voczl zapper 
by AJS from Atlanta, June 2007
Music Background:  recording engineer

The vocal zapper is more of a vocal reducer. I got it for a specific client who wanted to record a vocal demo to a collection of country songs.
For most of them it worked OK. It does alter the texture of the music because it removes the center track where the vocal & snare reside. Some songs reduce very well others did not, due to the verb or delay used on the original.
I educated the client up front & overall they were happy with the results. Even though I already did my reseach, Sweetwater was great to educate me before
I bought.

Vocal Zapper 
by Anonymous from Indianapolis, August 2004

The Alesis Vocal Zapper is a good value. I had tried a few freeware software programs on my PC to remove vocals and received mediocre results. Even though I'm a computer geek, I prefer hardware solutions in some instances. This is one of those times due to the sheer ease of use of this product.

This device has left & right 1/4" inputs and outputs, an input level control, a mix control and a 16 setting Zapper control. The Zapper control allows easy targeting of specific ranges for removal. The possible settings include: Standard, Girl, Low Alto, High Alto, Soprano, Female Left, Female Right, Stereo Female, Wide, Stereo Male, Male Right, Male Left, Tenor, Baritone, Bass and Boy. The Mix control allows you to adjust the level of vocal removal that will be applied. The input control obviously adjusts the level of the input source. The only other things that you need to purchase are the connectors to use it. I already had high quality RCA cables so I took a trip to Radio Shack and purchased 4 of their RCA to 1/4" mono adapters. This unit is very portable and can quickly be moved to other systems. The Vocal Zapper now sits between a Sony CD player and one of my Creative Labs Audigy2 line level inputs. The only thing that I can complain about regarding the hardware is the lack of an On/Off switch. I don't like having to pull the power adapter connector when it's not in use.

(Qualifier, my vocal removal experience is limited to using the aforementioned 2 freeware PC programs and a circa 1978 Thompson Vocal Eliminator. The new Thompson VE-4 looks awesome, but I didn’t have $1800 to try out their solution.) Now on to the Alesis Vocal Zapper results. I tried several different CDs and was very impressed with the results!! The results varied from mediocre to incredible!! It was much easier to achieve great results using the Zapper. I was not able to achieve similar results using the software solutions. (Yes, there are software solutions that can produce incredible results, but they are not in the $100 range or provide the ease of use of the Zapper.) The flexibility of switching the Zapper control to different ranges is awesome. That allowed me to get better results on some of the CDs. I also love the mix control. This allowed me to resolve a problem where I only needed to remove the vocals from the first 1/3 of a song. The sound quality is very good!!

Bottom Line: The most bang for the buck in vocal zapping!! I’m very satisfied with the results!

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