April 2025 SOS review: Boss VE-22

[alexis]

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/bo ... -performer

Hi, Thank you, Atheen Spencer for the nice review, very timely in my case!

If I understood correctly: I notice you pointed out there was no input to the unit to guide its harmony generation - no audio or MIDI in; rather, all the unit's harmony generation is triggered from the song's key, dialed in ahead of time.

I was wondering though if the aux input could be used to that purpose, as it can, e.g., in the VoiceLive Play unit - maybe routing piano audio to the Boss' aux input would allow the unit to follow the chords and generate harmonies appropriately?

If not, that would seem to be a truly limiting absence of a feature, especially for the price (several hundred $$ more than the TC Helicon VoiceLive Play)!

Thank you again!

[Wonks]

No, there's no auto harmony detect from an input. You have to set up the harmonies beforehand and save them as presets.

Which is fine if you have a song in one key and doesn't change from major to minor in verses and choruses, or does a key change, otherwise you'll either have to remember to keep changing patches, or else you'll have to drive it from a MIDI program for the songs.

[Wonks]

It's probably designed for country singers where everything is in the good ole country key of A.

[Sam Spoons]

That's 'cos of them pesky fiddlers...

[alexis]

No, there's no auto harmony detect from an input. You have to set up the harmonies beforehand and save them as presets.

Which is fine if you have a song in one key and doesn't change from major to minor in verses and choruses, or does a key change, otherwise you'll either have to remember to keep changing patches, or else you'll have to drive it from a MIDI program for the songs.

I may have missed it, I don't remember seeing a MIDI input, I'll double check. Thank you, Wonks!

[Wonks]

Sorry, it doesn't. I thought I saw something in the manual but I didn't. The USB is only for playing backing tracks. So no MIDI program selection is another big negative.

[alexis]

Sorry, it doesn't. I thought I saw something in the manual but I didn't. The USB is only for playing backing tracks. So no MIDI program selection is another big negative.

Thanks, Wonk.

Leaning towards that TC Helicon VoiceLive Play unit. It also had is drawbacks of course, but I'm not asking the world of it.

[Sam Spoons]

TC Helicon were in at the start of vocal harmony processing and there's not much they don't know about it. I've owned 3 or 4 over the years, if I had another it would probably be something like the Harmony Singer, as basic as it gets (but with guitar input to drive the harmony engine) but it's just not something I use much anymore.