Just received my Voice Box (probably one of the first!) and tried it at rehearsal. I play in a 5 piece classic rock band, and take this with a grain of salt because I’ve only have one day of experience with it. Here’s what I think so far:
– tracks harmonies well, sounds somewhat natural. It sounds as good as you sound – if your vocal is flat, this thing will make you sound 2-3x worse because now you have 2-3 flat harmonies going. You have to be on your note correctly, and no slow traveling between notes, it doesn’t like that “travel time” while you’re trying to find your next note. Hit your notes though and it sounds pretty darn good. Exceeding expectations because I was 50-50 on this going in.
– I’m just using it thus far for high harmonies and octaves. It’s taking the place of the high voice that recently left the band and does a fine job of it. 3 singers now sound like 4, and the octave function can really thicken things up. Maybe we’ll get into the 3 part harmony modes in the future, but that may be too much for a band with 3 singers. I could imagine a solo act using it though.
– Here’s an example of it’s usefulness: we’re all singing a chorus to a Counting Crows song and the bass player and I realized we were both singing upper 5th. I say, “I can fix that”, and turn a knob and now have a lower 3rd going without having to practice learning a new part. Pretty cool.
– Only 1 preset allowed per mode, so that kind of sucks. If I want to use the high harmony mode most of the time, I can only preset one blend of the dry/wet harmony, one gender, one balance of the harmony (low/high/both). I’m going to be bending down a lot in a gig tweaking knobs.
– I was expecting this to be completely dependent on the guitar chord and how well you strum it. Strange but it seems to work pretty well if you flub a chord, or even don’t play a chord at all. I wonder if it’s just remembering the last chord you played. Anyway, I was pleased to find this out. You can just sing acapella and it works in the modes where the manual says you need to play an instrument. It seems to recognize your voice as much as the instrument so that was a pleasant surprise.
– I think it’s going to be a good unit when used correctly. Maybe in a 30 song night it’s only used up to 10 songs, but those 10 will sound great. I think overusing it could get old. It’s like an instrument. Extremely versatile in that you can blend the wet/dry mix on the harmonies with your own voice, add reverb to you or the harmony, adjust the mix of how much you hear the 3rd, the 5th, or just one or the other. Jury still out on the gender thing. I guess it does sound more male or female it’s just I’m not sure whether they are human or not. I can tell that I’m going to need to learn how to play the Voice Box correctly to get the best out of it.
– Beware of that video demo on this website with that guy and Nataly doing the video demo, it could make the average musician not want to buy it. As a side note, that video kind of freaks me out. I think it’s going to give me bad dreams, but I digress. It doesn’t show just how basic and neat the box can be without over-doing the vocals/vocoder stuff. It’s nice that demo is there, just don’t think that’s all this thing does. Saw a similar one on You Tube where the guy is vocoding to Pink Floyd. I’m here to tell you that this thing can just add some nice basic harmonies.
– overall, this works about as well as you work. Sing well, get on and off your notes, and it will follow along. I think it’s a keeper.