voxpops

For me, I wanted a lightweight board that married a good clone engine with a usable synth for a second tier - at a sensible price. If the NE4 had anything beyond a basic sample player it would have been the obvious candidate. If the PC361 was a little lighter and more readily available, it could also have been in the running. If the XW-P1 had a clonewheel engine, rather than a kind of wannabe organ, then I would have kept that and used it. All of those boards fall short in some respect, except, apparently, for the VR-09, and so I have it on order. Do I expect compromises? Yes. Do I expect it to have the best organ, synth and piano engines from dedicated boards? No. But I trust Roland to give me good quality sounds, and a sensible interface that's easy to use in a live situation. And for the $850 I'm paying, I'm unlikely to be disappointed in those respects. At the moment, for top board I use either the Numa Organ coupled with a Plugiator or a Micron (the only synth with full-size keys that will fit on top of the Numa without having to use a 3-tier stand), or VB3 played from an Axiom, and teamed with the Plugiator. It's OK, but I would prefer a simplified setup that doesn't involve either MIDI (with the need to also add external filtering), or the risk of collapse: my K&M 18880/81 starts to wobble with a weighted board on the bottom, and then the Numa and Micron up above (I love that stand, as it's so incredibly light and easy to setup). Before committing to buy the Roland, I really didn't expect to get more than basic software functionality, and so I'm not disappointed now the manual and hands-on testing has confirmed that. Dedicated clonewheels with waterfall keys and separate rotary speaker outputs, etc. start at closing on $2k. The VR-09 was never going to change that. VA synths can be had relatively inexpensively - even analogues, too, in some cases - but you need real estate for those. The piano engine is not vital to me, but it's nice to have alternatives/backups available. But put all that together WITH DRAWBARS, and it's a helluva deal, IMO.

Same here. Nice to have the "friendly" discount, too!

I'm very close to thinking the VR-09 is worth a gamble at $999. I'd like to hear more, but the fact that it has sliders that look no worse than those on the NE4D, sports an uprated Leslie sim, has some live synth-shaping parameters, plus some reasonably good pianos for backup use, all make it quite appealing. I doubt it'll hold its value like a Nord, but then it has less far to fall...

I love drawbars. I agree. I've had four Electros, and every time thought that I ought to be able to get used to the "drawbuttons," but always felt hamstrung by the darn things. Now, Nord presents us with the option of drawbars and a 61-key board with inadequate memory, or a 73 with the dreaded buttons. Thanks! The Casio is an interesting board (I have one) but for me its only use is as a controller for VB3, and occasional mono synth leads. The drawbars controlling the onboard organ are poorly implemented with a huge jump from registration 0 to 1, and the organ tone is thin, with a toytown rotary sim. But I still applaud Casio for taking steps towards a more interesting product range.

That was where my confusion lay.

I thought someone said that it only has MIDI-out - no MIDI-in. No MIDI IN and OUT plus it appears to have PEDAL IN (Roland bass pedals shown in a number of photos). Busch. Thanks, I've changed my post above.

I thought someone said that it only has MIDI-out - no MIDI-in. Stupid comment. I should have looked at the picture first!

I think it all depends on the price and the actual sound quality. If it comes in at around $1,000 (or half an Electro 4D) it might gain some traction. A lot of people are looking for bread and butter sounds in a lightweight package. Up to now, Roland has rarely delivered on EP samples, so much will depend on how they've done in that department. The organ sounds (from the videos) may be typical Roland VK, but they sound WAY better than Casio's in my opinion. The lack of complete on-board control for the organ parameters is limiting, but possibly not crucial for some players. The synth seems to have some flexibility (more than in the VR-700). The biggest negative is having to buy an iPad (unless you already own one, of course) if you want full control over the sound-shaping parameters.

Love the ending of the predictably crappy overview video when the narrator declares that it "won't put you in the RED!"