VR 09 - Real world user reviews

Other Roland synthesizers, modules, keyboards, etc.
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carpetcrawler
Posts: 3
Joined: 17:13, 23 February 2014

VR 09 - Real world user reviews

Post by carpetcrawler »

It's getting down to crunch time for me. I am a utility guy and I am looking for an easy keyboard to use while I Have a guitar strapped around my neck. I haven't seen very many positive reviews on the VR 09..who has one here and can testify to it's strengths and weaknesses? I am looking at this or a King Korg..I have a Juno Di but it is really awful in the piano department otherwise it would suit me ok..
carpetcrawler
Posts: 3
Joined: 17:13, 23 February 2014

Re: VR 09 - Real world user reviews

Post by carpetcrawler »

No response..must mean it is a piece of junk??? What I am reading is not good...
Brenner13
Posts: 3
Joined: 12:07, 13 March 2014

Re: VR 09 - Real world user reviews

Post by Brenner13 »

I've been bar and party gigging with my VR09 for 10 months (ordered it sight unseen in January last year right after NAMM; it a arrived in early May...got one of the first shipments) and am really digging it. Granted I needed a better organ sound for my classic rock band of the 60's 70's & 80's and knew this would fill the bill from the U-Toob vids.

I rarely use the factory registration presets other than for warming up and goofing around. Many of them are very good, but I needed to program those signature sounds of those classic tunes: "Let's Go" by the Cars: layered SuperSaw and a Sync Synth...awesome, "Cars" by Gary Numan: another SawSynth then switch to the next register for a layered SynthString and Pad for the ending solo...nails it, "Swingtown" by Steve Miller, again another slightly softer SyncSynth for the first half of the solo with the next register having a layered Square and Sine Synth for the second half...always well received by the audience. Heck I even ditched my vocoder by crafting an excellent distorted throaty gtr/synth patch for Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way" solo...the crowd goes wild for that one. This is saying a lot about the ease of programming 'cause I didnt take a lot of time to do it but the results have been outstanding.

However an iPad with a camera usb connection kit is required to really do any deep synthesis, and it is pretty deep. The architecture is similar to the Gaia I think...three layerable occilators and you can choose virtual analog sine, square, pulse, saw, SuperSaw, noise, or pick from over 300 waveforms...the sames ones used in the JP80 and JP50. Utilizing a couple of the waveforms, I managed a pretty decent Bag Pipe sound that went over great at New Years Eve. No arpeggiator, though...HUGE omission...nearly canceled my preorder when I found that out.

As for the organ...very, very good sounds and excellent live tweaking is easy with the Draw-Faders. The Leslie Sim is so good I also ditched my RT-20 for live gigs. We cover Simple Man, Wonderful Tonight and many others with a clean Jazz Organ sound, and a couple of hard Rock Organ patches aptly define Born To Be Wild and Gimmie Some Lovin.

I think you mentioned piano in you original post...several of them are real nice BUT, all of the waves have horrible loops that deaden the sound when sustaining notes longer than a second. This is a memory saving technique found in 1990's ROMplers, and is quite disappointing by today's standards. I've heard these pianos are very similar to the ones in the Juno series, but I have not done a comparison. These might have a couple of updated waveforms, though. I've had mild success hiding this ugly decay of the piano waves by adding a smidge of chorus and a healthy dose of reverb. I have just started layering two different piano tones and it is getting a little better to my ears. Layering strings or pads with piano and you don't notice the loops at all. Oh, the loops are most noticable in headphones; amazingly it is not intrusive at all through an amp and PA with a band. The pianos cut through the mix quite well, but for my live shows I prefer the one I've been tweaking for years in my Fantom X7. That is probably due to my ears being so used to the loads of programming I've done on the Fantom, and the fact that 76 keys offer more room, and the key bed is more expressive and responsive for piano.

...the keybed...I recall my first day when the VR09 showed at my door...I almost chucked it back into the box to return the next day. It is quite toy-like at first glance. I had better keys on Radio Shack Casios from the late 1980's! The experience was compounded by the lame stock piano sound that pops up as the first sound by default. Thankfully I spent the next day diving into the Organ part of the thing and found the keybed extremely capable. I love that quick trigger response. I'm glad I spent the weekend with it and decided to keep it because overall, it is a great light weight board for easy transport and it's sounds compliment the Fantom very well for gigging.

Oh, there are a few "hidden" Super Natural derived sounds that I use quite a bit, N Alto Sax gets the most play. The expressiveness is uncanny. N Flue is another, and a very nice N Acoustic Bass. Here's a link to a little modal ditty, in one key, done live, one-shot, into the VR09's song recorder featuring the N Alto Sax split with a Pad on the lower and one of the VR09's drum patterns tap tempo'd to half-time:
https://soundcloud.com/brad-renner/vr-0 ... t-05-13-13

I really like being able to assign the hold pedal to just one of the split tones. This allows hands free on a solo part to activate modulation and pitch bend while a lower drone is sustained with the pedal. It works the other way, too when you need sustain on the smokey Electric Piano and no pedal on the N Acoustic Bass. Man, that bass sound has just the right amount of string buzz and artifacts to sound very dynamic; I get lost for hours with that tone.

The drum sounds are quite good and the patterns are tasteful if a bit limited, but work fine for getting ideas down with some rhythm.

The quick access effects knobs are great and add another element to live tweaking during a show. The effects are decent quality and are designed to simply twist a knob to activate and modulate, but there is very little deep editing available...especially the delay level...you get what you get. Love that Tape Delay, though. Phaser is fab on synths and electric pianos. I heard a lot of complaints about the overdrive on the organ being too much too soon, but it works great for me and my rock band. I prefer the Jon Lord sound anyway and the knob half way up nails that Deep Purple tone.

This this is definitely a quirky board and it has some frustrating limits, but bang for the buck it excels for my needs which is great Hammond emulation with good synths for leads and pads. For someone wanting just a good synth experience...this board is capable, but honestly the iPad requirement is kind of clunky and not something I would want to interface with at a live gig. However, the effect knobs and sliders controlling Envelope Attack, Decay, Release as well as Filter and Resonance provide lots of fun on pre programmed synth patches.

It is a darn shame Roland chose to utilize their System Exclusive parameter modification...this could have been one wicked controller with assignable MIDI to all the knobs and sliders...OY, what it could have been. HEY! Roland, is there any chance of a system update enabling MIDI implementation?
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