TC Helicon VoiceLive Touch  

I bought the Voice Live Touch to use in my solo act. I was sold by the video demo at the TC Helicon web site. Be advised, this rig, while very cool and adding a great dimension to my gigs, is by no means as easy to operate as the demo would have you believe. The touch features are VERY sensitive and it's really easy to overshoot your mark when trying to edit and waste a lot of time futzing with the touch strip. One needs be dead-on when trying to use the loop feature--takes a great deal of trial and error. I find it close to useless in a live setting. I agree with former reviewers: The manual (not to mention technical support at the website) is very incomplete and not for beginners. It is assumed that the user has a certain familiarity with the product and the instructions are short and cryptic. And again, why no off/on switch. The closest feature it offers is the "sleep mode." On the whole it has been a positive addition to my bag of tricks, but it is nowhere close to being as easy to operate as the manufacturer would have one believe.

I've had a voicelive for about a month.  I'm a hobbyist with decent technical chops but not a huge amount of free time to dedicate to learning new devices.  I agree with much of the longer first review.  A couple of comments to add-- The harmonies and effects aren't an instrument, and the complexities of any processor makes it difficult to use on the fly.  You have to know what you want and think ahead to get it, just like practicing on your instrument and rehearsing a song.  As your shows get more complex, and your processing gets more complex, it requires time to tweak the setup... Having said that, this is a fairly complex box to use and I agree there are things I'd like to see done better.  It's still awesome as evidenced by my ratings.  It's got a lot of features that take time to absorb and maximize. It sounds awesome both as a mic pre, harmonies are very very good, and the AG pre is also very good.  The reverbs are rich and complex, many of the presets really are very good - but the challenge is finding the appropriate ones out of 300 or so.  Takes time. I've got a few minor quibbles - a guitar input level dial on the side like for the mic and headphones would be really nice for when you switch guitars - their pre's typically have different outputs. The AG processing could use a compressor for looping percussive clips. The looper could use a lot more memory. Why not include an SD card slot and an MP3 compatible media player like I have in my Line 6 gear (only better - stereo mp3 files not just wav).  This would be great for performance and looping. The undo and redo features often cause me to unintentionally overwrite presets - I suspect this may be my learning the device but it's annoying. It should be easier to access the guitar processing levels and effects types - they're in different menu locations and that slows down the swaps during a set. You should be able to choose whether guitar effects are saved with vocal presets.  This would mitigate the comment above. The footswitch modes should be able to be rotated without accessing the control pages, like Line 6 does with their gear. The multi-touch interface is fun and fairly intuitive once you get used to it.  but it's not obvious.  The manual needs a summary of multi-touch actions as they relate to using the VL-T Looping is powerful but not as easy to learn as the demos make it appear.  Timing is hard to get right without some real practice. It would be nice to be able to read loops from the aforementioned SD card, and to assign multiple loops to the five preset slots from the SD card.  That would be awesome. Why is there no power switch? The power cable from the wall wart is too short. Double the length and it'll be a lot better. Mic cables/XLR jacks can be stressed by the cable routing - minor but irritating in setup. Enabling break/sleep modes sometimes cause you to overwrite presets.  Grrrr. Bottom line - I am stoked to have this processor and it adds a LOT to my arsenal.  My gripes are relatively minor things that are easy to see in hindsight.  This box is worth the price!

I hope this will help someone considering purchasing a VL Touch. I've had enough time to 'touch' every ability of my purchase.  Overall I am pleased and this has become an interactive component of our live performance.  I play in a band,  not using this fro DJ or 1 man acoustic situation but I can see the uses in this area. The Good *Quality sounds *Lots of effects buried under those 6 touch boxes. *Easy access to rotary volume (good while your learning while playing - with so many effects combinations its quick access if you find your effects sound different than when you created them) *Build quality seems solid. *Looper - If your into this type of thing,  there are oodles of hints and entries in the manual and TC online on how to create killer loops.  IMO they spent too much energy on this feature.  (see below) *Guitar effects were pretty good for acoustic guitar.  This thing makes me want to design a couple 1 man show party performances.  Not really my thing but with the ability to sound like an entire band with just a guitar and mic it's very tempting.   Don't tell my band... The Bad *The VL Touch is LESS editable than the Voicelive 2 floor unit. *You can't create custom key / scale harmony. *Manual is incomplete.  TC has used names for the presets that will at least give you a clue but you have to look at all settings one by one,  through over 200 presets to figure them out.  Worse is that this unit has effect settings called "styles" that you have to figure out on your own.  Not enough explanation around some of the other settings they use.  For example, I copied this from the manual... "Choir engages the Choir effect."  While I know what a choir is..  some definition (glossary) would have been appreciated.  There are lots of examples like this where the manual lists a key parameter with a single word definition..  leaving you to wonder what actual effect is going on. *Vocoder - Take this comment with a grain of salt.  Hopefully others will speak about this.  I thought the vocoder was terrible BUT 1-I don't know much about these and 2-I was using a 200 Yamaha keyboard / midi.  I would be curious what others think about vocoder quality.  For me it was monophonic and grainy sounding...  not the quality I hear from professional artists. *PC interface is extremely limited.  NO ability to edit parameters with your PC.  You can only move patches around update firmware and make an archive of your settings.  (very handy as making accidental saves on this is very easy )  I hope they edit this later with an 'edit lockout' mode to avoid those accidental saves.  I think this is a big deal as nearly every section of the top of this device is touch sensitive.  A simple adjustment or brush of the hand can result in things being saved or new effects being turned on / off. In summary If you have your hands free to interact with this device I would recommend it.  If you want every possible edit option / effect you owe it to at least look at the Voicelive2 or another product. Of disappointment was the fact that TC didn't advertise the "less editable than VL2" until after all the launch hype and that the full manual wasn't available until after launch.  Well,  that's my own fault for being too excited to read the manual before placing my order.  ; P  I probably would have ordered it anyway. The online community is slowly growing although most of the FAQs available are still very basic and not much help for advanced questions.  Hopefully this gets better soon. Sure I'm pointing the finger at some of this device's shortcomings but I'm hoping this allows anybody reading from avoiding any negative surprises.  Overall this deserved a rating of 4 - Great!  It's really fun to interact with this little device.

I'm a professional Musician, not a sound geek or tech guy  - So of course I want things to be intuitive so I don't have to read a long-winded instruction manuel that goes into too much detail or not enough depending on what you need to know. The Voicelive Touch is very cool and shows promise but I've had it for a week and am finding the resources (how-to clips, directions in normal English etc.) too vague. The 16 page manuel that comes with it is useless, the more detailed on online isn't much better. Most notably explanations of advanced looping, quick shots, and particularly anything relating to MIDI. A lot of factory presets won't make a sound without MIDI - yet when you hook something up to it...there's still no sound on these presets. Research continues...but I'm annoyed that it's taking this long. The footswitch is not included. (sometimes it's described as being included, but it's not in the box and an additional $50.00 - seems necessary too since if you're playing an instrument, your hands aren't free to push buttons.) There's no on-off switch and the save features are hit or miss too. If you tweak a preset and accidentally scroll to another preset before you saved it... you have to start all over again. BEWARE - some presets have ridiculous feedback. I accidentally hit the fx button on one preset and almost blew my PA system out. This doesn't happen to most presets though. Speaking of presets: Many of them are useless unless you're really into auto-tune or reverb, the chorus type patches are all very similar you can barely tell the difference. (Why would you need to lock your harmonies into a 4th above for an entire song for example? That gets old really quick.) I'm glad I have it but I'm not impressed with how it's marketed as being super simple to learn and ready-to-go. This is NOT something you can improvise with at a gig. You want to make sure your chosen presets are mixed and soundchecked before you sing. My first gig with this was going fine until I changed to a low-voice patch I thought sounded nice at home and when I cued it at a gig, my backing vocal was suddenly 20 times louder than my keyboard or bandmates - I brought the volume down right away and when I changed to my next patch for the next song, my vocals were too quiet. Because it's touch-sensitive tech, it's very much that - SENSITIVE. While hooking up my mic to a stand, it's cable accidentally brushed the voicelive and changed some settings. Presets are not arranged in any order that makes sense - They're mostly grouped in categories but not all. (Like distortion or choral) This entire product is like a jelly jar. Looks simple, you know it'll be good, then you struggle to get something super simple to open up. TC Helicon should have produced more detailed how-to videos in tandem with the release of this product - not DEMOS but HOW-TOs.