Processing vocals live

DanLights

DanLights

Santa Hat Forever
Jul 28, 2008
7,114
8
38
36
Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain
www.danlightsaudio.com
Any touring guys here ever thought about doing their own vocal processing before sending to FOH? I mean, if you have a specific type of verb, compression, maybe some basic Eq that always seem to work well with your voice and mic, probably even your own preamp with appropriate gain bringing your preferred saturation/coloration level?

If so, what do you do? a rack/pedal fx unit? Several pedals? An interface with your laptop with all your favorite plugs on and sending the output to FOH seems a bit extreme, but not impossible. I´m curious and have been thinking about doing similar for a while
 
I have a friend who has a boss pedal unit of some type rigged up to control reverbs and compression etc, mic into the board and the FOH guy takes an xlr out.
 
my old singer used to have his own 3 space rack he brought with him ... had things dialed in and setup so he could use his own presets depending on the venue & equipment (or lack of) he had to work with
 
I always thought about doing stuff like that, I heard only good things about some Digitech units,
never got to try them out-in the end I like to trade my voice just as another instrument and most
musicians try to get a good (or at least their) sound out of it.
A friend of mine only uses his own microphone for example (a line6 wireless one-models 10 different
mics I think) and you actually here that his vocals sound a bit better most of the time because he
spent some time and tried which mic sim fits his voice the best.
I would never have guessed that the difference is that big (still not huge, but it's there) and as a
vocalist it's nice to use your own mic.

I only scream and growl, so pitch correction is not needed, but some basic eq and compressor would
be cool and if I would be able to sing clean I would love to get something like a Digitech Vocalist to
simulate stuff I would do during recording.

A good friend of mine does it the following way (his band plays a mix between NIN and Muse):
Laptop on the stage that sends a click to the drummer, changes the midi channels of his Axe-FX II,
triggers all the samples and they also use it for vocal processing, everything automated.
They need this because they got like 2-3 vocal effect changes during most of the songs and they
use alot of effects on the vocals like heavy distortion and so on, songs wouldn't sound the same
without the effects.
 
I like when guys bring their own mic, and sometimes guy bring their own processors. I'm not opposed to it as long as the patches are somewhat sensible. I had a band bring one in one day that used TONS of compression, EQ and distortion to make the guys voice sound radio-like in quality. Caused all sorts of feedback problems and I recommended to them after the gig to tone it down and not use compression if they didn't know what they were doing.
 
StefTD said:
to the FOH guys here (I am looking at you Brian ;) ) - what do you think about singers that bring
their own stuff in general?
Click to expand...

I don't care at all as long as it doesn't sound like shit or make the monitors go crazy, 2 major mistakes I see people make are adding a shitload of high end (sometimes I've had to roll off literally 15dB to make the feedback stop and sound like a normal mic) or having the input gain too hot on the processor and it distorts the signal. If you leave any EQ settings flat and only add effects usually there are no problems
 
Any thougts on some good stuff for processing vocals live? Maybe some kind of rack or pedal multi-fx that works well and preferably includes a mic preamp? Or a separate preamp, or those TC Electronic pedal thingies that have XLR in and out so it all stays mic volume? I´m completely lost on which ones are good, usable, pure crap, etc.
 
DanLights said:
Any thougts on some good stuff for processing vocals live? Maybe some kind of rack or pedal multi-fx that works well and preferably includes a mic preamp? Or a separate preamp, or those TC Electronic pedal thingies that have XLR in and out so it all stays mic volume? I´m completely lost on which ones are good, usable, pure crap, etc.
Click to expand...

I use the Boss VE-20 and its pretty solid so far, has a good selection of effects and you can set it to toggle one effect with a footswitch (I have it set so I can stomp on it to turn on the harmonizer for clean vocals). Doesn't have an eq but maybe that is not such a bad thing, and it does have xlr in/out. Might be worth checking out.
 
My band's live engineer always brings his 4space rack.
On vocals it's 1 channel of DBX 266XL gate/ comp and then into a TC Electronics M1 with a Tap tempo Delay and the second channel is used for delays throws during the songs :)
 
StefTD said:
to the FOH guys here (I am looking at you Brian ;) ) - what do you think about singers that bring
their own stuff in general?
Click to expand...
I really don't like them but I've had really bad experiences with drastic EQ and level differences between patches. If a guy showed up with a well programmed one or with an dry out it would be fine.
 
I use the Boss VE-20 too, reliable pedal. One cannot expect sonic excellence at this price tag but it does what it's supposed to do. A touch of compression, chorus and dly/verb can go a long way, especially in clubs without a sound engineer etc. Making sure there's no clipping at the input and output stage and leaving lots of headroom just in case the rest of the group decide to turn the volume up is also extremely useful.


Edit: Forgot to mention using a gate to the point where one can sing without the annoying feedback or other loud sources being amplified through the mic.
 
yeah, going on the cheap I guess that VE-20 would definitely do the job of giving me the chance to have my own sound ready for any show with the proper amount of verb and compression which I think is crucial in my kind of growls. What about plugging the output of the pedal into a preamp with Eq to further shape it to my liking? Something good like a golden age which is still within a reasonable price range? The only downside I think is that to send it to FOH on most decent shows I would still have to put it through a DI box in order to extend the cable to make it to the board if it's far away, wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose as it will end up going back to mic level then back through a mic pre on the board?
 
I'm sceptical, if you have your own engineer and he controlls the processor than it's great. But otherwise it seems to be a recipe for dissaster for most people
 
xFkx said:
I'm sceptical, if you have your own engineer and he controlls the processor than it's great. But otherwise it seems to be a recipe for dissaster for most people
Click to expand...

I see how it can be terrible in the wrong hands, but I don't see a problem if I know what I'm doing, or anyone who actually is for that matter, I'm just trying to rely the least on local soundguys (if there is any, cause more than once there hasn't been) as possible, plus try to have a consistent and good sound throughout every gig (as possible), and even if we have our own soundguy (I've got a good candidate, it would just depend on the conditions of the show, if he can get paid or not) I'd rather we all had our own tones instead of depending on the gear in the PA/Backline/Whatever.
 
akarawd said:
On the eq thing, from what I can recall , it does have a basic high, low and
mid (sweepable) eq as well as a fixed freq low cut. I guess it'd be best if you kept it at line level from its output on but I'm not sure.


Here's a link to the VE-20 manual : http://media.rolandus.com/manuals/VE-20_OM.pdf
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot dude, I just read the manual and it does have a preamp gain, low cut and 3 band Eq with parametric mids. I guess of my options this is the most effective one within my reach, it also has a line output hidden in the phone output, but the manual says it's stereo, that if you're going to use the line out it should be with a Y cable, I don't know how that would affect if I used a regular mono cable with it. Anyways, it also has two Xlr outputs which can be set to dual mono, which is more than enough for me. Thanks!
 
Got to be honest, every time a vocalist has rolled into my venue with some kind of vocal pedal it's gave me problems with feedback and generally sounded quite shit. Probably down to user error more than anything else. But also you can't really judge how much delay/verb your vocal needs while standing on stage.

If you could get one that has a seperate dry and wet output I reckon that would work quite well so the FOH guy still has control of the overall dry/wet balance.
 
DanLights said:
I see how it can be terrible in the wrong hands, but I don't see a problem if I know what I'm doing, or anyone who actually is for that matter, I'm just trying to rely the least on local soundguys (if there is any, cause more than once there hasn't been) as possible, plus try to have a consistent and good sound throughout every gig (as possible), and even if we have our own soundguy (I've got a good candidate, it would just depend on the conditions of the show, if he can get paid or not) I'd rather we all had our own tones instead of depending on the gear in the PA/Backline/Whatever.
Click to expand...


Yeah, but i'm still missing the point

- i'm hesitant to believe that the compression in the ve-20 is in any way as good and controllable as a trusty dbx unit, maybe it's on par with cheap digital desks, also the compression would be pre monitor-aux... gulp.
- the same goes for reverb/delay
- eq'uing your vocals in the unit can be fatal, as every room/pa is tuned differently, also it can fuck with the monitors if they are properly ringed out for the venue, and it can fuck with them even more if they aren't


Dunno, the unit is fairly cheap so experiment with it, do remember to come back with the results
 
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