TC-Helicon VoiceLive Touch Now Shipping
(ShackMan | Posted 2010-11-11)
Vocalists! Tired of bending down to reach your processor? Wish you could make adjustments on the fly on stage without having to stoop and lose stage presence? Wish I would stop sounding like an infomercial? Well, thanks to TC-Helicon's new VoiceLive Touch and me moving on to the next paragraph, you can have all of this...and more.
TC-Helicon's VoiceLive Touch is meant to go anywhere. Singers and guitarists mount it on their microphone stands. Keyboardists mount it on or next to their boards. Computer musicians put it on their desks. And everyone can make use of the Switch-3 foot pedals for controlling looping and other parameters. But let's get to the actual engine inside this thing.
It runs on the VoiceLive 2's Digital Effects Processor as well as plenty of presets originally made famous on it. including HardTune,µMod, tap delay, reverb, harmony, doubling, and transducer. It's still got the brightly colored touch-screen interface with all the trimmings, too, including a GlobalTune feature that tailors EQ, de-essing, and compression to your voice. They've also improved the tracking engine for guitar tracking guitars for harmonies.
Another new feature is VLOOP, TC-Helicon's Voice Looping program (if you didn't already guess). You have room for up to 25 separate loops, controlled either by the touch pads on the unit or the footswitch. That's gotta be enough to make a song with just your voice. And each of these are 30 second loops. You've got access to instant undo/redo, single shot mode, as well as overdub, undo, and multiply.
It also has inputs for everything you could pretty much want: auxiliary input for your mp3 player, Guitar/Inst in and through, MIDI input to control harmony, USB input for audio I/O and Voice Support, headphone out and XLR in and out.
Sure, it is a little pricey at $499, but having been in a band where the vocalist used one of the VoiceLive units, I can honestly say that I appreciate the sound it gives a vocalist. It sounds finessed and produced live, which is what TC-Helicon seems to be going for.
For more information on the VoiceLive Touch, visit TC-Helicon's product site at http://www.tc-helicon.com/voicelive-touch.
James Rushin is a bassist, keyboardist, writer, and composer living and working in the Greater Pittsburgh area. He has performed with Selmer artist Tim Price, Curtis Johnson, guitarists Ken Karsh and Joe Negri. His compositions have been featured at West Virginia University and Valley Forge Christian College. He will be spending the Fall and Winter months working on a full-length album with his latest project, Shutterdown.
Feel free to e-mail James with comments, questions, concerns, at james.rushin@musicgearreview.com
