Disclaimer: I was looking for an instrument that could enrich my electronic raga mantra experience. And that is what this review was based upon. So in no way this review is for the wilder forms of music.
At first I tried the white Pipe with the standard microphone but immediately I got confronted with audio feedback as the Pipe seemed too close to the speakers. Also, I needed to throttle down the setings of course, my bad. When I tried the low frequency microphone, it went a lot better also in terms of smoothing my voice input, and I got the aria vocalise of the day ;-)
A huge plus, compared to the older model, this one has two additional sustain switches, so you won't need anymore to keep the touch buttons pressed all the time, so hands-free operation with the Pipe on a stand is absolutely lovely. Hey Thomann, the product info pictures yet need to be updated (it is now aug/sep '22) to shwow the two hands-free switches!
The only persistent glitch is, with the switches in 'on' position, the strong audible constant hum at one particular preset no matter how I handled the ground loop situation, but only when I touched any of the touch buttons the hum disappeared. The Pipe obviously needed an additional built-in resistor of some kind. This glitch is not good when it comes to hands-free operation for that particular preset.
Most of the presets were to me rather wild noise crush filters that I could not appreciate as romantic artistic beauty, I'm sorry. Only one or two presets worked out for my mantra singing needs. Perhaps I were better off with a normal vocoder.
I also used the Pipe as an effect unit for the Lyra-8, and also here the result was quite crunchy noisy rather than silk oil painting. To me, the Pipe is clearly an attempt to squeeze as many effect like features into one unit, at the expense of the vocal quality of romantic beauty. But in the end, the presets I'd ever use in zen meditation raga mantra vocals were only two out of twelve of them. I really did love the vocal effects it produced, and with mixed feelings I returned the Pipe. No doubt at all, for the wilder folks who seek the broader or more extreme audio adventures, such as the looper kind of productions, I think this instrument would be a most welcome asset. The Pipe is an absolute beautifully engineered piece of gear.
So again, my disclaimer, I was looking for a piece of gear that could enrich my electronic raga mantra experience, but different than an vocoder could do. But for me personally, it was too wild ;-)
