tune), classic Vocoder effects, a voice-controlled synthesizer and vocal distortion and megaphone effects.
VoiceTone Synth Features:
- HardTune effect with user-selectable key or instrument-sensing
- Vocoder carrier can be driven by internal voice-controlled synth or instrument input (such as guitar)
- Transducer effects, such as megaphones, distortion and radio voices
- All effects can run simultaneously
- Includes Tone feature for adaptive live engineer sound processing
- Presets that can be edited and stored
- Instrument Thru allows normal instrument amplification and vocoding
Details below.
If you’ve used the TC-Helicon VoiceTone Synth, leave a comment with your thoughts!
HardTune
The jagged, stair-stepped vocal sound of key-based hard tuning is everywhere in contemporary R&B, Hip Hop and Electronica. This feature has eluded the majority of performing musicians until VoiceTone Synth came along. Now musicians can produce this effect live by simply recalling a preset and hitting the ‘On’ button. Easy key input methods include auto-instrument sensing or pushbuttons with a clear display of the current key. Other features of the HardTune effect include dry voice mixing, octave shift and character modification.
Vocoder
The vocoder in VoiceTone Synth is called ‘Massive-Band’ for a reason. It effectively scales resolution from ultra-clearly-enunciated Robot voices to the sound of the classic, analog low-band-count vocoders we all know and love. The benefit is that, while typical vocoders require a lot of pre-processing like distortion and EQ to hear the effect properly, with the VoiceTone Synth vocoder effect you can input signals such as clean acoustic guitar and vocode perfectly for sounds that until now have been impossible to achieve.
Voice-controlled Synth
The Vocoder also features a voice-controlled synth mode – considered by many as the Holy Grail for vocoding. Prior to VoiceTone Synth, vocoding required your voice (the exciter), and an instrument input (the carrier) to make cool vocoded sounds. Of course VoiceTone Synth supports the dual input method, but for artists who don’t have another instrument or don’t play one, VoiceTone Synth can generate a synth part directly from your vocal and vocode that. The result? Generated vocoder parts with one input: your voice.
hey, my band uses this for the hardtune effect and it is great. its very easy to use and sounds just like the”auto tune” effect on the plug ins it is great and i highly recommend it for sure.
Definitely invest in one of these if you're after a more electric sound to your vocals, i use one of these with a shure sm58 and it's amazing, all i have to do is take it out of the box, plug it in, and i have the main studio effects i'd use if i was producing, but on stage.
The 'tone' button is nice adding EQ and Compression, but not recomended for live use, as most likely the sound technician will put compression and EQ ontop of it, causing feedback.
One thing most reviews look over when review this is how when using the 'Hard tune' you can mix in the dry vocals. In my opinion this is the best feature of the product as when the mix is 50/50 of dry vocals and tuned vocals, it gives the effect of vocal-doubling, but with a more electronic twist, whilst keeping the energy and authenticness of the original vocal but adding that extra sound good feel.
The downside is you only get 10 presets…but it's easy enough to live with.
Overall a great, easy-to-use, great sounding product.
Definitely invest in one of these if you're after a more electric sound to your vocals, i use one of these with a shure sm58 and it's amazing, all i have to do is take it out of the box, plug it in, and i have the main studio effects i'd use if i was producing, but on stage.
The 'tone' button is nice adding EQ and Compression, but not recomended for live use, as most likely the sound technician will put compression and EQ ontop of it, causing feedback.
One thing most reviews look over when review this is how when using the 'Hard tune' you can mix in the dry vocals. In my opinion this is the best feature of the product as when the mix is 50/50 of dry vocals and tuned vocals, it gives the effect of vocal-doubling, but with a more electronic twist, whilst keeping the energy and authenticness of the original vocal but adding that extra sound good feel.
The downside is you only get 10 presets…but it's easy enough to live with.
Overall a great, easy-to-use, great sounding product.