Helix as a vocal fx box and looper disappointment.

Teetonetal

Did an acoustic gig last night and tried using helix as an fx box for both my vocals and guitar.

At home it sounded great. In the real world the guitar translated nicely but the vocal was horrid. Muddy, dark and slightly distorted.

Played around in soundcheck with mic in gain and reverb settings but it was horrible.
 Ended up going into desk with the desk fx.

Anyone had good results and what did you do?

Also had looper issues halfway through. Looper started juddering / stuttering on 1st ms when hitting record. Had to reset helix. Almost like footswitch engaged and disengaged instantly.

Beexter

Bit of a shameless plug but I'm selling an Eventide Mixing link in the classifieds that is designed specifically for this purpose- to be able to route a mic through floor based effects. There is a link in the listing to the Eventide product page which might be worth a look to see if would accomplish what you are trying to do . It is an incredibly flexible little box of tricks. 

Teetonetal

well @Beexter, the helix is supposed to do exactly that. Mic input is built in.

Digital_Igloo

There are touring acts using Helix as a vocal processor (on top of their guitar), so something's amiss. Some people suggest using the Mic Pre model, but I say don't—you don't need it, and it just adds hash. Just straight in on its own path, into the LA-2A, Parametric EQ (with Low Cut set to 120-160Hz or so), and a bit of delay and reverb on a parallel path—both at 100%, just like you'd do in the studio. Blend the effects in with the dry signal from the Merge > Mixer block.

Helix's mic preamp is the same (really) expensive one from StageSource M20d. They're used on high-end audio interfaces and are better than the mic pres found on pretty much all popular digital mixers south of $2-3k.

Teetonetal

Something amiss as I cannot get it clean. 
Was not using the pre amp block, but had to use a tonne of input gain to get above the acoustic.. 25db boost!

Need to figure it out.

Cabicular

Can you show the path ?

Teetonetal

Nothing to show. Just had the plate reverb on it, which I bypassed. I suspect either the mic pre or the mic is borked or user error.

I'm going to try a different mic with DI's suggesed path next chance I get.

Digital_Igloo

Teetonetal said:

Something amiss as I cannot get it clean. 
Was not using the pre amp block, but had to use a tonne of input gain to get above the acoustic.. 25db boost!

Need to figure it out.

That's totally normal, especially if it's a dynamic mic. You set the input gain with Global Settings > Ins/Outs > Mic In Gain? There's 60dB of analog gain right there. If you're adding gain anywhere else, you're boosting digital noise.

Getting a mic up to line level requires a lot more gain than getting a guitar up to line level.

Teetonetal

Digital_Igloo said:

Teetonetal said:

Something amiss as I cannot get it clean. 
Was not using the pre amp block, but had to use a tonne of input gain to get above the acoustic.. 25db boost!

Need to figure it out.

That's totally normal, especially if it's a dynamic mic. You set the input gain with Global Settings > Ins/Outs > Mic In Gain? There's 60dB of analog gain right there. If you're adding gain anywhere else, you're boosting digital noise.

Getting a mic up to line level requires a lot more gain than getting a guitar up to line level.

Yes I was adding in the global settings with no other make up gain options in the path.

Going over 25db gain just distorted the vocal.

I had reverb in series after, so will try the parallel path you mentioned next chance I get.