The quiet, high-quality preamp that is housed within the C1 ensures that the effects it produces are clean.
This is very useful when improvising or jamming, as it allows you to sing melodies and the pedal tracks the key that your instrument is in and corrects the vocal pitch accordingly. There’s a dedicated guitar input that can be used in conjunction with the pitch correcting feature, molding the tuning of your vocals with that of the guitar. The VoiceTone C1 can correct pitch with clarity and transparency. If you need to create extreme hard tune effects, the addition of an on/off footswitch makes it possible to quickly bring the effect in or out of the mix.
My Review: The TC Helicon VoiceTone C1 Hard tune pedal is the perfect solution for vocalists who want their performance to be polished and free from pitch-inconsistencies. You can add delays, reverbs, distortion, and modulation to your vocals, detect the key of a piece of music or add harmonies to existing melodies all with this comprehensive pedal. Using the footswitch controls, you can toggle through the settings, and edit them to suit your preferences. It’s the perfect choice for a singer who wants to add more than just auto tune to their set up.īottom Line: Despite its extensive range of presets, a wide array of built-in effects, and multiple connectivity options, the TC Helicon VoiceLive Play is surprisingly easy to operate. It produces a range of auto tune effects, and additionally gives you access to a host of other vocal processing facilities. Who is This Best Suited for: The VoiceLive Play is the ultimate vocal processing station. The Auto Key detection feature is also worth noting, as this allows you to detect the key of a particular melody or song without requiring any prior music theory knowledge. This is a highly useful feature for practicing harmonies or perfecting a vocal part when songwriting. In addition to the auto tune, reverb, delay, distortion, double-tracking, and modulation effects, there’s also a built-in looper. The pedal also has an auxiliary input for connecting an external sound source, a headphone output so that you can perfect the mixes with absolute precision. When combined with the auto tune effect, you get a chorus of harmonies that resemble a vocoder. This adds layers of notes to your existing vocal, and you can choose the intervals at which the notes play. You can use these presets as starting points and edit each of the effects: changing the characteristics of the auto tune, adding a variety of reverbs and delays, or distorting the vocals to your liking.Īnother interesting capability of the VoiceLive Play is the harmonizer effect. The LCD screen indicates the settings of each preset. The presets can be toggled through using the up and down footswitches, or by using the rotary hand knob. These feature a range of auto tune effects that vary between extremely processed to subtle and understated. Designed for simple real-time operation, this pedal can be controlled using the trio of footswitches or by using the hand-operated buttons which surround the LCD display screen.īuilt into the VoiceLive play are over 200 presets inspired by popular songs or artist’s styles. It combines ease of use with a wide range of vocal processing options. My Review: The VoiceLive Play by vocal-effects experts TC Helicon sets the standard for auto tune pedals. TC Helicon Duplicator (Best Under $125)Įffects: Autotune, Vocal Processing, OctaveĮffects: Autotune, Vocal Processing, Multi-EffectsĮffects: Autotune, Vocal Processing, Synth
TC Helicon Mic Mechanic 2 (Best Under $175)Ĥ. TC Helicon VoiceLive Play (Best Overall)ģ.
For those of you who want to learn more about auto tune pedals before reading reviews, we have a buying guide at the bottom of the page.ġ. We’ll start this article by discussing the best auto tune pedals at each price point. Although auto tune VST plugins can become complex, the pedal incarnations are much more simplistic and do most of the work for you. Whether you have any experience using auto tune in a studio environment or not, you’ll find it easy to produce good results using a pedal. Auto tune pedals come with multiple processing options that can add stability to vocals, add a psychedelic layer to them, or subtly nudge the pitching back into tune if the singer strays slightly. Although it may have been unfairly labeled as simply a way to make a bad singer sing in tune, it far exceeds the limitations of that description. With improved digital technology and processing, manufacturers have now produced some exceptional auto tune pedals for fine-tuning vocals.Īuto tune, like all effects, can be used in a variety of ways. Although guitar effects pedals have been available for a long time now, it’s taken vocal pedals decades to catch up. Pitch correcting vocals are common across a variety of genres, not only in recorded music but in live performances too.