VocalShaper

Status: draft. Concrete reference content + structural placeholders; flesh out the prose + screenshots when ready.

Purpose

A 12-tab editor for the vocal signal chain on the VL3X. Tweak the preset that's currently loaded on the device, or open a saved library preset for offline editing. Each tab covers one effect block, in the same order the device walks through them: Harmony · Doubling · Delay · Reverb · HardTune · Synth · Transducer · µMod · Choir · Rhythmic · Stutter · EQ/Mix.

VL Studio difference — style browsers, visualizers, and A/B

On the device, picking a vocal style means pressing Vocal, navigating to the right edit screen, then scrolling through styles one at a time on a small LCD. You can't see the full list at once, you can't see categories side-by-side, and there's no built-in way to A/B compare two versions of a preset without storing one to a different slot.

VocalShaper shows every style as a clickable tile, optionally filtered by category. Click a tile to switch instantly and the device installs the style's defaults. Custom visual editors render what the LCD can't show: the Harmony voice map with drag-to-set pitch and pan, the reverb envelope shaper, the delay timeline, the EQ curve editor with draggable nodes, the HardTune custom scale bitfield with one-click presets. The A/B snapshot in the header captures the entire vocal chain to slot A, lets you tweak, captures to B, then toggles between them so you can hear the difference without losing either version.

And the device walks through the 12 effect blocks one screen at a time with the Arrow buttons; VocalShaper puts them all in one tab strip you can jump between.

Walk-through

1. Open VocalShaper — click "VocalShaper" in the top nav for LIVE mode (edits write to the device's active preset, page tracks device-side changes). Click "VocalShaper" on a Library row for PRESET mode (edits the stored library preset; nothing reaches the device until you click Push to Device).
2. Page header — left to right: the mode chip (amber LIVE or blue PRESET), the preset name (or "Active device preset" in live mode), the A/B snapshot controls, and — in preset mode — Save to Library and Push to Device buttons.
3. Tab strip — twelve pill-shaped tabs across the top. Each tab (except EQ/Mix) has an ON/OFF chip showing whether the effect block is enabled. Click the chip to bypass or re-enable. EQ/Mix is always on (it's the preset's mix strip, not an effect block).
4. Tab body — every tab follows the same pattern:
   • Style browser at the top — clickable tiles for every available style. Optional category-filter chips above the tiles let you narrow the list. A status line shows the currently selected style and its category.
   • Knob row below — tab-specific controls. Drag to set, Shift for fine, wheel for one step, double-click to reset.
   • Visual editor (where applicable) — Harmony voice map, EQ curves, reverb envelope, delay timeline, mixer strip.
5. EQ/Mix is a three-view combined panel — Vocal EQ (left chip, device-global), Harmony EQ (middle, per-preset), Mixer (right, per-preset). See EQ/Mix below for the full breakdown.

The tabs

Harmony

The most-edited vocal tab. 30 group styles across six categories (Simple, Choir, Pedal, Fixed, Notes, Special) — each style configures the four harmony voices for a different musical effect.

Top-level knobs: Lead Level, Level (overall harmony mix), Tuning (Equal / Just / Barbershop), Humanization Amount, Vibrato Amount.

Top-level dropdowns: Humanization Style, Vibrato Style, NaturalPlay Source — see Mixer → NaturalPlay for what each input source does.

Envelope (applies to harmony voices): Attack, Release, Hold Release.

Harmony EQ (3-band parametric): Low Gain / Low Frequency, Mid Gain / Mid Frequency / Mid Bandwidth, High Gain / High Frequency. Per-preset, edited inline on this tab. (Voice EQ for your lead vocal is separate — see EQ/Mix.)

Per-voice controls (V1–V4)

Each of the four harmony voices has its own controls:

Per-voice control	What it does
Mode	How the voice picks its pitch — see modes below
Voicing	The interval offset (semitones for Shift / Fixed; scale degree for Scale; etc.)
Level	Voice's contribution to the harmony mix
Gender	Formant shift — higher = brighter / more feminine, lower = darker / more masculine
Pan	Stereo placement
Portamento	Pitch-glide time between notes
Portamento Smoothing	Smoothing factor on the glide

Voice modes — the six options

Each voice's Mode dropdown determines how that voice picks its pitch:

Mode	Behavior
Off	Voice disabled — hidden from the Voice Map
NatPlay	Diatonic offset against the lead vocal. Auto-picks notes that fit the current key. Musical default.
Scale	Locked to a specific scale-degree position regardless of where the lead is.
Shift	Chromatic semitone offset. Transposes the lead by a fixed number of half-steps regardless of key.
Pedal	Sustained reference tone held against the lead (like an organ pedal note).
Fixed	Locked semitone offset from the key root (not from the lead).

Harmony Voice Map editor — drag colored voice circles vertically in the left pitch panel to set the interval; drag horizontally in the right stereo panel to pan; drag the level readout below each pan dot to set that voice's level. Voices set to Off are hidden from the map.

Tip

"Subtle" is usually better. Harmony levels around −6 dB or lower often sound more natural than maxed-out voices. The "robotic" or "fake" complaint about harmonies is most often a level-balance issue, not a tone issue.

Doubling

12 styles in 3 categories. Mimics the studio technique of singing the same part multiple times — slight differences in timing and pitch between the copies create a fuller, thicker vocal.

Knobs: Level, plus per-voice controls for up to 4 doubling voices (D1–D4) — Level, Pan, Detune, Timing.

The doubling voices appear on the Mixer view (EQ/Mix tab) as D1–D4 strips alongside the harmony H1–H4 strips.

Delay

19 styles in 5 categories. Master tempo clock (shared with vocal rhythmic, stutter, guitar delay, and looper quantize).

Knobs: Feedback, Level, plus per-side Feedback L / Feedback R / Cross-feed L→R / R→L for stereo character.

Filter Style dropdown — colours the repeats tonally.

Ducking — Threshold, Amount, Time. When you're singing, the delay ducks down; when you pause, it rises back up so the echoes are audible without competing with your dry voice.

Modulation row — Mod Depth and Mod Speed apply slight pitch wobble to repeats (gives tape-style delay its character).

EQ row — Low Cut, High Cut on the repeats only, for thinning echoes so they sit behind the dry signal.

Set BPM widget — writes the master tempo. See Tempo widgets — three sites, one target.

Delay timeline visualizer — drag-to-edit stereo timeline showing left/right tap positions and feedback amounts.

Reverb

43 styles in 6 categories — physical spaces (Amsterdam Hall, Hockey Arena) alongside device types (Plate, Spring).

Knobs: Decay, Level, Pre-Delay, Early Reflections, Reverb Tail Level, Width, Lead Level.

Tone shaping: Low Color, High Color, High Factor, Diffuse.

Modulation: Mod Depth, Mod Speed.

Ducking: Threshold, Amount, Time — like the delay, lets the reverb breathe with your vocal.

Source sends — independent send levels for what feeds the reverb: Lead-to-Reverb, Harmony-to-Reverb, Delay-to-Reverb, Choir-to-Reverb. Useful for sending only certain elements through the reverb (e.g., a wet vocal but dry harmonies).

Reverb envelope editor — shapes the decay curve and early/late reflection balance. Bias toward Early for room ambience or toward Late for wash, without changing the style.

Tip — Decay time

1.3 seconds is a common decay for mid-tempo pop. Shorter reverbs fit faster songs; longer reverbs fit slower ones. "Timing" the decay so it ends on a beat (or every other beat) makes the reverb feel like part of the arrangement rather than wash on top.

HardTune

7 styles split across two categories — Correct (transparent pitch correction) and Effect (audible character).

Category	Styles	When to use
Correct	Pop, Country Gliss, Correct Natural, Correct Chromatic	Subtle, mostly-transparent pitch correction — sounds like a tuned-up natural voice
Effect	Gender Bender, Robot, Pedal	Extreme, audibly "tuned" character — the "Cher / T-Pain" sound

Knobs: Gender, Shift, Rate (how fast the correction snaps to pitch — faster = more obvious "tune" sound), Amount, Window (how close a note has to be before correction kicks in).

Key Source dropdown — where the engine pulls the target key/scale from:

Key Source	What it uses
NaturalPlay	Whatever NaturalPlay is currently detecting (guitar, MIDI, etc. — see Mixer → NaturalPlay)
Manual / Custom	The Manual Key + Manual Scale dropdowns below, OR the Custom Scale bitfield (see below)
Robot Mode	A flat single-note target — produces the classic robot-monotone effect
Pedal Mode	Whatever note your guitar pedal is sustaining

Manual Key / Manual Scale — used when Key Source is Manual / Custom. Scale options: MAJ1, MAJ2, MAJ3, MIN1, MIN2, MIN3.

Custom 12-tone scale editor

When you want a scale that isn't in the Manual Scale dropdown (jazz scales, modes, exotic intonations), the Custom Scale bitfield lets you flip individual notes on or off:

• The 12 toggles represent the chromatic scale, anchored to C (Bit 0 = C, Bit 1 = C#, …, Bit 11 = B). The device transposes by your Key dropdown.
• Quick presets populate the bitfield instantly: Chromatic (all 12), Empty (none), Major, Minor, Pentatonic, Blues.

Tip — verifying your custom scale

If the audible result feels wrong after dialing custom notes, hit one of the quick presets (Major / Minor / Pentatonic / Blues) and listen — they're known-correct references. From there, work toward your custom scale a few notes at a time.

HardTune overrides global pitch correction

Whenever HardTune is active, the device's Global Pitch Correction settings (Setup menu) are temporarily overridden by HardTune's settings. When HardTune is bypassed, the Global settings reactivate.

Synth

13 styles. The "talk box" effect family — a carrier sound modulates your voice to create a robot, vocoder, or instrument-like output.

Knobs: Gender, Level, Lead Mix (how much of your dry vocal blends through), Carrier Mix (level of the carrier signal), Carrier Shift (transpose the carrier), Resolution (smoothness / quantization — lower values = grainier), Portamento (pitch-glide time, 0–5000 ms), Ess Level (sibilance pass-through — keeps consonants intelligible).

Dropdowns: Carrier (12 source options — including built-in synth carriers so you can use Synth without an external instrument), Note Source (where the pitch comes from — your voice, MIDI, etc.).

Harmonies toggle — enables multi-voice chord output through the synth.

Tip — synth as accent

Synth works best as an accent for a specific passage, not a full-song effect. Practice the exact notes you want; talk-box-style effects lose their lustre when the player meanders. Elongating vowels and over-pronouncing consonants while Synth is active makes the effect more pronounced.

Transducer

10 styles — the "Megaphone" / "Distortion" / lo-fi vocal family. Covers any combination of gain shaping and filtering.

Knobs: PreGain (±20 dB input), PostGain (±20 dB makeup gain), Distortion Amount, Threshold (gate — keeps low-level noise from being distorted), Low Cut, High Cut, BandLimit HP, BandLimit LP.

Presence peak — three knobs that shape a tunable peak in the signal: Presence Gain (±20 dB), Presence FC (centre frequency, 100–195 Hz), Presence Bandwidth (Q).

Routing dropdown (5 options) — chooses which signals the Transducer processes:

Routing	What it processes
Output	Everything in the main vocal output
FX – Lead	Only the lead vocal in the FX path
FX – Harmony	Only the harmony in the FX path
Lead	Only the lead vocal
Harmony	Only the harmonies

Distortion Type dropdown — 15 algorithms across 4 character groups: Saturation 1–3, Overdrive 1–5, Distortion 1–4, Fuzz 1–3.

Feedback risk

Distortion and filter effects can be very prone to feedback because they're boosting narrow frequency ranges. Be cautious about the initial Threshold setting and overall PostGain, especially at venue volumes.

µMod

23 styles in 6 categories. The "Micro Mod" block — micro-pitch shifting, Flanger, Chorus, Rotor, Thicken, plus extreme variants like Tube Up and Alien Voiceover.

Knobs: Level, Speed, Detune, Depth, Dry Gain, Width, Phase, Delay L, Delay R, Feedback L, Feedback R, Cross-Feedback L (XFB_L), Cross-Feedback R (XFB_R), Low Cut, High Cut.

Dropdowns: Wave (Square / Triangle / Sine), Inverse Phase (polarity invert).

This block uses the same routing concept as guitar µMod — independent send levels from Lead-to-µMod and Harmony-to-µMod let you apply the effect to specific signal components and keep the rest dry.

Choir

13 styles, always-on (no ON/OFF chip).

Knobs: Mix.

Send levels: Lead-to-Choir, Harmony-to-Choir — how much of each signal feeds the choir block.

The Choir block was split out of the Harmony block (it used to live inside it). Its job is "group sound" — the impression of multiple voices singing together, vs. Harmony's per-voice interval control.

Tip — Choir + Harmony

Start with a low Choir level when using both. Too much Choir on top of Harmony makes the overall output sound robotic or over-effected. The "Speaking" style works well for Hip Hop / Rap / Spoken Word — a group-saying-something-together effect.

Rhythmic

11 styles across 4 categories (Modulation, Pan, Chopper, Special), always-on (no ON/OFF chip). Uses the master tempo to chop, pan, or modulate your vocal in time with the music.

Knobs: Depth (LFO modulation intensity).

Target dropdown — what the Rhythmic block modulates:

Target	What's modulated
Lead	Your lead vocal — the rhythmic effect applies to you
Harm Level	The harmony level — voices swell and fade in time

Type / Waveform dropdown — Square, Triangle, Sine, Sawtooth Up, Sawtooth Down — shapes the modulation.

Division — sets the rhythmic subdivision relative to the master tempo.

Set BPM widget — writes the master tempo.

Internal metronome (for rehearsal): Metronome Type dropdown — Kick Drum, Hi-Hat, Sine/Beep — picks the click sound. Metronome Level (−100 to 0 dB) — enables and sets the volume of the audible click.

Tip — long divisions on harmonies

Setting Target to "Harm Level" and using a long division (e.g., whole-note or half-note) makes the harmonies swell and fade slowly — a beautiful, breathing pad effect.

Stutter

4 styles, always-on (no ON/OFF chip). A small sampler that records a brief slice of your vocal and plays it back repeatedly in time with the music.

Knobs: none beyond the dropdowns.

Division — sample length, set as a rhythmic subdivision relative to the master tempo.

Direction dropdown — Forward / Reverse — plays back the captured sample normally or reversed.

Path dropdown — Forward / Reverse — direction of the capture/read-head. Combining Direction and Path toggles gives four playback outcomes from the same two-axis choice.

Capture — triggers a fresh sample grab. Best assigned to a footswitch (Momentary mode) so you can grab samples at musical moments.

Tip — Stutter timing

Stutter sounds best when you assign it to a momentary footswitch and grab samples at deliberate musical moments (the start of a word, the peak of a phrase). Set the Stutter footswitch to Momentary on the Mixer's button-mapping panel.

EQ/Mix

A three-view combined panel — the only tab in VocalShaper without an ON/OFF chip because none of its contents are bypassable.

View	Scope	What's in it
Voice EQ	Device-global	Your personal lead-vocal EQ — applies across all presets
Harmony EQ	Per-preset	The harmony-bus EQ
Mixer	Per-preset	The preset's internal mix strip: H1–H4 levels and pans, D1–D4 levels and pans, wet sends (reverb / delay / choir / µMod / Transducer / Synth)

EQ editors — both Voice EQ and Harmony EQ render as 3-band parametric EQ curves with draggable nodes. Outer ring sets frequency, inner sets gain.

Mixer strip editor — per-voice level and pan controls for harmony (H1–H4), doubling (D1–D4), and all wet send destinations. This is the canonical place to adjust user-facing loudness for harmonies, doublings, and wet effects.

Flatten gains quick-action — appears in the header when an EQ view is active. Resets all EQ band gains to 0 dB without touching frequencies or bandwidths. Useful for starting fresh from a tuned EQ shape.

Voice EQ is your personal vocal tone

Because Voice EQ is stored device-globally, it applies across every preset you load. Treat it as your personal vocal "tone" tuned for your voice and PA, not a per-song parameter. Adjust it once when you set up the room and leave it alone.

Where harmony loudness actually lives

The user-facing loudness control for harmonies is the Mixer view's Harmony level, not the per-voice Levels inside the Harmony block. If "make the harmonies louder" doesn't seem to work, you're probably editing per-voice levels — switch to EQ/Mix → Mixer view and raise the Harmony fader there.

Reference

Tabs at a glance

Tab	Styles	Notes
Harmony	30 in 6 categories	4 voices with independent Mode (Off / NatPlay / Scale / Shift / Pedal / Fixed)
Doubling	12 in 3 categories	4 doubling voices, mixer strip on EQ/Mix
Delay	19 in 5 categories	Master tempo, Filter Style, Ducking, per-side feedback + cross-feed
Reverb	43 in 6 categories	Envelope editor, Early/Late split, source-specific sends
HardTune	7 (Correct vs Effect categories)	Custom 12-tone scale editor with quick presets; KeySource dropdown
Synth	13	12 carrier sources; Resolution, Portamento, Ess Level, Harmonies toggle
Transducer	10	15 distortion algorithms; Routing dropdown (5 destinations)
µMod	23 in 6 categories	Vortex Flanger / Corona Chorus-style emulations, stereo routing
Choir	13 (always-on)	Lead-to-Choir + Harmony-to-Choir send levels
Rhythmic	11 in 4 categories (always-on)	Target (Lead / Harm Level), internal metronome
Stutter	4 (always-on)	Direction + Path two-axis playback toggles
EQ/Mix	(always-on)	Three views: Voice EQ (global) + Harmony EQ + Mixer

Page header & mode chip

Header element	What it means
Amber LIVE chip	Edits write to the active preset on the device immediately
Blue PRESET chip	Edits a stored library preset; device isn't touched until you Push
Preset name	The preset you're editing — "Active device preset" in live mode
A/B controls	Capture and compare two settings — see below
Save to Library (preset mode only)	Persist changes to your library row
Push to Device (preset mode only)	Send this preset to its device slot

ON/OFF chips per tab

Each effect tab (except always-on Choir, Rhythmic, Stutter, and EQ/Mix) has an enable / bypass chip in its header:

• Emerald-green "ON" — the effect block is enabled and processing audio.
• Dark grey "OFF" — the block is bypassed.

Click the chip to toggle. Bypassed blocks keep their knob controls interactive so you can dial in a tone without hearing it, then re-enable.

Style browser

Every tab opens with a style browser:

• Category filter chips along the top — narrow the tile list (e.g., "Choir" on the Harmony tab shows only the choir-grouping styles). Click a chip to filter; click "All" to clear.
• Style tiles below — every style available within the filter. The currently selected tile has an amber-500 border.
• Status line below the filter — shows the currently selected style's name plus its category.

Click any tile to switch instantly; the device installs the style's stored defaults and the page re-reads them so the knobs show the new state.

A/B snapshots

The A/B controls in the header let you capture two complete VocalShaper states and flip between them to compare changes. Capture covers the union of all per-tab parameters (everything in VOCAL_PARAMS).

Session-only — not saved to disk

A/B snapshots live in memory for the current VocalShaper session only. They are NOT saved to disk and do NOT survive an app restart or leaving the VocalShaper page.

For permanent A/B-style work, save the tweaked preset to a different slot on the device (long-press Store on the VL3X), or in preset mode use Save to Library to persist changes, then duplicate the library row before the next experiment.

Voice EQ is global, Harmony EQ is per-preset

This bears repeating because the device-global / per-preset split causes confusion:

• Voice EQ (the lead-vocal EQ in EQ/Mix's left chip) is stored device-globally. It applies across every preset. Think of it as your personal vocal-tone EQ tuned for your voice and your PA.
• Harmony EQ (the EQ/Mix middle chip and the in-line EQ inside the Harmony tab) is per-preset. It changes when you switch presets.

VocalShaper fetches the Voice EQ via a separate dump_system_params call and merges it before rendering. The periodic re-dump preserves the previously-fetched system values so they don't snap back between polls.

Tempo widgets — three sites, one target

The Set BPM widgets on Delay, Rhythmic, and Stutter all write the same master tempo:

Tab	Widget target	Shared with
Delay	Master tempo	Vocal rhythmic, stutter, guitar delay, looper quantize, Mixer metronome
Rhythmic	Master tempo	Same as above
Stutter	Master tempo	Same as above

All vocal time-based effects share tempo by design — they're meant to lock together. (Only GuitarShaper's Rhythmic tab has its own independent clock — see GuitarShaper → Tempo clocks.)

HardTune custom scale bit ordering

The custom scale bitfield uses standard chromatic ordering, anchored to C:

Bit	Note
0	C
1	C# / D♭
2	D
3	D# / E♭
4	E
5	F
6	F# / G♭
7	G
8	G# / A♭
9	A
10	A# / B♭
11	B

The device transposes by your Manual Key dropdown — so setting Bit 0 = C and Bit 4 = E in the bitfield gives you C + E in the key of C, D + F# in the key of D, etc.

HIT-gated effects

Each vocal effect block has a Hit Control parameter (visible per-tab). When set to a HIT-gated mode, whether the block is audibly engaged depends on the device's HIT button state — not just the ON/OFF chip. The Device page's effect grid renders such blocks with a dimmed appearance (and an "(estimated)" hover tooltip) to signal the uncertainty.

The HIT button is the device's "drop the chorus" lever — typically used to bring Harmony, µMod, or Synth on for a chorus and off for a verse with a single footswitch.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
Tab ON/OFF chip looks "stuck" after editing the preset directly on the device	The page tracks device-side changes on a short delay. Wait a moment. If it still doesn't update, check the Mixer page for the block's actual state.
"Make the harmonies louder" doesn't actually raise the perceived level	The user-facing loudness control is the Mixer view's Harmony level (EQ/Mix tab), not the per-voice Levels inside the Harmony block. Open EQ/Mix → Mixer view and raise Harmony there.
Harmonies sound "robotic" or "fake"	Try a lower Level first — most often this is a balance issue, not a tone issue. Harmonies at −6 dB or lower often feel more natural. Adding subtle Humanization and Vibrato per voice also helps.
Voice EQ keeps snapping back to defaults after a preset change	Voice EQ is global and shouldn't change with presets. If it appears to reset, that's a regression — flag it.
Custom HardTune scale doesn't sound right	Use the Major / Minor / Pentatonic / Blues quick presets to verify the editor's bit-to-note mapping, then dial your custom scale from there.
HardTune is on but pitch correction sounds inconsistent	Check the Key Source dropdown — if it's on NaturalPlay but no NaturalPlay source is hearing your guitar/MIDI, the engine doesn't know the key. Either switch Key Source to Manual / Custom and set Key + Scale, or fix the NaturalPlay input on the Mixer page.
HardTune doesn't respect my Global Pitch Correction settings	By design — HardTune overrides Global Pitch Correction whenever it's active. Bypass HardTune to fall back to Global.
A/B comparison was lost when I left the page	A/B is session-only and not persisted. Save changes to a separate preset slot (long-press Store on the device) or use preset mode's Save to Library before navigating away.
Set BPM on Rhythmic or Stutter also moves the delay tempo	That's the master tempo — vocal delay, rhythmic, and stutter all share it. Use GuitarShaper's Rhythmic tab if you need a separate clock for guitar tremolo.
Synth effect doesn't make sound	Check the Note Source dropdown — Synth needs to know where its pitch is coming from. If set to MIDI but no MIDI is plugged in, no notes drive the synth. Also check Lead Mix and Carrier Mix levels.
Transducer feedback at gig volumes	Distortion/filter blocks are feedback-prone. Raise the Threshold (the in-block gate) so the block only opens when you're actually singing, and watch overall PostGain.
Stutter captures empty / silent samples	The sample is grabbed at the moment you press Capture. Press Capture during a sung note, not in a pause. Mapping Capture to a Momentary footswitch lets you grab at musical moments without taking hands off your instrument.
Choir + Harmony together sound over-effected	Lower the Choir Mix first — too much Choir layered on Harmony is the most common cause.

See also

• GuitarShaper — same shape, applied to the guitar signal chain. Shares the master tempo (except GuitarShaper's Rhythmic).
• Mixer — system-level params, master tempo, NaturalPlay input source.
• Preset Editor — visual per-effect editors with at-a-glance status across the whole preset.
• Device — live effect grid; HIT-gated blocks show "(estimated)" status.
• Library — Pull All from the device to populate your editable preset library.
• Quickstart — first-launch flow.