I guess I should just keep this thread going...
Night one: Granted this is after 3 hours of messing around so none of this should be considered by prospective future owners, except the good stuff.. 
Unit: 1.0.05 build 21 sun:89 avr:14
Vocal Support version: 1.1.1 build 28
System: Quad core, 16 gig ram, Windows 7
The unit is a good size and will fit in my portable rack box easily. I'll have room in the back to store the mic.
The mic is as advertised. Solid, handles well, rejects ambient noise well and has a decent vocal reproduction (I think). It tapers too much for me and is too thin on the palm side but hopefully I can get used to that. There's no click when the button is pushed so I don't know if I've toggled or not. Not a huge deal for me as I'll probably use it as a momentary switch most of the time. I can't tell at this point how the mic handles a wide range of signal because most of the presets I played with had more compression than I'm used to and I don't know if the signal bar is before the preamp/tone or after.
As for the presets, I played with the Brick one first. Another brick in the wall, right? I sort of felt like I was singing to it in rock band, if that makes sense.. Sounded great, but way more processed than I am used to. I know, I need to customize it for me and I am no where near ready to attempt that just yet. So I would call up other presets, maybe turn blocks on and off, then think of a song that would fit. With 12, I think it was, I could do the Everly Brother's all day long.. LOL I might even be able to tweak that one and use it.
Of course this time was split between looking through presets, testing them and fumbling through the menus. Of course you already know I would much prefer to do this with my head pointed at the screen instead of down and around and at the little screen but that's something I'll live with. It's just going to make the learning curve much much longer.
One issue I had, was as I would play with the settings, the mic control seemed to switch itself off without me even being in that area. I'd be in the middle of the song and realize the button had been turned off. So I try to fumble through the setup to that area and turn it back on. Again, three hours so I am sure I am not doing something right..
I couldn't test the Voice Support software. I loaded it off the CD and rebooted. When it comes up, it says there is no internet connection. Well, there certainly was one. Next, the software didn't find my device. If I turned the device off and back on, the software would say that a new midi device was found but did not find my rack as a TC device. Looking to manually add the device, the Rack wasn't listed in the products. So, I'm not sure, yet, how much the Voice Support will help me with making changes.
Speaking of making changes to presets, There and probably 50 undocumented settings for some things, like Reverb and delay. Figuring out all of those from that little screen will take forever. It would be cool if you could at least build a preset from blocks of other presets. Say, you like the delay in one, so you can copy it to another. You like the reverb in a different one, so you copy that to the one you are building. You like the tone for a studio preset from one, so you duplicate the preset you are building, and add that tone. You maybe put the same one in the second preset and adjust the compression down for a live preset. Maybe that is possible with the voice support, and my guess is I just need to download the latest version.
Speaking of the compression. It is awesome and I haven't really looked at the settings. I've developed the proper support to be able to push my registers but this unit seems to be designed to help you develop a similar sound without pushing your registers. When I would get to a point that I normally would, the unit seemed to say, "uh, that's a no no with me. Adjust your preset and try it a different way without pushing."
The pitch control can be useful in some applications, but I probably won't need it often. I'm a bleeding register singer and the pitch control tends to mis-identify the note to correct at times. It works great for songs that are solid in the head, chest or falsetto.
The harmonies will be useful once I get things figured out. An issue I couldn't resolve in my lengthy three hour testing: I would like to bring in my backing music for reference to the harmonies but without patching it through. I mix already on my board and I don't want to have to mess with mixing the backings in the unit. I could not find a way to do this with the line in. I haven't played with the aux yet. My one thought was to use the dual mono out and bring the backings in to the guitar input. Then I just don't plug anything in to the right output jack. So, the questions are, can I bring a line or aux signal in and turn off the output of those or can I make this signal hot enough for the guitar input? Or am I going about it all wrong? Anyway, the harmonies sometimes work like a champ with no external reference. Fantastic job, guys. But as you know, it can easily guess wrong. I did find that if I remembered where it went wrong the last time, and I adjusted MY voice to, say the middle instead of the low, it would do better. But I would like to test the Natural Play and haven't been able to yet.
Over all, I am sure in time I can get what I want out of this unit. I sing 1000's of songs in all sorts of styles and most of the time, it's on demand and by request. I had this down to two presets on my vx400. The sound was very natural, full and allowed for everything from belting to falsetto. If I can get 4-10 good presets (allowing for different versions and levels of harmonies) I'll be good to go.
I haven't gotten to recording yet.. That will come soon. Most of my recordings are just to get an idea of what people hear versus what I hear. It's the absolute best way to train your ear, in my opinion.. Anyway, I may play with that tonight.
