Effects during monitoring...not the usual question

[Myriad_Rocker]

No, this isn't about latency.

I'm talking about direct monitoring from the preamp going to a headphone amp. Would it be okay to put an effects processor between the headphone amp and the line out of the preamp? This is assuming that the preamp has two line outs, one of which is meant for direct monitoring.

Also, what would you recommend? I don't want to make the performance crappy and I would think using effects would cause the vocalist to use less effort but some insist on having this or that on their voice before they can deliver. Fine by me, I guess. I just don't want to dump a huge sum of money on something like that when I'm only going to be using it for vocal monitoring.

[reshp1]

I don't see why not. If the vocalist wants some reverb or delay on the monitoring signal something like the picoverb would work. (Too much reverb can cause pitch issues)

[Robert D]

Sounds like a good, no latency approach. I think a lot of red light fever can be eased by helping the singer to sound good to themselves, which usually leads to a better track.

Cheers, RD

[gordone]

I do something like this all the time. The Delta 44 allows you to send a line-input directly to a line-output (so no latency worries) so I plug the out of my pre into line 1, and re-route that to out 3 (outs 1 and 2 are my main stereo output from the PC). Out 3 goes into a line-level channel on my mixer. I then patch an Alesis nanoverb into an aux send on the mixer. Voila! Instant reverb in the monitor mix. I can also control pan, eq, and volume without affecting the signal that's being recorded (line 1 of course also goes into my PC and DAW software)

[Myriad_Rocker]

Originally Posted by gordone

I do something like this all the time. The Delta 44 allows you to send a line-input directly to a line-output (so no latency worries) so I plug the out of my pre into line 1, and re-route that to out 3 (outs 1 and 2 are my main stereo output from the PC). Out 3 goes into a line-level channel on my mixer. I then patch an Alesis nanoverb into an aux send on the mixer. Voila! Instant reverb in the monitor mix. I can also control pan, eq, and volume without affecting the signal that's being recorded (line 1 of course also goes into my PC and DAW software)

I very good point that I didn't think about!! I have the Delta 1010 and it will do the same thing. Guess I had a brain fart.

Now to choose a cheap decent sounding effects processor for vocals.

[xstatic]

I do a similar thing from within my software. For example if I am recording a vocal track that comes in on channel one of my soundcard. Inside Cuabse I open two blank tracks for the same vocal. The first I use to record the dry signal. The second I use for just reverb. I take the second channel (the FX channel) and put in in monitoring mode, take the fader all the way down, setup a reverb on an aux send and put it in prefade mode. This way I do not need a dedicated outboard reverb for this function. If you are already montioring through your software you coupld do this without using prefade and on just one track, but I use a large format analog console and monitor all signals through that before they even get to the software so that I never have to deal at all with latency. The reverb send however would have some latency. Since reverb though is already a time based effect, that is not a worry for me. Basically, the latency becomes almost like a predelay.