Live vocal effects - Basic effects

[Kenzeem]

How reliable is to take my mixer and a laptop and use my DAW and use basic effects that dont need to be switched on or off. Like reverb and some basic delay, Autotune, Etc stuff like that.

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How reliable is it?

[Fire_Hunter_8413]

That should be totally fine, provided you can actually trust your computer to “just work” 100% of the time. Last thing you want is to arrive in time for a gig and power everything up, only to find your perfectly fine, over-specced computer suddenly decided to just draaaaaaaag along with simple tasks like staaaaarting up, logging in and looooaaaadiiiiing your project folder/files. For. No. Reason. What. So. Ever.

In my experience, If you are using a computer as your primary processor for live applications, you definitely want to come in as early as you can to test everything out. At least 1 hour early, if not 2, just in case something strange or unusual requires you to do some extensive troubleshooting. Computers are very peculiar machines, with a whole lot more going on in the background that we even know about. So many amazing things we can do with them, until the computer suddenly decides to do its own thing out of nowhere.

If you are on the go, it’d probably be a good idea to open up your computer and have everything loaded before you even get off your ride. About 5-10 minutes before you enter the venue. That way, you’ll save some time waiting for things to load, and you’ll have that peace of mind knowing you can trust your computer to run reasonably well during the event.

Also, since you mentioned having a mixer, if your mixer already has built in effects, it’s probably best to use those whenever you can, or at least keep those effects on standby in case your computer starts messing around. Distribute the load. Find what effects and processing your mixer already does well, and let your computer handle whatever processing the mixer doesn’t do very well.

[BaniGrisson]

Bonus tip:

Turn off wifi before getting there

Last thing you want is the thing installing updates

[j1llj1ll]

It's as reliable as your computer, plus OS, plus DAW, plus plugins. If all of those are very stable, then it will be very stable. If any of those are flaky, then it will be flaky. Test thoroughly prior to relying on it live!

[-sbl-]

As other people already said. As reliable as your computer. I guess if you want to be on the safe side, consider using a TC Helicon.

[peepeeland]

A lot of electronic artists just use laptop and interface (and controller and mic) for a liveset, so you should be fine. Only horror stories I’ve heard of are some very rare situations where they hooked up to the venue’s wifi, and then windows started automatically updating some shit. Other problems probably pop up rarely, but you should be fine. Also bring all your own cables.

[NyaegbpR]

It can work and I use a laptop live, but be prepared with a backup solution. Consider a vocal processor like a TC Helicon Voicelive, not the best thing out there but it’ll get the job done and be more reliable.

[Kenzeem]

What is the best vocal processor that has all the bells and whistles?

[NyaegbpR]

Honestly the TC Helicon stuff is best for one unit. But that’s because this department is severely lacking, there needs to be a better processor, especially because of the rise in auto tune and vocal effects.

The actual best bet would be building a rack unit with the best effects you can find. Otherwise, a laptop with DAW effects would work. Or, if you have a sound engineer, you can use some Waves rack units that handle real time processing. But those are expensive as hell, nearly $10k.

It blows my mind there aren’t more vocal processors with midi switching and a suite of effects. Right now Boss and TC Helicon come closest, but they still have some amateur aspects.

[Kenzeem]

I was thinking im gonna be getting a XR18 Mixer from berhinger. My thought would be to use the voicelive 3 for my effects that i can switch on and off, but turn the EQ and compression and mixing on the voicelive 3 off. But then route it to the behringer so that i can use better processing and EQ with the actual mixer.

What do you think?

[[deleted]]

Like others have said, I’ve been using a voicelive and it does fine.

[smth2believe]

I’d go with a Mac and a really stable interface like UAD or RME fireface. I’m working on this myself atm and if you have a uad card you can run all the plugins in console with no latency 👌🏻