Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Vox

November 3rd, 2008 – As someone that has been around a fair amount of gear, I would say that it takes quite a lot to excite me. Call me a luddite, but I’m not that interested in the cutting edge models that companies are spitting out at a fevered pace. In fact, I usually find that older gear has more character and is simpler to use, therefore allowing me to get the best sound out of it.

Today I stumbled across the Vox JamVox and I must say, for the first time in a while, I’m truly excited. I’m surprised I didn’t hear more about it since it won “Best In Show” at this summer’s NAMM. At a street price of around $250, you get what essentially amounts to a USB guitar interface that also has a built in speaker. But it’s not really the hardware that is the interesting part, it’s the software. Vox, in conjunction with Korg, has put together a software package that emulates amps (Vox’s specialty) and coupled it with a plethora of software guitar effects, all bundled into a very easy to use standalone guitar DAW.

That’s all fine and dandy, but what’s even more amazing is the GXT functionality. By clicking one virtual button with your mouse, you can extract the guitar lines from a song; even separate harmony lines, independently of each other. Let me explain to you why that’s so amazing. I’m sure you’ve heard of, or have even used, karaoke machines that remove the lead vocal track so you can sing along to any track you want. Those machines work by turning the entire track to mono, then using the reverse phase of frequencies in the vocal range, those that were previously centred, and playing them on top of the mono track thereby cancelling out the lead vocal. The problems with this technique are that you can only remove the lead vocal, and by chopping out the frequencies where the human voice is, you also remove frequencies other instruments are in. This makes the whole mix sound muddy and indistinct with everything sounding pretty much terrible.

The JamVox software supposedly analyzes the “stereotactic position” and “frequency band” spatially, allowing them to pull out only the guitar parts, without affecting the quality and stereo bandwidth of the rest of the mix. That may all be marketing mumbo-jumbo, but you can’t deny the end result; it sounds almost like the original track. Oh, and remember how I talked about karaoke? You can also plug a mic into the JamVox and remove vocal tracks with the same quality as the guitars. If people come to you looking for karaoke tracks to songs, you can rip out the vocal in as long as it takes to play the song, and charge 20 bucks. You’ll pay off the JamVox in no time!

Because the JamVox can remove the guitar line, it can also solo it from the rest of the mix, allowing you to learn complex guitar parts. You can listen to the guitar slowed down, or pitched up (so you can practice in your tuning). You can also change the pitch of the whole track so you don’t have to re-tune your own guitar if the song is in another key.

Along with great amp emulation, there are awesome effects. What I like about Apple’s Logic is its presets and JamVox follows in the same footsteps. You get over a hundred artist presets to get you sound so close to the original artists, you’ll be stunned; software has no right to sound that good. Watch the promo video here to see what I mean. Want the percussive and dark sound of SRV’s set up? You can get pretty darned close with just a click of a button. You can mess around with any effect pedal path, and can even save them and upload them to the JamVox user community to share. Conversely, you can download the presets of other JamVox users.

I think the JamVox could be great for small live performances where you don’t want to carry that much gear. Sure, it won’t sound as good as the real amps and pedals, but it comes pretty close and with way less baggage. The JamVox software is meant to be a standalone DAW that can record your performances, but it would be great if it would work as a plug-in to other DAW’s like ProTools or Logic. Maybe Vox will develop that functionality, who knows? All I know is that I want one, and now.

Vox via Sympatico.ca