Home › Forums › Help/Technical Questions › How to record vocals with Voice Box without having the instrument leaking in the mic?

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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  • June 19, 2009 at 7:02 pm #78445
    gil51
    Member

    Hello everyone!

    I found out about Voice Box from an article in Recording Magazine. It seems very cool and easy to use so I’m thinking I should get one. But then I don’t do any live stuff, all my work is done in my home studio I wonder if I will get the same use out of voice box than those who use it live. There is no mention about recording in the product, features.

    My concerns are as follows:

    1) I always record my vocal tracks separate from instrumentation, so I’m fearful about getting either the guitar and/or keyboard leaking in the mic. Of course I record my vocals using headphones as the sound output. Will that be sufficient?

    2) How will I be able to separate the various sounds to multiple tracks, or is this impossible? I’m thinking, will my voice and harmonies plus the instrument used (guitar or keyboard) all end up on one single track? If so it would be a mixing nightmare.

    3) Can I send the voice signal and the instrument signal to different channel in my mixer/console?

    Could anybody out there provide me with a step by step approach on how to resolve these concerns.
    exmpl: Step 1 : connect guitar output to voice box input then voice box output to console input etc.

    Many thanks.
    Luc in Canada

    June 19, 2009 at 8:04 pm #98158
    electro-melx
    Moderator
    Quote:
    Hello everyone!

    I found out about Voice Box from an article in Recording Magazine. It seems very cool and easy to use so I’m thinking I should get one. But then I don’t do any live stuff, all my work is done in my home studio I wonder if I will get the same use out of voice box than those who use it live. There is no mention about recording in the product, features.

    My concerns are as follows:

    1) I always record my vocal tracks separate from instrumentation, so I’m fearful about getting either the guitar and/or keyboard leaking in the mic. Of course I record my vocals using headphones as the sound output. Will that be sufficient?

    2) How will I be able to separate the various sounds to multiple tracks, or is this impossible? I’m thinking, will my voice and harmonies plus the instrument used (guitar or keyboard) all end up on one single track? If so it would be a mixing nightmare.

    3) Can I send the voice signal and the instrument signal to different channel in my mixer/console?

    Could anybody out there provide me with a step by step approach on how to resolve these concerns.
    exmpl: Step 1 : connect guitar output to voice box input then voice box output to console input etc.

    Many thanks.
    Luc in Canada

    Hi Luc, I don’t own one yet so all these answers are ‘as far as I know’ or ‘best guesses’

    ok, point 1… you don’t need to have the instument output connected for it to work, as long as you have an instument plugged into the unit, so for recording at home when doing the vocals you can just (for example) plug a guitar in and play along to get the harmony effect without the guitar sound coming out of the unit, so there’s no need to worrry about anything leaking into the mic other than the sound of your strings acoustically on your guitar.

    point 2…. there are two seperate outputs an balanced XLR for the mic and a regular jack for the instument signal so sending each to different channels shouldn’t be a problem.

    point 3 yes, as I mentioned above they both have seperate outputs.

    like I said this is all ‘as far as I know’ you can read (or download and print) the manual in full here:

    https://www.ehx.com/assets/instructions/voice-box.pdf

    so if you have a read through that it might answer any other questions, if not feel free to come back with more questions as I’m sure someone more knowledgable on the voice box will be able to help.

    June 20, 2009 at 2:24 am #98179
    gil51
    Member

    Thank you for the info, it’s very helpful, looks like I could pre-record the song chords in my keyboard, then connect the keyboard to the Voice Box input then connect the Voice Box output to my console’s input channel 1. Then I could connect my mic to voice box input then voice box output to channel 2.

    If I playback the song from my keyboard, the voice box should hopefully pick it out as I sing the melody. At least that’s what I’m thinking. I want to avoid having a guitar leaking into the mic because that bring up mixing problems with eq. compression etc.

    I’ll check the manual as well.

    many thanks
    Luc

    July 29, 2009 at 5:56 pm #100116
    voxfan
    Member

    any reason a guitar track fed into the INST input prerecorded will trigger the harmony while you overdub vocals? should work.

    record a guitar chord guide tracl, sned that track only to the VB thne sing later.

    Try it.

    Jsck Secret.

    July 29, 2009 at 7:47 pm #100117
    B.Daws
    Participant
    Quote:
    1) I always record my vocal tracks separate from instrumentation, so I’m fearful about getting either the guitar and/or keyboard leaking in the mic. Of course I record my vocals using headphones as the sound output. Will that be sufficient?

    2) How will I be able to separate the various sounds to multiple tracks, or is this impossible? I’m thinking, will my voice and harmonies plus the instrument used (guitar or keyboard) all end up on one single track? If so it would be a mixing nightmare.

    3) Can I send the voice signal and the instrument signal to different channel in my mixer/console?

    1. Not a problem. Like the earlier post said, you don’t have to have the instrument output plugged in.

    2. Your voice and harmonies (or whatever effects) cannot be seperated, but the instrument vs. mic signal can be.

    3. You can have Mic in then out to mixer and instrument in then out to a separate channel (this will have to be mono 1/4″ though). You have one XLR in and XLR out, and one 1/4″ in and out so yeah.

    There you have it.

    July 29, 2009 at 8:46 pm #100120
    B.Daws
    Participant

    I take back number 2. I think you could record the regular vocal and the harmonies separately. You would just have to record the singing either in bypass or the blend all the way counter clockwise, then you could record with the blend fully clockwise so you could have your clean vocal track and then a harmony track! Just thought about it.

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