TC-Helicon VoiceLive 3 Review
When buying any type of effect unit, the most important aspect is the sound quality. You’re not going to want to waste your money on bad-sounding effects. With the VoiceLive 3, TC-Helicon made it a priority to deliver the best quality effects on the market.
The TC-Helicon VoiceLive 3 is an all-in-one guitar and vocal effect box. It blends a mixture of classic and modern effects that are perfect for live performance.
In this review, we’ll be taking a close look at the VoiceLive to find out if it’s actually worth your money. If you have any questions regarding the TC-Helicon VoiceLive 3, feel free to drop a comment down below.
What Will Be Covered In This Review:
- What’s Included?
- The Features
- Ins/Outs
- How Do The Effects Sound?
- Ease Of Use
- What Others Are Saying About The VoiceLive 3
- Pros
- Cons
What’s Included?
With the TC-Helicon VoiceLive 3, you’ll get a headphone/guitar cable, a USB cable, a power adapter, and standard manuals.
Not a whole lot is included. This is NOT a bad thing. The VoiceLive is designed to be set up fast and easily for use in live performance.
A USB cable is included for connection to your computer. This can be helpful for post-processing in your favorite DAW.
The Features
The VoiceLive 3 has a ton of features that will make both talented and un-talented singers sound 10x better.
There is no other vocal/guitar effect box out there that is as versatile as the VoiceLive 3. The VoiceLive operates in 3 separate layers: a guitar layer, a vocal layer, and a loop layer.
On the back of this unit, you’ll notice a surplus of connections. We’ll be going over the connections in more detail later on in the article.
There is a boat-load of presets organized by their style and genre. If you aren’t in the mood to tweak parameters, this is a surefire way to draw inspiration.
The foot-switches are easily accessible. Especially if you’re a solo guitarist, you’ll find it easy to swap through presets and create loops.
My favorite feature of the VoiceLive is it’s advanced harmonization. It gives you a very realistic sound that can be adjusted to your liking.
Ins/Outs
- XLR input
- Guitar in/thru
- Aux input
- Monitor in/thru
- Headphone output
- Voice output L/R
- Guitar output L/R
- Footswitch and expression input
- MIDI in/out
- USB
- Power
How Do The Effects Sound?
With the VoiceLive 3, you get a ton of great-sounding effects. Some of the included effects are doubling, harmony, echo, flanger, choir, and reverb.
I liked the vocoder effect. On the VoiceLive, there are many different modes to choose from. There is even a talk-box effect that sounds really good.
You can also switch around the amp type to emulate a bunch of other popular amps. You’ll find both modern and classic amps to choose from.
The VoiceLive has a looper that works great for live performance. You can turn on a metronome while you’re playing different segments to help you stay on time. I thought it was a nice feature that loops can be stored to memory and then be recalled later within different presets.
Harmony is probably the most used effect on the VoiceLive. You can adjust the humanization to make the harmonies sound a little bit more real. I appreciated how TC-Helicon made sure to have a non-cheesy harmony effect.
Ease Of Use
Surprisingly, the VoiceLive 3 is pretty straightforward to set up. The Getting-started manual is clearly explained and easy to follow.
What Others Are Saying About The VoiceLive 3
There were mostly positive reviews on the VoiceLive 3.
I saw one review that was talking about how even if you aren’t a singer, this effect unit is worth buying solely for the guitar effects. The VoiceLive’s delay effect sounds amazing on a guitar!
A lot of people agreed that the warmth to the VoiceLive’s amplification was superb. Even when you turn up the amplification to higher volumes, there is no clipping whatsoever.
The vocal harmonies are very extensive and sound like no other effect box. You don’t need backing singers anymore to get a realistic harmony. This becomes extra-useful when you don’t want to bore your audience by overdubbing organic harmonies manually.
One of the more fun features that people favored was the looping function. Looping makes it easy to create a song on the spot. If you’re a one-man-band, the VoiceLive makes is super simple to create loops and put effects over them live.
Right out of the box you have a ton of presets at your finger-tips. Instead of having to mess with parameters an create your own presets, you can quickly get started with the wide selection of included presets.
On a more negative side, I did read a few reports that the screen is difficult to read in low-light situations. This won’t be a huge problem if you get all of your presets set up prior to the gig.
Pros
- The effects sound amazing!
- A ton of presets to gain inspiration off of
- Easy to set up
- A perfect option for live-looping
Cons
- The display is hard to read in low-light situations
Summary
In conclusion, if you’re looking for a great effect-box to bring your live performances to the next level, look no further than the TC-Helicon VoiceLive 3.
It has everything you can ever want, from a wide selection of effects, to an intuitive looping function. You’ll get a ton of presets, organized by genre and style, to draw inspiration from.
Even if you’re planning on using this in a studio environment, rather than live performances, you can still connect the VoiceLive 3 to your computer via the USB connection. This makes it easy to post-process effects and record your creations.
Thinking of Buying the TC-Helicon VoiceLive 3?
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