A voice processor that listens, then harmonises.

THE Internet hit pop music hard. Without the Net, we'd still be buying songs from record stores. Apple would still be just a computer company. And Justin Bieber would probably be working in a Burger King in Ontario.

In the online world, you can take your music straight to the public. No more gatekeepers, record executives or rejection letters. If you're any good, you'll soon win your fame and fortune - or at least sky-high view counts.

But these days, a great voice isn't enough; you also need great processing. There's not a song on the radio today that hasn't been digitally massaged with effects like reverb (echo), compression (evening out the volume spikes) and autotune (fixing notes that were sung sharp or flat).

You can do this sort of work using software like GarageBand or Audacity. But the VoiceLive Play ($250 online), a new gadget from the vocal-processing company TC Helicon, offers all of those effects and more - it can even generate phantom backup singers.

The twist: It's a rugged metal box with foot-stompable buttons, so that you can turn those effects on and off even during a live performance. It's like a guitar stomp box, but for singers. (You can also use it in the studio, of course.) You can even create a sort of playlist of effects that correspond to the songs you'll be performing, and hop from one effect to the next by tapping switches with your toe.

Now, vocal processors aren't new. But programming most of them seems to require a degree in acoustical engineering, or possibly space shuttle cockpit design. The thought behind the VoiceLive Play is to put spectacular audio features into a box that's about as difficult to use as elevator buttons.

You plug the box into the wall. You connect headphones - or speakers, or a computer. You plug in a microphone (it requires one with a pro-style XLR connector).

Then you can start to explore. You turn a knob to click through the 237 presets. Each emulates the vocal processing of a well-known pop song. Each is identified by a sneaky, lawyer-thwarting name like 'In Air 2Night' (the creepy metallic echo of Phil Collins' 'In the Air Tonight'), 'Hey Jude-y' (doubles your voice in the classic Beatles style), and 'Cali Hotel' (the three-part harmony of the Eagles' 'Hotel California').

That's right: three-part harmony. On this box, the result is amazing. If you know anything about vocal music, you know that no singers blend quite as well with your own voice as your own voice. (Or your siblings' voices, which is why family groups from the von Trapps to the Jonas Brothers sound so great in harmony.)

But what kind of dark voodoo magic could possibly be capable of that stunt After all, there are at least three notes in a chord. If you sing a middle C, there's no way for a computer chip to know what harmony notes to play with it; a middle C could belong to any of several different chords. And if the computer picks the wrong notes, the resulting clash would make even the most tone-deaf listener wince.

There's only one way for a piece of electronics to know what harmony notes to generate - and that's by listening. And sure enough: the VoiceLive Play actually listens to the band, samples the current chord and calculates the correct auto-harmonies for your voice in milliseconds.

It "hears" the band - or your guitar, or your piano - either from an audio cable or through built-in microphones right on the box. Those mics, which the company calls RoomSense, are also a great way to get the sound of the room and the band into your earbud mix. (RoomSense is one of several features that rival boxes, like the similar Boss VE20, lack.) Every now and then, usually on quick notes in a moving melody, the box guesses wrong about a chord, and you get a brief, passing moment of dissonance. In general, though, the harmonies are lush and amazing. A YouTube music video at j.mp/JcdbVG features a more expensive VoiceLive model, but it's a great demo of auto-harmonies. The company plans to offer more presets every month. You can download them to the box via your computer's USB connection - a feature unique to this machine - to keep up with the latest pop trends. You can tweak any of the presets and then save them under new names.

One of the VoiceLive Play's foot buttons is labelled Hit; one tap turns on an effect. In other words, in performance, you could sing the verse of a song plain, and then tap Hit to burst into harmony. Holding down the Hit button continuously cuts off all effects. It's intended for between-song talking - "How's everybody doing tonight " - that would sound a little peculiar in three-part harmony.

Another strength of this box is looping. That is, you record yourself singing or beat-boxing a pattern, up to 30 seconds. The box plays that fragment over and over; you add a riff on top of it. Now the box loops those two layers as you add a third - and so on. In an enchanting YouTube music video at j.mp/KKwfZr, a singer adds a second, then a third, then a fourth vocal part to her own live performance of 'Danny Boy' using this real-time looping. The only VoiceLive letdown is the Voice Cancel feature.

The theory is that you can connect your iPod, phone or computer and start playing some pop song, and the VoiceLive will magically remove the singer from the mix, leaving behind only the original band.

You'd feel like Taylor Swift's understudy on the night she gets laryngitis.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Like earlier boxes that purport to have this feature, the VoiceLive Play works by deleting whatever's in the centre of the left-to-right stereo mix - which is where the lead vocal appears in most pop songs.

Trouble is, other things may also appear in the middle of the mix, like drums. Conversely, the lead vocal isn't always in the centre. And its reverb usually isn't in the centre, so you might wind up getting rid of the voice but not its echo - a bizarre effect, to be sure. The box usually reduces the singer at least somewhat, but the bottom line is, don't get your hopes up.

It's also worth pointing out that even though this is among the easiest-to-use vocal boxes, that's not necessarily saying much. Anything you do beyond playing with the presets will require immersion in the online-only user manual and a good deal of pleasant experimentation.

There's a lot more the VoiceLive Play can do, from showing you when you're off pitch to traditional studio effects like equalization, chorusing, distortion and so on. This box can give your voice an incredibly cutting-edge, professional sound, either live or when you're sitting at your computer. The audio quality is sensational, and the presets are extremely convincing.

Now, nobody outside Justin Bieber's tax bracket would buy the VoiceLive just as a toy. Still, it must be mentioned that you and any nearby children can have hours of fun turning yourselves into robots, chipmunks or angels. (I let a pair of fascinated elementary-school boys try out the Barry White effect, so that their mother could hear what they'd sound like as high-schoolers. She freaked out.)

Let's not kid ourselves: A voice-processing box is a niche product. But thanks to the greatly simplified controls, the replication of up-to-date pop songs and the professional quality, the VoiceLive Play has just widened that niche by a considerable margin.

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Muscat Press and Publishing House SAOC 2012

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