Boss VE-5 Vocal Performer

20 November 2012 | 9:21 am | Reza Nasseri

The Boss VE-5 is a superb tool for vocalists wanting to get started with using effects; so much under the hood at this price!

The Boss VE-5 is a cool little multi-effects processor that's simple to use and a lot of fun. It's essentially a plug in and play unit with 30 well thought-out presets, onboard looper and built-in mic. You can overwrite the presets and access an additional 20 banks for up to 50 patches, with the ability to save three “Favourite Sounds” for fast recall on the fly.

I started by plugging in my Shure Beta 58 and sending the XLR out to my mixing desk, threw on a pair on phones and jumped in for a quick taste of the presets. Immediately levels, compression and EQ sounded right. The reverbs and delays offered in the first group of settings sounded stunning, with the “Cathedral” preset displaying a nice long tail, perfect for a solo performance or ballad. These tones were so great I jumped on over to YouTube for a quick karaoke session to see how they'd sit in a mix. After having blown my lungs out after a few songs, I noticed that this unit is essentially a Swiss army knife for vocalists, a real quick fix that can work both live and in the studio, and perfect for adding multiple layers to a mix.

The “Ensemble” setting provided a good doubled/chorused tone, but it was the “Double Voice”, “Four Voice” and “Unison” patches that were truly outstanding. The “Four Voice” uses harmony doubling in conjunction with a short delay to create four separate voices, and I love this sort of effect live as it really makes the vocal stick out of a mix.

Harmony and Pitch Correct both sounded fantastic, but harmony processing lacks a key input (from say an acoustic guitar or keyboard), so complex pitch shifting based around different chords and multiple keys is a lot harder to coordinate, but if you're using the harmony for simple songs, you'll be happy. The effect tracks beautifully and the inclusion of the “Gender” function changes the formant in your voice so your harmonies sound like a different person singing - brilliant!

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Pitch correct is a lot of fun too. Not only do you get to use it as a contemporary effect, but also for very subtle, natural pitching, making you sound better than you really are (very important for me). You can select from Soft, Hard, Electric 1, Electric 2 and Robot functions, with the latter snapping everything to a single selected note. I was a real fan of combining the pitch correct and harmony together, using the pitch correct with a specific key and turning the gender back to deepen my shrill Anglo-Saxon voice, while adding the harmony for a unison effect for the sort of “Auto-tune” that saturates the airwaves. Other outstanding presets were “Radio”, for a band-pass radio/telephone effect, “Heavy Scream”, which pitches down a high scream for a brutal death metal, “Space Lounge” for a flanged robot effect, and “Opera Queen” instantly turns you into a soprano. The onboard mic was okay, though if anything a little honky, and the looper killer, perfect for beat-boxing and adding multiple layers with ease. As a whole, the Boss VE-5 is a superb tool for vocalists wanting to get started with using effects; so much under the hood at this price!