About

About This Project

The TC Helicon Play Acoustic is a fantastic vocal and guitar effects processor — but it's a discontinued product. TC Helicon no longer updates its firmware, and VoiceSupport 2, the official companion app, is no longer maintained or supported.

For musicians who still rely on this device, that means no new features, no bug fixes, and increasingly difficult software compatibility. The Acoustic Play Editor was built to help musicians get the most out of a device that still sounds great — even if the software support has moved on.

How We Got Here

TC Helicon never published the SysEx protocol for the Play Acoustic. Everything in this editor was reverse-engineered by capturing and analyzing the data packets exchanged between VoiceSupport 2 and the device.

The process involved systematically comparing data captures — changing one setting at a time on the device, reading back the raw bytes, and mapping out which bytes control which parameters. Hundreds of experiments across all seven setup packets revealed the locations of HIT state, guitar effect toggles, looper input, pitch correction, harmony key, and more.

Some things we discovered along the way:

The device does not respond to standard MIDI input — all control must go through SysEx
There is no command to simply switch presets — the entire preset data must be transmitted each time
Global settings require a full read-modify-write cycle within a single sync session, with a specific checksum formula
Some states like Guitar Boost on/off are volatile and only exist at the hardware level

What This Editor Does

The editor acts as a modern replacement for VoiceSupport 2 and goes beyond what it offered — adding live performance automation, MIDI integration with apps like Stage Traxx and OnSong, real-time effect toggling, and a setlist system that sends presets to the device on the fly.

It runs as an application on Windows or macOS and communicates with the device over USB.

The technical details about the SysEx protocol, packet structure, and parameter map are documented on the Technical page.

Disclaimer: The information here is based on independent research and experimentation with the Play Acoustic device. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by TC Helicon. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, use at your own discretion.