or he could mean live.... most big tour FOH guys process the vocals pretty heavily these days.... in pop music they even take the rackmount auto-tune on the road! But in clubs you often get jack and shit.
@cheever_chad
If you want control of your own vocal processing for live work in small clubs though, your best bet is to build your own rack of vocal effects and bring your own mic that flatters your voice and just give the sound guy a line out for the bard. Stay away from EQ though as every room is different and any low roll off or high end sweetening is best done by the FOH engineer to suit the room and mix. But you can sure as heck have your own pre-amp, compressor and ambiance effects. Another option is that TC Electronic processor for vocalists. Helicon, I think??? It comes in a floor pedal, but the original version was a rack unit and a studio I worked for that also did live sound had one in the live rack for lead vocalists. Preamp sounded hella good by live sound standards and the effects were incredible. I used at a million outdoor, hire gigs with great results.
When I did FOH at the Northstar here in Philly every weekend I really liked guys who had their own processing as long as they kept reverbs and delays fairly dark so that if I wanted to add sizzle to the vocal sound I couldn't be making the ambiance harsh. Either that or I would take a separate dry and wet line from their processor if it gave that option, that way I could EQ the 2 signals separately to suit my mix and really control the level (as well as ride the fader on echo and such for dramatic effects between verses and choruses). The guy with their own gear saved me a lot of hassle trying to get a nice 'studio' vocal sound with the house gear during overly short soundchecks. Most FOH guys in clubs can't even be bothered beyond a little verb or slap back for this very reason. If you can't provide separate wet and dry feeds, make sure you have your vocals properly gated or expanded as well because a single feed w/effects will make your vocal impossible to gate cleanly at the FOH console.
For a while at small shows my band that toured heavily would bring (I think) a presonus eureka and my Yamaha spx90 racked with the wireless mic's receiver and give the FOH guy the dry signal and mono or stereo effects feed depending on what he was feeling good about. I think when we first experimented with our own vocal rack we would use a cheaper pre and my modded alesis 3630 and the god awful midiverb (I was using the SPX90 in my guitar rig for a little)
in microphones for heavy music I highly recommend the Audix i5, its like a 57 or 58 if they were any good. It takes more SPL, has better dynamic range across its full bandwidth before distortion, is well built and while it has decent presence it is not overbearing like the stage-standard 58. It has really low handling noise too.... if you leave your mic on the stand because you play the guitar or bass as well as sing then I recommend the discontinued Blue/EV collaborative stage microphones from a few years ago. There's a dynamic and a condenser. The Dynamic is great for heavy music with lots of scream to whisper dynamics. I thought it had the best attributes of an EV RE20 broadcast mic (one of my studio favorites) and a modern beyer.
for wireless the 58 will do... and AKG has some decent wireless hand-helds, depends what you are shooting for. I would stay away from anything but shure and akg wireless due to the wireless units being so good. I have had bad experiences with sennheiser's wireless units.
