TC Helicon VoiceLive 2 Floor-Based Vocal Processor  

This thing has about every vocal effect you can think of and sounds great too.

It is built like a tank and the size of it really fits in my set-up nice. It has a handle built into it to carry it, they really thought this thing out well.

Though the price is kind of high, you pay for what you get. I had a digitech vocalist Live3 and it worked pretty good but it is no match for the quality of T.C. Helicon's engineering. It sounds 10 times better.

I can put the Digitech and the T.C.Helicon up side by side comparision the T.C. Helicon's effects are much better and pristine sounding delays and reverbs. The harmony in it is way faster and hits less errors when you use it with a guitar. Having presets is way nice too, you can go back and forth to different patches without any glitches pops or clicks. Every time I use it I find something new and interesting and it can be up graded to new versions of software , I can now do 15 second loops with it and do some creative things withit. There is a hold button where you can hold a chord the chooir is doing while you start singing something different. I can't wait to plug it in again and see what I will come up with next.

Truthfully, I haven't tried other vocal processors, but can't imagine any surpassing the VoiceLive 2. Using it with no harmony, doubling, FX, etc., it's still a great tool for adding richness to your voice. While I can carry a tune, I've always been a little ashamed of my VOICE; I think it sounds almost boring and lifeless. But, with the VL2, I'm actually pretty blown away by what I'm hearing! As has been mentioned in other reviews, if you really can't sing (in tune) don't waste your money, spend it on singing lessons instead, seriously; this will not improve your singing, only your voice.

On the other hand, if you are a good singer but just don't have perfect intonation, the pitch correction compensates beautifully without that robotic sound so prevalent in a lot of R&B music today. But it's not that the VL2 can't do that, it can if that's what you want, I just don't like that sound personally.

The unit is easy to use, but it will take a bit of patience to learn to get the best settings and sounds for your particular tastes and style, and it's worth the little bit of work it takes. If you can't find what you need among the 200+ presets, it's pretty easy (and fun) creating your own, and you can control so many aspects of what comes out that it's amazing.

I chose the VL2 over other products because while I do play both guitar and keyboards, I don't play either well enough to play and sing (I'm a bass player really), so I needed a device that had the capability of setting a key to create harmonies. Even better is being able to play a music track from my digital recorder and have the VL2 build harmonies off of that, which are then fed back into the recorder for beautiful vocal tracks.

Now, the thing is expensive, almost prohibitively so, but if you can in any way swing it, I'd highly recommend it. As a recording musician only (I don't play live anymore), it's one of the best investments I have made for my studio. I recently needed a particular harmony sound for a song, and wound up creating a new preset, and it turned out so well that, honestly, I can't stop listening to the song because the harmony sounds like something a "professional" band would have done.

All in all, I'm pleased with the VL2 and doubt there is anything better on the market short of something a major recording studio might drop 3 grand on! The more I get into the settings, the more creative ideas and uses for it I come up with. About the only drawback is the temptation to overuse it.

Awesome features; multiple effects, harmony, doubling, delay, reverb and any or all can be on or off at will with the press of a button. Easy and detailed editing assure you can get almost any sound you may want vocally. Automatic voice EQ, compression and de-essing are excellent; gives your voice some "ooomph" without a pro-level engineer at your disposal.

Solidly built and looks beautiful. Large and easily readable display, intuitive button layout. Noiseless footswitches and buttons mean that if you use it desktop (like I do) those sounds don't get into the mix. Kinda chintzy AC power brick though.

It's expensive, and if you are not really serious about what your vocals sound like, especially as a solo or duet act, or if you really believe they are good enough, then it probably won't be worth it to you.

Again, not very impressed. got some nice-sounding harmonies to come out for a minute in practice, but they were muffled. It is extremely difficult to tell what the presets are. It is extremely difficult to see the buttons onstage. It is extremely difficult to read the display, especially on stage. I just can't see any reason why a musician would buy this unit when they can have a similar one with a really sweet sounding warm preamp, too.      I am returning this to my friend today.

Pro gigging musician here. Read the manual several times- it is vague, incomplete, and poorly-written. I had this unit for several weeks to try to help a fellow musician figure it out. Could not even get it to work at all. I already have the digitech vocalist 4, which I was using several years ago the day I picked it up with no issues. According to the manual, it appears that you have to somehow calibrate this device to whatever system you are playing it thru via a vaguely described set of commands/button presses each time you use it. With a similar pedal, you plug and play, and the gain/output nobs are right there- simple. Why does the tc have to overcomplicate what should be a simple part of the process? And again, why does the manual leave out so much detail? How they are selling so many of these things is a mystery to me. A lot of them must be getting returned.

Anything that does not do what it is designed for gets a terrible rating. If an experienced musician cannot get to square one with this after 3 weeks, what does that tell ya?

A device that is unworkable is of no value.