Karaoke Forums

Hi,

I'm Dennis and I run Karaoke shows in Minnesota. I work in the Twin Cities, but also have an ongoing show in Northern MN. It makes my week sort of tight in that I have a full time job as an Engineer. I run a show in the Twin Cities on Thurs and up north on Sat. I also do private parties and weddings.

I have a sound system for each venue, athough I take my computer with me. My traveling system is pretty compact, so I can move it around myself pretty quickly.

Last year I upgraded my system to include a TC Helicon Voice One vocal processor. I wanted to get one ever since I saw a demo a few years ago. This is a studio piece. TC Helicon makes these systems for recording studios. It has a very realistic vocal processor that can ad some very cool effects, like growl, breath, resonance, pitch, and a couple of others. Each effect has like 99 presets and then an infinate control knob, so you can get millions of different sound qualities. It is very complicated to run during a show. I have set up a number of presets, that I use and add to people singing with there permission. I have a Pop setting, a Cocker setting, a Deano and Elvis setting and so on.

The machine has two pentium processors that will modify the voice, process it and send it back in less than a milisecond. If you add a lot of effects it will delay a tiny bit longer. In most cases you can't tell the time diferrence. On the extreme, I can make a woman sound like Barry White, or a guy sound like Celine Dion. The sound is very natural and not synthesized at all.

It will also do a harmony line using your own voice that sounds very natural. You have to tell it octive and starting key, which makes it a bit difficult to do under the gun while running a show. I usually set it up ahead of time.

It also has a pitch/key, that will bring a singer that is singing off key into the right key...as long as they keep sing off key.

Well, as you can see, I'm a bit of a techie. Instead of talking about me, I talked about my stuff...oh, my wife will kill me...

Hi Dennis love having you join us -  :wave:

One of the reasons I love the forum so much is I can talk about my craft with others who share the same interest. I feel I bore my partner at times too. They truly can't understand  what we we go through at a show or keep interest with our techy side. Here others have been through what we have and have similar problems.

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[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

Babs,

Thanks for the welcome.

I am enjoying looking through posts here on subjects that interest me. The comments and info is very useful.

My wife actually is pretty good about it. She usually comes to my shows (I think she wants to keep an eye on the groupies  :D ). She doesn't understand the tech side, but is very supportive, and likes the results.

Hope we can talk more.

I've always wondered about software like that. Does it editing things not take away from the emotion in the voice of the performer?

SoapGuy,

It's not software, it's a rack mounted dual microprocessor vocal processor. They discontinued the Voice One...here's a link to the replacement:

http://www.tc-helicon.tc/VoiceWorks

The enhancements that can be added actually improve the singer. Most times you don't add a bunch of effects at the same time. This is a professional studio piece, same used by most high end recording studios. It allows you to add the effects that were actually used on the original recordings. The processors use your actual voice, and only add effects such as whisper, growl, resonance, etc. You can change pitch, and modify the voice to where a man sounds like a woman and vice versa, but these are the extremes. the vocal output still retains the inflections of the singer.

It's really hard to explain this piece of equipment. You have to really play with it to understand the quality and ability that it gives to the voice.

It's not a toy. The retail on the Voice One when I bought it was close to $2000. They came down quite a bit, and you can get the Voice Works for around $600. I also use the TC Electronics (same company) Reverb engine. Together they give you unlimited effects...in the millions of possible combinations. The TC Electronics reverb is one of the most realistic, clean reverb systems out there.

http://www.tcelectronic.com/M350

This is high quality equipment. Check it out.