Universal vocal disturber for theater use

[mefju]

I am looking for vocal processor for touring theater group. It will be used to change voices of actors -- their voices should be heavily disturbed, maybe similar to telephone talk, reverbed, pitch shifted, like vocodered etc

 

I am not a sound guy, director don't exactly know what effect he wants, so processor should be 'all purpose box' -- quality of sound is not so important. I plan to visit professional shops to test some processors, but after checking manufacturers web pages I don't even know what I should ask for. Could you give me names of few models worth tests?

 

IF it helps VT-1 from Roland looks OK, but I want to have more models to chose from.

[Mr.Si]

for FX, I personally have a TC-Electronic unit which I like. It's dual channel, so you can run two different ones at a time so both together, or one different vocals or instruments.

 

Alesis Midiverbs are pretty good stuff, and the Behringer Virtualizer Pro is pretty good too, esp for the money that you pay for it.

 

hope this helps

 

Si

[Bobbsy]

For the sort of "bit of everything" effects box you mention, I'd probably go for the Behringer Virtualiser Pro. Besides reverb, it has all sorts of pitch shift, flange, chorus, delay, vocoder etc etc. effects. I discovered them a few years back when doing "Scrooge" and I needed a different voice for each ghost, plus a Vocoder for Marley. It worked well for the relatively small amount it cost.

 

Bob

 

Edited to add link to details: http://www.behringer.com/DSP2024P/index.cfm?lang=ENG

[Just Some Bloke]

All the Yamaha SPX range can do these things too and, as they've been around for a while, you can often pick one up quite cheaply second hand if you're on a tight budget.

 

BTW, the "telephone talk" effect you want can be easily achieved using the EQ on your desk. Just take out all the highs and lows and boost the mids to full (if you've got sweep mids have a play to find the right frequency for the phone you want to emulate). If the desk doesn't take out enough, then take the output of this first channel and put it into another (maybe using an Aux send or a group) and do it all again. Usually this will do the trick without using outboard.

 

HTH

[Bobbsy]

Good advice from Just Some Bloke....

 

...on the "telephone voice" effect, a handy trick if you use it frequently and have a spare input on your mixer is to split the mic input into a second channel and have one with EQ set for "good" sound and one set with the effect. This way you can controllably fade between the two.

 

Splitting can be achieved either by taking a direct out to another input, or with a "Y" cable, being careful of phantom power needs of course.

 

Bob

[david.elsbury]

All the Yamaha SPX range can do these things too and, as they've been around for a while, you can often pick one up quite cheaply second hand if you're on a tight budget. 

 

BTW, the "telephone talk" effect you want can be easily achieved using the EQ on your desk.  Just take out all the highs and lows and boost the mids to full (if you've got sweep mids have a play to find the right frequency for the phone you want to emulate).  If the desk doesn't take out enough, then take the output of this first channel and put it into another (maybe using an Aux send or a group) and do it all again.  Usually this will do the trick without using outboard.

 

HTH

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

** laughs out loud **, so easy... I just did this with an outboard EQ and a compressor. I eq'd it so the tops and bottoms were rolled off, and compressed the snot out of it.

Or I could have done it with a couple of channel EQ's, reading this..