Karaoke Forums

Hi All,

Is anyone using a Lexcon MX-200 and/or TC Heilcon Voiceworks for karaoke?

Does anyone have some detailed parameters you could share to get a good karaoke echo and effect on the Lexicon MX-200?

I've tried all the presets and tried to make my own presets but haven't been able to get a good sounding karaoke echo/effects out of it. The best seems to be preset 38.

I also just got a TC Helicon Voiceworks. Anyone using this and can also share some good setup and effects parameters for karaoke on it?

thanks alot!

mchin99

I use the MX-200. There are several presets I have found useful.

First is the #1, Big Pop Vocal. Best general purpose verb I have ever heard for vocals.

For good singers doing country I like #24 Nashville.

For rock ballads like Journey I use #21 Big Vocal Verb.

For 50s and 60s I like #34 Slapback.

I have those on the first four user presets (two of them are tweaked slightly), and switch between them based on the song. I also frequently adjust the amount I give -- some singers I slather it on, others I just use enough to take those little vocal defects out.

I have a couple of other EQ tricks I do. I have an extra EQ channel set up with everything below 300Hz and above 3000Hz rolled off, and 1K boosted -- I insert that on a vocal channel to get the telephone sound for Aqualung et al. I use huge amounts of the internal effects delay for songs like Green Tambourine. And I ride the low EQ knob for songs like Folsom Prison Blues, Your Man or Draggin' the Line, trying to give some bass presence to them.

It would actually be nice to have another MX200 to use on the mic insert for a couple of things. One of these days I am going to wire up a patch panel to allow me to do these effects without having to plug cables in and out of the back.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Thanks for responding..much appreciated!

On the MX-200, I was using preset#1 bigpop vocals for a while, but I find there's too much reverb in it. Did you tweak preset#1, of just use it as is?

Also, do you do any compression? I know compression technically decreases the dynamic range and is used to fit a program into the limits of a soundsystem, but am I right in that also , in practicality for vocals, it makes it easier for the singer to sing and to bring out the vocals in the mix?
Any good general compression settings for this purpose?

thanks!

mchin99

That one I use tweaked very slightly. But I only use a bit of it (i.e. the level returned is low) for good singers. I do sometimes use a lot of it for the ahem, vocally challenged.


I use the one-knob compression on my Yamaha MG166CX mixer. Not on the MX200.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Yeah, I was looking at those Yamaha CX's just because of the easy one-knobber compression. But I'm happy with my trusty plain old MG16/4 since I got the outboard stuff..

But am I on the right track as to the reason to use compression on live vocals?
ie it makes it easier for the singer to sing (hit notes with less effort) in addition to bringing out the vocals in the mix? That's what it seems to do, with a side effect of more potential for feedback if using too much make-up gain...

mchin99

I don't know about easier to sing, except that you don't have to think about mic positioning as much once you get used to it. I find that it just sounds better because you can boost gain enough to hear the soft passages while still not being blown out on the loud ones.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

We use the MX - 200 as well and most of the songs that I sing are big arena songs Bruce, Bon Jovi Great White Van Halen...etc so we use # 1 and we change it around to get a slight delay. The key is the tempo...too slow it is Hey......Hey....etc so we speed up the tempo settings to make it quick Hey ..Hey.. The effect is (excuse my verbage) large which is what I am after....That is on my Mic...On the other mic's that singers use we use a couple of different settings depending on the singer etc...Most of the time a splash of ehco is alright some singers want no effect and want to run dry...But the Mic that I use is preset to what I like...

I'm not to sure you can just have a "one size fits all" mentality when using FX as the room itself determines how the effect is perceived. For example, in a smaller room, we'll say a 40X50 room with a traditional eight foot ceiling a 200 to 220 millisecond delay would be about right for that familiar "slapback" effect. Yet if I use that same setting in another room I do which is much larger, I'd guess 100X150 with twelve foot ceilings, the delay would pretty much go unnoticed. I have to set it to closer to 300 milliseconds to achieve the same result. That is why I still prefer a dedicated delay, in my case a Roland SDE1000, so I can change the initial settings, IE delay time, modulation and feedback on the fly for each situation as it presents itself. I also use a Lexicon MPX1 for all other FX and even with the Lexicon I use different presets depending on the room size and acoustics.

Your talking about a pretty sophisticated unit here. Seeing how the Voiceworks needs to know what key a song is in to function properly. I don't see how you could use it effectively in a Karaoke situation. About the only feature I could see being helpful might be the "doubling" capability to help a weaker singer. I use a TC Helicon Harmony M hooked into one of my keyboards for live use. They make some very nice products.

_________________
Quickness of mind will deceive the eye

Ya, TC makes some good (or should I say expensively good) stuff, with strikingly poor documentation
I'm actually getting some decent sound from the Voiceworks just trying some of the presets, before attempting to tweak things myself. What's good about it is that it can do anything/everything: harmonies, thickening, pitch, EQ, compression, delay and reverb. But needs lots of tweaking; hopefully I can get a few working well for general use and just tweak a few things depending on song like the delay tempo. For pitch, it can do chromatic which I think will work ok for most general situations.

mchin99

Somehow, I think one of the tricks that I haven't totally figured out yet to making good sounding presets on the Lexicon MX-200 is getting the leftmost knobs (wet/dry mix) correct. When using MXEdit to see what what parameters they've used on the built-in presets, I notice that that on most of the presets, the wet/dry mix is fairly low (not much wet), whereas I tend to put too much (past 12 oclock) when I try to make my own..

I'm liking the sound of the reverb and delay on the TC Voiceworks...prior to the Lexicon MX200 I had a TC M350 and I didn't like "the TC sound" out of that at all.
The TC M350 had no real presets to get you started and the manual was typically lacking, so it was hard to get good sound out of it. But on this Voiceworks, there are presets and it sounds nice; maybe because it's tailored for vocals whereas both the Lexicon and TC M350 are general purpose...

mchin99

If you are using your FX as part of a loop through your mixer you should have the unit set to 100% wet as you are using the mixer to do the actual blending into the mix.

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Quickness of mind will deceive the eye

Ya, that's what I thought back when I was using the TC M350, which totally made technical sense in theory. But when I came to actually mixing in the FX, having reverb and delay efftects at full wet and using the mixer fader to mix it in, the effects sounded very robotic and unnatural nomatter how low it's faded. I think that's the reason I didn't like / seemed to get lousy sound out of the TC M350 now I think about it, cause I was using all wet and they had no real presets to give me some ideas as to not use all wet. With the Lexicon MX200, it sounds better / more natural because their presets don't use all wet, me thinks...when I try to make my own presets and use past 12oclock wet or all wet, the effects also sounds unnatural/robotic on the MX200 nomatter how low faded...

mchin99

If you think about it, it makes no sense to mix a dry signal back into itself, which is what you would be doing. I have no explanation of the "unnatural/robotic" sound you mention. Perhaps an adjustment of the initial input and output of the unit would be in order. If you are returning it to a channel also check your gain level there, you may be to hot.

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Quickness of mind will deceive the eye

Hmm, you gave me an idea. Has to do with the internal routing options on dual effects processors like the MX200. It makes sense to go full wet if the routing is dual mono (mono/mono; the 2 effects processors act as if they were 2 separate processors with no internal cross mix of the effects within the effects unit). But it makes sense to not go full wet on certain things like reverb (to lower the effect) if the outputs of the 2 effects processors are mixed internally in the unit before outputting back to the mixer. Ie. routing options such as dual stereo or dual split, if used, does internal mixing before outputting. I think that's why the MX200 presets don't use full wet and it sounds good coming out 'cause it's mixed internally together first.

mchin99