Roland V-Synth

[ChrisMcCoy]

Just wondering if any of you have used the Roland V-synth.
It looks like a pretty interesting board.
Any opinions ??

[Over The Edge]

Strictly for sound design, adding weidness a la David Torn, Mick Karn.
I wouldn't use it for live purposes. Very limited.
There is noticeable aliasing especially when pushing samples
upward in range.

Personally, you could get Ableton Live 3.0 and do a lot more and
it's far, far less expensive.



FL
www.franklucas.net

[Shreddy]

Frank do you think of the board kinda like the Korg Wavesynth? I always thought that board was cool but not highly useful for a live board. The keyboardist from Tribal Tech always used to play with one and it bothered the heck out of me. To me he was someone that needed to play more Rhodes and Hammond tones.

Ed

[Over The Edge]

Ed, the V could certainly pull off Wavestation sequences.
I think Scott Kinsey used a lot of Nord stuff, including the
Electro which has some really good Rhodes emulations.

In what capacity did you see him perform. Live? On DVD?
What year and concert performance?

He's one of my favorite fusion keyboardists. My fave by
them is Ilicit.



FL
www.franklucas.net

[AFKAR]

Chris,
I havnt had any hands on with the V-Synth, but i did go to the Demo night. Its an impressive syth, but like frank said its better for creating sounds, and (for me) not the kind of keys you would use live.

The guy doing the demo took a *.wav file of a drum loop and using various filters ect created this awesome spacey type pad sound...pretty cool......But not for me


Adrian

[Tusker]

Yeah, that's probably the sideband filter. It takes an atonal sound and imposes tonal characteristics on it by strengthening the fundamental and consonant overtones, while filtering the non-consonant (i.e. sideband) overtones. It's very cool for sound with a lot of noise in them. This suggests that you can do exciting funky stuff with spoken voice samples, drum samples, etc. Not the traditional province of proggers though.

Here's my take on it. When I was shopping for gear earlier this year, I considered it and the nord modular. Went with the NM classic, mostly because there were some control tricks I wanted to try. The G2 engine wasn't out, and the G2 keyboard didn't have an attractive keybed. I might still pick a V at some point, but it's not a do everything synth. So what's it good for?

You can use the V-Synth live. In fact it's a great live instrument, but not in a traditional prog-rocky lead synth way. There is some filter stair-stepping, which you notice with higher resonance settings, rather like the first generation VA's, and there can be a ton of aliasing, depending on which dsps you use. I personally like aliasing and have been known to use the octave button to get to the end of the range of other instrument and play these robot, munchkin tones as a percussion instrument. But that's me.

If you want to do resonant filter sweeps live take another instrument along. Use the V to run loops, do organic ethnic leads, spacey digital sounds, and occasionally polyphonic pads.

As a VA, I don't care for the V-Synth tone. To my ears, it's taken from the dsp in the VG-88 style guitar boxes, rather than the JP8000 dsp. The tone is thin punchy and raw, rather than lush. Sure it depends on the settings you use in the VA engine (high quality versus low quality), but generally, it's value is more on the punch side. I would use it for snarly stuff, but not moogy stuff.

There is a space between a sampling instrument, and a DAW/Live/Acid software, which V-synth provides. Nothing else really does that. I'm talking about slowing down samples in real time while filtering and changing amp settings. And controlling that through a traditional midi controller like a joystick or pad. To do that with traditional drum loops, you could use Ableton, but not for leads, etc.

I find that depending on the sample, there is a lot of expressiveness in moving to the back or front of a sample while you play. To me this is more like the range of expressiveness you get in a natural instrument. It's not as extreme as sweeping the cutoff on a single filter a la traditional subtractive, but it can pull out a number of sonorities subtly. If I was doing music like Deep Forest (ethnic samples turned into lead instruments) I would find a V synth very useful.

I think I would like the convenience of not having to create a multi-sample when using sounds I record. The aliasing Frank refers to is mostly on the lower resolution settings, in high resolution mode (lead mode?) I was able to get some decent results with human voice samples, which are usually very tricky. The V is the closest wev'e come to delivering the promise of sampling, which is that you can record any sound and make it into an instrument. If you don't like the entire sample, simply focus on the part that sounds musical, and time trip forward or backward for special nuances.

That D50 expansion is a sad joke, since it shuts down the regular features of the V. The only thing I would like to see in a new V, is more resolution in the controllers. Also it takes minute to boot up a fully loaded (128 meg?) V. Onc'e it's booted though, all sounds are directly available. They need to speed that up. Oh, maybe add some more unsusual new dsp's like the sideband filter.

There are some lead sounds in the late 100s or late 200's I forget exactly, which use the mod matrix and the time trip feature well. Try those out and see if they appeal to you. Try the various controllers to pull out the timbre changes. If those appeal to you, I think you will see what you can do with this instrument. If they don't ... skip it.

Proggers shouldn't buy this instrument, until they have their rompler sounds, B3 sounds and analog sounds reasonably covered. Then they can use this instrument to it's strengths rather than it's weaknesses.

Hope this helps,

Jerry

[Over The Edge]

I heard the stepping should be resolved in a new
update. Too bad they didn't have it ready by NAMM 2004.



FL
www.franklucas.net

[ChrisMcCoy]

I noticed on the Roland site a while back that Duran Duran's keyboard player Nick Rhodes added one to his rig while on the last tour.
:D