TC Electronic VoiceLive

On the surface it is a plug and play kind of unit. Go through the patches and find what works. They give you clues as to what you will get with some of the names such as; Bennie & The Jets, Helpless and Takin' It Easy. There are all kinds of vocal combinations and voicings such as male female Jazz Guys Jazz Gals etc. If you want to use it for a full song you need to program in the chord changes. Then it becomes very complex. It is good to know theory with this unit if you plan to explore the patches beyond using them as factory defaults. My last unit was a Digitech. It offered muddy three part harmonies. Voice Live offers extreme clarity and up to 4 voice harmonies. It can be a very very complex unit as there are so many parameters. The manual is often little help, I found it refers to an feature telling you to use it throughout the manual but never tell you how to address the feature. That will make your head spin around and make you spew green stuff.

I run my mike into the unit through the XLR input and then into a Fender Acoustic amp. It does not have an XLR output which I found so be strange. I also use a different Mic to record as opposed to live. The different mics trigger different actuations of the vocal harmonies IE more high voices or less depending on the sensitivity of the Mic. The sound is very clean and will do wonders for your vocals. You will sound like a recorded voice fresh out of the studio in your live performance.

It is to soon to tell. It is built like a tank. All metal and very solid. The eight stomp switches are very solid. I would use it on a gig with out a back up cause it is to dam expensive to have two of them.

Forget customer support, They offer it but is is some kind of very cruel joke.. Do not bother with the e mail as it is some kind of bogus ploy to get rid of you. They NEVER NEVER answer e mail. It is justified by we get to much. Phone support is also close to non existent. You are placed in a cue 90% of the time and before your call is answered you are told to call back. You can leave a message and if you are blessed by all the Gods in the known world they might get back to you many days later. You better write down what you wanted to ask as they will not remind you and will be very short with you if you need time to recall. They offer you support on the web but they play another giant joke on you. The want your User ID and Password. In my case I tried different passwords, with Caps, with out caps after about 25 different combinations I got lucky and noticed they would send you your password. When I got the email it said you.DID NOT NEED A PASS WORD.I felt like Rock Hudson with a new lover. As great as the products are is how bad the tech support is. You can't blame the two guys who are support as they are caught in the squeeze between an avalanche of calls and Managements lack of concern for the end user of these products and their lust for profit at buyers expense.

I work with many styles of music. The Voice live has them all covered.I love the unit but the Screw job TC Electronics does is enough to make you go postal. They make the best units in the harmony voice business

W O A H!!! Stop the presses!! why the heck is everyone upside down here? This is the absolute rock solid harmony BOMB that sounds so real it is scary. DID NO ONE PLUG a MIDI KEYBOARD INTO IT???!! That is how it tracks different keys. Very easy if you have used MIDI harmonizer before. The effects are good but the Harmonies played Live can't be touched unless you have 3 to 4 backup singers. Must have midi keyboard player for live!! If Not do not buy!!!
WE do not place it on lead vocal. The keyboard player has perfect pitch and his MIDI keys tracks the keys for the Helicon and he sings through the Helicon. In fact with this thing..he uses a real time pedal to pull out his personal unison vocal with the lead singer and with the pedal down only the harmonies go through the P A. This thing turns heads BIG TIME !! Recording would be great too..as I have used other MIDI tracking harmonizers in the studio many times with stunning results. BUT as far as ease of use one MUST have MIDI keys, and a great pitch singer on the mike that runs through the helicon or the lead vocalist. Without MIDI for the unit to track the key changes FORGET THIS PRODUCT!! That caveat gives it a 5 for ease of use.

Live..we are a vintage rock and r&b dance band with a vocalist that smokes anyone I have ever played with 40 years. When you cover Steeley Dan's "Pretzel Logic" you better be packing serious spot on harmonies AS THEY DOMINATE THE CHORUS. That song probably had at leats 12 doubled and backing harmony tracks at least when they recorded it. We all sing but this thing takes it over the top. We get so many compliments as our Lead Vocalist is so talented that he MUST have great harmonies to back his voice..and this box just Kills.."Sarah Smile"...."New Orleans Ladies"..Eagles..3 Dog Night...many others. We do sing many of the simple one and 2 part harmonies, and 'R & R harmonies' like Rolling Stones stuff... but since we got this BOMB we can concentrate on playing and the keyboard player stacks KILLER harmonies that turns heads from the audience every time we use it.
BUT the catch is MIDI input must be there or forget it!!

WE HAVE HAD IT FOR A YEAR..Yea it simply got fried with some other gear with an idiot 'electrician' flippin' breakers as we were packing big rigs in this 25,000 sq. ft convention center. We have had trouble before with breakers in this extremely high$$$ high tech new place with lousy electrical. TIP: My amp and gear was saved by a $34 HIGH END POWER STRIP DESIGNED FOR HOME COMPUTERS,PLASMAS ETC. I BOUGHT AT LOWE'S,..HIGHLY RECCOMENDED.....JUICE GOOSE?..NAHH TOO $$

We'll find out this week.

Gigging for 40 years..yes we are getting annother ASAP if this one can't be fixed..What I love is when a song is covered that actually demands huge stacked harmonies it delivers in spades..but you must have a keyboard player that has great pitch. You could run MIDI input from keyboard as we do and run the lead vocalist through it...all he would have to do is step on a floor switch to turn his harmonies off and on. This is a floor piece...looks like a tank!!
Point is who ever runs through it, must be really good or the harmonies will track to lousy vocal..trainwreck. We are just lucky to have an awesome keyboard player that can sing with true pitch and his playing has to be spot on as the Helicon is tracking key changes from his MIDI keyboard. But line these things up and you will be stunned!!!

I don't think anyone will accuse this unit of being easy to use. There are a number of controls that you must get familiar with to get any use from this device. Then again, the question becomes "How easy can you make this type of device and have it be flexible?"

You can get a very good channel from this device. I suggest that you turn all the features off to start with and just treat it like a channel on a mixing board at first. The add in correction and harmony (if needed). If I played a horn, (sax, trumpet) a voice live would be the first thing I would get. These give you an instant horn section. I use this unit for recording more then I do for live performance but once TC has the add on unit to follow chords I may use it more live.

Perfect, could not be better!

I have not called them. I can get the unit to do what I need and I have not had problems. I guess that music theory is finally paying off.

You can use this for any style but rest assured that the other user reviews on this are somewhat correct as most of the demo sounds are overboard and need to be tweaked done to reasonable amounts. This is not going to take an average vocalist and make them into Marvin Gaye but it will allow you to make up reasonable background vocals and add more depth to them.

Easy?? You gotta be kiddin...
And I love tinkering with stuff
I paid $625 for it on Ebay and just sold
it for $425 and I paid shipping,does that tell
ya sumthin?

I bought it for vocals of course,ran it through a Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro
board,Mackie Amps and Yorkville pulse speakers dual 15's and some 3 ways.
The settings from the factory are all a friggin joke, get ready to tweak for the sound you need.
Effects were delay,reverb and that harmony that the whole rig is geared up for,basicly scared my neighbors with that PA cranked and me singing like a roomfull of Buddhist Monks,,yeah after about 5 rum n cokes it was fun...

Built like a Sherman Tank

Don't know

STP,Diamond Dave with VH,Led Zepplin,Audioslave etc...
It wasn't what I needed in any sense and I took a beating on the
experience...
I'm sure it's perfect for somebody,just not me.
The preamp quality was exceptional and it did sound very highend
concerning the sheer range,it's ideal for a single one man show looking to enhance the solo voice.

I'm getting a Voice Prism Plus or M3000 rack mount gear.

Its hard to know how to get started with a review on this thing. I am a profession musician and run a studio as well. I buy equipment all of the time and never write reviews - I read plenty but never feel the need to write one - that is until I came across this machine.
After plugging the item in for a test run I went through the factory presets with a vocalist in the recording room we got some amusing effects and all seemed well until I came to actually try to use it to get a serious result. For saying this should be capable of being used in a live situation its really not that friendly - If you want the presets then, sure "plug in and go" but I honestly can't recommend this ridiculous piece of well built tat to any serious musician.

I tried connecting through the RCA Phono (S/PDIF) connection and even through the microphone I/O. I actually didn't give up easily, I worked with this unit for 4 hours straight and then went back to it the next day for another couple of hours before I realized how absolutely gimicky this thing is. I can't take it seriously at all. The connectivity is great - it provides good I/O - too bad it?s not any actual use.
Sound quality was good - No issues with noise or clarity and some of the effects provided me with a moment?s amusement.
The harmonies sound a bit realistic - but don't go expecting it to match up to the real thing - its pretty good but not at all what TC says it is.
The reverbs are nice and there are some good effects there but they are not easy to program nor would I like to be using this thing in a live situation - One wrong foot move and you are screwed.
HERES WHAT I THINK MAKES THIS SUCK:
I was working with a very capable vocalist with this machine and we tried all possibilities. We tried to find a nice harmony part for a simple melody line. That took a bit of time since there are so many scale variations to choose from - You have to both select a Key and a scale ( not very user friendly) - TC give you a number of major scale variations and its hard to sus each one. We did find a reasonable harmony to work with until we started to play around with the melody line - At that point we found all of the scale variations came up with different harmonies and if your singer is at all versatile , you will run into problems. With this unit you have to find the harmony that works with your melody line and stick with the way you sing it - As a vocalist is you ever ran this Voivelive and tried to change your melody line at all you would not know what to expect with the harmonies (Unpredictable results ? we even found that phrasing will effect how the harmonies react). Good vocalists these days have to incorporate some freelance into their live performance and this is where this just does not cope -its awful - it can make a great vocalist sound really bad and certainly would not make a poor vocalist into a pitch perfect superstar as TC has you believe it would.
The pitch correction is OK but wow!, once you have it turned on please don't try anything fancy - this piece of junk will have you wailing like a coyote in no time at all. Its reasonable for correcting simple melody lines but that?s about the best I can say about it.
For someone who sings straight with no frills who wants to spend 6 months working a set out with this box it may prove to have some use for making your solo vocal performance a little more interesting. For anyone who is at all experienced or actually works their voice on stage - DO NOT GO ANYWHERE NEAR ONE OF THESE!!!!!!
It seems like a nightmare to me to contemplate setting this device up to cope with a song that has a changing vocal pattern and one or two key changes - You might have the patience to set it up but if you ever went on stage and changed the slightest part of your vocal line, you may find yourself sounding like a cat on heat. I hate this thing and I've just sold it - I never sell anything - I'm a pack rat and I have rooms full of instruments and every amp and gadget imaginable ? This one just had to go (I owned it for one month), I wouldn?t have even used it as a door stop.
If you fancy getting this device for pitch correction please don't.
SPEND YOU MONEY ON SINGING LESSONS - you'd be much better off.

I guess its probably going to be a reliable machine - It seems to be extremely well built and proably unbreakable. Too bad its not actually useful.

TC were helpfull and I felt a bit sorry for the guy on the other end of the phone who was trying is best to help me work with this monster.
I was convinced that i was doing something wrong with it - However, it turned out that I was doing everything right and the results I got were to be expected.

This is a novelty item or something to make a stiff straight vocal sound a little better. Its not for any serius vocalist and that would be my take on it for any vocal style.
I bought it for $699 plus taxes and shipping and I sold it for $550 - I still feel happier not owning it than I did seeing it everyday - one glimpse of one of these and my nightmares will start to recur. The profeesional vocalist who worked with me on this is a serious recording personality and she was appauled by it. It will give your the same effect as Cher if you overdrive the pitch correction (that was the best giggle we got out of it) - but in all honesty - who needs that.