Q&A: Plug-in vs Hardware, DSP and Harmonies

Hi, I’m Tom Lang, the Product Specialist at TC-Helicon. First of all, thanks for all of your questions and interest! Right now I’m testing the plugin versions delivered from our developers. It’s exciting to finally see (and hear) a version of our technology running in real time in a DAW program. Yeah!

I’ll take a moment to address some of the more common concerns.

Sound Quality Compared to VoiceWorks and VoiceLive
The pitch detection and harmony generation comes directly from our flagship vocal processor, VoicePro. Which helps answer the question of its necessarily heavy DSP consumption… VoicePro has extra humanization controls that help with making the virtual harmonies sound more real. Also, because the plug in doesn’t have to take an extra trip through ADA converters and an analog mixing console, it’s just that much cleaner.

DSP Consumption
Harmony4 Powercore will require the full resources of one of the DSP’s on your Powercore card. Most Powercore cards have 4 DSPs, leaving plenty of room for other effects.

How real do the harmonies sound?
If you’ve got four professional singers in your studio, use them. Otherwise, with very little effort, Harmony4 can produce realistic results. Stay tuned for some audio clips generated from the plugin.

That’s it for now, back to testing…

Tom Lang
Product Specialist