iSolo Choice by CloudVocal Review

I’ve gotten the opportunity to try out an awesome new wireless mic for violin. CloudVocal’s ISOLO microphone is small, lightweight, and stylish and has an incredible amount of features. In addition to their ISOLO for Violin, they also offer an option for guitar and saxophone. Check it out!

Get the CLOUDVOCAL ISOLO for Violin:
https://bit.ly/CloudVocalViolin

Get the CLOUDVOCAL ISOLO for Guitar or Sax:
https://bit.ly/CloudVocalISOLO

Hi Everybody! Vi Wickam here. I’ve got a new toy to try out for you. It is the ISOLO by CLOUDVOCAL. It’s a brand-new product. It’s a wireless microphone that attaches to the violin. There’s two modes of attaching, but I’ll get to that later. And it wirelessly connects to this unit, which is kind of a wireless receiver and DI all in one, and it also has a small amount of effects pedal and EQ functionality as well.

And from there you would go into your amp or into the soundboard. You’ve got a quarter inch output, you’ve also got a quarter inch to XLR adapter, specifically for it. So, lots and lots of cool stuff here.

Let’s start with when I got it in the mail. I was really impressed because it came in this nifty, pretty box and had all sorts of things in it. It had the microphone and it also has a transducer adapter. So, this can either be a microphone that you place right above your F hole, or wherever you think it’s gonna sound better.

Check that out. Got delay turned on right now.

You can also hook this in—which I haven’t tried, because I haven’t wanted to mess with my bridge. But you hook this in here, put that under your bridge foot, and it’s a piezo transducer. There’s a switch on here that allows you to switch between transducer and mic input. So whether this is sending a transducer signal or mic signal to this unit.

So that’s another option that this comes with, which is really cool. I personally prefer the mic because it has a more authentic violin sound coming to it in general. This is not specific to this product, but in general I prefer the acoustic sound of a violin to sound like a violin, whereas an electric is going to sound like a transducer or sound electric from the get-go. So, if we’re really trying to replicate the sound of a violin, the microphone is going to give you the most authentic and accurate replication of that.

So, there are actually two options of connecting. I chose the carpenter jack, which is really slick.

Ooh. Hello.

It’s a very sensitive microphone, but it is pretty directional. So, we’ve got this carpenter jack, it comes off of the violin really nicely, and it’s pretty slick like that. I’ve got it turned on right now, so I’m gonna press and hold this button for just a minute and the green light on the top goes off. Now the microphone’s off.

The jack has little pieces of cork, so it doesn’t damage your instrument. I’ve found that the best place for me to attach it to my violin was right here on the south end of the c-bout. And then I mounted it so that the microphone is right over the bottom eye of my F hole. And I’ve found that to work really nicely. On the bass side of the violin. I didn’t try it on the treble side, but I may do that another time.

I’ve been playing with this on gigs for the last month or so, and I’ve really, really enjoyed it. It’s worked really nicely. It’s light to travel with. Everything that’s in the box can fit in this little, approximately 6 by 8 inch, carrying case that comes with it as well. There is a manual as well that comes with it, that’s really useful. It’s got good instructions – that was awesome – good instructions for pairing the wireless transmitter with receiver, which is pretty straightforward. The other mounting option that it comes with is a sticky mounting option. Which the glue is supposed to be instrument safe, I don’t trust putting glue attached to my violin varnish. It’s an older violin, the varnish is kind of sensitive, it’s not a lacquer varnish that a lot of new violins have. So, I opted for the carpenter jack option. But, if you have a newer violin that has harder varnish, this would probably work fine.

It also comes with a USB charger for the wireless transmitter and microphone—which is nice and small. I’d seen it in the pictures, and it’s smaller than I thought it was going to be. It’s small and it’s light. This is a micro-USB adapter, and a USB. There’s a USB charger that you can use for this, you can also use it to power your DI box. So, you can use it for both of those purposes, it’s standard USB so I’m sure 75 other USB power adapters would work just fine for it, but I’m using the one that came with it, because it seems like a good idea.

It also came with this quarter inch to XLR adapter to plug in to a PA system, a quarter inch to 8^th inch adapter, and a directional antenna. I chose the omnidirectional antenna. I figure this is only probably needed when there’s a long distance between you and the receiver. Since generally speaking I have the microphone and the receiver both on stage within 15 feet of each other, I think it’s fine. I walked down the hallway in my house, about 30 or 40 feet away, it still worked just fine. When I walked behind a wall, it stopped working so well. So that at least gives you an idea that it works well, at least out to 30 to 40 feet without obstructions in the way.

I’m really, really happy with the sound reproduction of it, and with the features of this.

It’s just got a bass and treble EQ, so it’s not a multiband—I mean it’s multiband, 2 bands—EQ. It’s really nice to be able to just dip your treble or dip your bass a little bit. I’ve ended up having my bass point straight up, and my treble dip just a little bit to get the sound I wanted. The gain I have set at 0, and the master I have set at less than half.

I haven’t used this during my gigs, but I’ve had a lot of fun here at home playing with the effects. So, it has 4 different effects options, and you can modulate the effects with the effects parameter button here, and you can also change your dry/wet blend. So that’ll tell you how much of the unaffected signal—that’s the dry signal, the wet signal is the effected signal—and it’ll let you decide on what mix is there. Right now, I’m gonna turn it more to the wet, because you can hear me through this microphone here in addition to what’s coming out of my little practice amp.

So, let me give you a little demo. I’ve got it currently turned on the digital delay.

This right here is the transmitter strength, or the signal strength. You can turn it back and forth between lower strength and higher strength. And this is the charger port for charging the transmitter. So, I’m gonna turn my microphone back on.

There’s the green light, it’s on. And it’s off.

And I just hold it until this light here next to EQ on the DI box turns to solid blue. It was flashing blue before. When the microphone is connected it goes to solid blue.

Now it’s connected, now it’s disconnected.

This right here gives you an adjustment on the receiver as to whether you are going to be near or far from the receiver with your violin.

You also have an input/output on the DI box where you can have an additional input of something else coming into the DI box, and you can mix between the mic and the line. Right now, I just have the line going in it. You can also add an aux in, eighth inch. There’s an ability to put a mute on it. On the back we’ve got a sync in and sync out, probably for MIDI sync, not something I’m actually gonna use it for.

But it’s really an easy indicator, really clear, full-featured, and has a nice user-interface for something so small. It’s got a lot of action packed in there.

So here we go.

I’ll slow that down a little bit.

So that’s one of the options, digital delay. The second option is chorus.

So that gives you a little bit of thickness to your sound. Then number 2 is hall reverb, so that’s a big reverb.

So that’s really a wet sound, and now I’m doing the room reverb, which is a little shorter. And then I can turn it down a little bit.

So that’s with it turned all the way to wet, but I’ve got it on room reverb with a relatively short delay in the reverb.

So those are some of the features and the fun things you can do with this ISOLO from CLOUDVOCAL. I’ve really enjoyed playing with it for the last month and a half. I will disclose here I did get this unit for free from them. And I appreciate that, and I’ve really enjoyed using it. I’m going to continue using it as I play in shows going forward.

There is one situation where I have had an issue with it. It was a small amount of issue that I had when I was playing at the Colorado Dulcimer Festival a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure if it was due to an ungrounded power source, or it was due to some sort of radiofrequency interference in the church where I was playing but there was a little buzz in the unit when I played it at that church. But every other time I’ve used it to perform, it’s performed flawlessly. So, as of right now, I consider that to be an aberration, but we’ll see as I continue to use this.

I highly recommend this unit. I think it’s really well made, it’s slick, it’s light, it travels really easy, and it’s less complicated than my previous rig I’ve been using.

Thank you for tuning in, and I’ll see you next time.