Roland V-Combo VR-09

[Bossbandbob]

Update version 1.1 is no longer available on the Roland website.

Anyone know if it is OK to go from 1.0 (which I have) to 1.2. I really need the Octave change on organ enabled. Anyone still have the 1.0 file on their computer they could send me if I have to do that first? I have both a Mac and PC laptop. Thanks

[Craig MacDonald]

BnB,

 

I have both files, and the 1.1 version and the 1.2 version and both contain the same 3 files and they are all about the same size. In fact, based on the dates the .cfg and .bin file are the exact same file (created at the exact same date/time)..

 

The only difference is that the 1.2 main.rom is 2 kb larger in the 1.2 update and it has a more recent date/time.

 

I think it's a safe bet that you can go straight from 1.0 to 1.2. If it was me, I certainly wouldn't bother taking the extra step.. If it was not possible to go from 1.0 to 1.2 I'm sure that there would be warnings.. (the only cautions provided are 1. not to apply this update to any other product 2. Never power off during an update 3.Follow the directions, Roland will not answer questions regarding the update procedure).

 

However do what you want. If you want 1.1, PM me with your email ID and I will send it to you, when I have a few spare minutes.

[sherpakeys]

I'm fairly new to the VR09 (bought mine at GC less than a month ago) and am assembling my Registrations to use with my band. I've gotten lots of good tips from this thread (thanks guys). Here's a trick I can't figure out, so maybe you can help. I recently saw Daniel Fisher's excellent registrations from SweetWater and would love to try layering 2 pianos but can't figure out how to do it. I Love VR09's easy ability to layer and tweak on the fly and have set up layers for example with 2 Synth sounds (from different buttons, e.g. Brass plus Strings). How do I layer from within the same button, e.g. Piano plus Piano? Thanks for your help.

[Craig MacDonald]

I'm fairly new to the VR09 (bought mine at GC less than a month ago) and am assembling my Registrations to use with my band. I've gotten lots of good tips from this thread (thanks guys). Here's a trick I can't figure out, so maybe you can help. I recently saw Daniel Fisher's excellent registrations from SweetWater and would love to try layering 2 pianos but can't figure out how to do it. I Love VR09's easy ability to layer and tweak on the fly and have set up layers for example with 2 Synth sounds (from different buttons, e.g. Brass plus Strings). How do I layer from within the same button, e.g. Piano plus Piano? Thanks for your help.

That's a good question!! It's not obvious..!

 

There isn't a "layer" button only a split button so if you want to layer two pianos.. select an empty registration and press and hold the e piano and then press the Piano.. this creates a layer with electric piano on top and an acoustic piano on the bottom.. with the electric piano highlighted on the display press enter and then the piano button and the upper part will change from electric piano to acoustic piano. You will get a effects edit screen, ignore that and use the exit button to get out of there and you will see that your registration now has two layered pianos. You can move up and down between the two layers with your cursor, and you can update either part with respect to acoustic piano tone, octave and level. There are lot's of different variations you can get. For example, if you want some bite, layer any of the pianos with the JD piano at set the volume to your liking.. There are some interesting combinations.. including octave piano if you change the octave on one of the layers.

 

Hope this helps!

[sherpakeys]

that's it! and there goes the rest of my evening. Thank you

[Bossbandbob]

I tried updating the VR 09 this afternoon and I could get neither the 1.1 or the 1.2 update to work. I tried two different USB memory sticks that I knew worked fine before and I've formatted both of them on the roland first. One of them I used no problem before on my PX 5S. I followed the exact instructions below and all I can get is a blank screen. Even after a factory reset I still get nothing but the blank screen. Any ideas?

 

 

Never power-off your VR-09 while the update is in progress!

 

Leaving the power to the VR-09 switched off; connect the USB Memory to the "USB MEMORY port".

Hold down the ROTARY SOUND [ON/OFF] and ROTARY SOUND [FAST/SLOW] button and turn on VR-09.

The update process starts with displaying on the screen the repeatedly as follows.

"Updating..."

* The indicator of the ROTARY SOUND [ON/OFF] button will be blinking slowly on updating.

When the update completes, the message "Finished." will appear on the display.

Then, the indicators of the ROTARY SOUND [ON/OFF] and ROTARY SOUND [FAST/SLOW] buttons will be blinking quickly.

Turn off the power of VR-09 after confirming the update completion.

Detach the USB Memory and switch off the power to the unit.

[Craig MacDonald]

BBB,

 

The process, which you copied from the instructions does not describe the process you followed to copy the files from the computer to the USB stick.. so you may NOT have correctly copied the files onto the USB stick (that's the only explanation I would have for your problem, I haven't heard of anyone else having a problem with the update).

 

First of all, don't bother with 1.1.. delete the current files from the USB stick and make sure that you copy the entire "EXPANDED" 1.2 folder onto the USB stick.. So dig down into the folder until you see the three individual files, then back out one level and copy this folder over to the USB stick. (This is important, you can't just copy the compressed files onto the USB Stick because the VR-09 update will not expand them automatically). Once you've done this, follow the same instructions that you quoted above and I would expect that you will have successfully updated your VR-09. IF that doesn't work, you may need to get some help from your dealer.

 

 

[Bossbandbob]

These were the "expanded" files I copied onto the USB stick. However, apparently the PDF files were interfering with the update as I must have loaded the whole folder with the Pdf's rather than just the one with the 3 files . A direct 1.0-1.2 UPDATE NOW COMPLETE! Thanks for your help, Craig!

[Craig MacDonald]

BBB, patience and persisitance does it again!! I figured that there had to be something wrong with the way you put the files on the USB stick.. I'm glad you managed to sort things out! the new features of 1.1 and 1.2 are good to have! Enjoy your updated VR-09 and keep us posted on your progress.

[Bastida]

Hello

 

will be nice if Roland put the three low-pass filter options in the VR-09 synth section as the Jupiter 80

[brenner13]

I'm not real familiar with the JP80, but I think the VR09 has the same filters with individual key tracking settings and ADSR's for each of the three partial tones. Need the iPad app to access 'em on the VR09, though.

[brucie808]

This was speculated on early on in this thread before people had got their hands on the keyboard but can someone please confirm either way if the VR-09's drawbars send out midi CCs?

 

I'm interested in the VR-09 for the acoustic and electric pianos but also as a controller for VB3 running on a V-Machine.

 

Cheers

 

John

[Craig MacDonald]

Brucie808,

 

I think it has been confirmed somewhere in this thread, that the VR-09 does NOT send or receive drawbar CC info.. I believe it uses sysex messages.. However, if you want to be sure you can check the midi implementation manual for the VR-09 to confirm this. I think it's available on the Roland site under VR-09 documentation.

[brenner13]

There is no MIDI on the knobs or draw-faders.

[brucie808]

I did have a look at the midi implementation manual but unfortunately I couldn't make head nor tale of it so thanks both for the confirmation.

[Bossbandbob]

First gig with VR-09 on Sat. Actually had two- aGrad party in the afternoon and a Club at night. Used primarily as my "organ." Went great and sounded very good , just a bit more tweaking needed. I actually entertained quite a few of the little kids there with the effects and the DBeam when our sound guy was having some technical issues at the party and we were we were delayed! Some questions: since I could not find it anywhere or in the manual, I presume this board does not have on board EQ? Also can the Twin Rotary effect be saved in a Registration as dialed in? also how do you escape from Registration mode to just go into the board's basic organ/piano/synth mode? When I hit those buttons the "Registration" still shows on the LCD but I don't think it is active.

[AndrewOnKeys]

Hey, guys... Sorry to bump it back up, but I'm curious... I checked the whole PCM wave list and went so far as to call my Sweetwater engineer, as they're always helpful. There is no "tape strings"/Mellotron strings sound on board as a PCM sample, which is important in my 2nd-tier slab. HOWEVER, I'm really into every other aspect of the VR... the reasonably good clonewheel sounds, the Roland bread-and-butter synth palate, the real-time controls including the FX. Has anyone tried an approximation of tape strings using the VR's "real" strings sample(s) and EFX, namely compression and overdrive? I know there's more to the tape character than that, but a solid approximation for live use would cinch it.

 

Kind of surprised that given the VR's vintage bent what with the organs, EPs and classic synths, that there wouldn't be AT LEAST tape strings, choirs and flutes. A future firmware upgrade, perhaps?

[Craig MacDonald]

AndrewOnKeys,

 

I did exactly what you're suggesting, I used the compression and overdrive on the VR-09 strings to create a mellotron string sound.. If you want to hear it, go to soundcloud, search for my account (ccmacdon) and look for a clip called "VR-09 fake mellotron strings". This will give you an idea of what you can do with the VR-09.

 

It's not perfect but it does have that rough character that you expect from tape strings.. In a mix it will work fine, and you can further tweak to your liking, and do the same with the choirs if you want. I hope this helps.

[Craig MacDonald]

BTW I agree that tape strings, choirs and flutes are a major oversight! I would love to see them added to the sound/tone list but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this.. and I will be very surprised if we see another OS update.

[Craig MacDonald]

First gig with VR-09 on Sat. Actually had two- aGrad party in the afternoon and a Club at night. Used primarily as my "organ." Went great and sounded very good , just a bit more tweaking needed. I actually entertained quite a few of the little kids there with the effects and the DBeam when our sound guy was having some technical issues at the party and we were we were delayed! Some questions: since I could not find it anywhere or in the manual, I presume this board does not have on board EQ? Also can the Twin Rotary effect be saved in a Registration as dialed in? also how do you escape from Registration mode to just go into the board's basic organ/piano/synth mode? When I hit those buttons the "Registration" still shows on the LCD but I don't think it is active.

BBB,

 

I'll try to answer your questions as best I can.. I don't have my VR set up right now so my answers are just from memory..

 

There isn't an onboard EQ the tone control gives you quite a bit of control over sounds.. and you can adjust the tone on any sound and save it as a registration. I do believe that you can save the settings of the Twin Rotary effect as part of a registration.

 

Regarding exiting a registration, it's not exactly a straight forward answer.. I have to double check this but if I recall correctly, you can select piano, organ, synth parts from within a registration and they are still subject to certain parameters that have been saved as part of the registration.. for example if you save a key transpose as part of a registration, the transpose will remain if you choose another mode (piano organ synth) from within the registration.. in fact I think you have to change to another registration without any transpose to return the transpose to normal.

 

I'll have to pull my VR out to see if there is an easy way to exit registrations altogether, and I'll let you know if i figure it out.

 

[xKnuckles]

Hello. Does anyone know what would be the best settings to use to get a really excellent church organ sound? ie. Bach's toccata & fugue in D minor type of thing. Many thanks for your help.

 

[AnotherScott]

Hey, guys... Sorry to bump it back up, but I'm curious... I checked the whole PCM wave list and went so far as to call my Sweetwater engineer, as they're always helpful. There is no "tape strings"/Mellotron strings sound on board as a PCM sample, which is important in my 2nd-tier slab. HOWEVER, I'm really into every other aspect of the VR... the reasonably good clonewheel sounds, the Roland bread-and-butter synth palate, the real-time controls including the FX. Has anyone tried an approximation of tape strings using the VR's "real" strings sample(s) and EFX, namely compression and overdrive? I know there's more to the tape character than that, but a solid approximation for live use would cinch it.

 

Kind of surprised that given the VR's vintage bent what with the organs, EPs and classic synths, that there wouldn't be AT LEAST tape strings, choirs and flutes. A future firmware upgrade, perhaps?

The VR isn't designed to be able to have new samples loaded into it, regardless of whether Roland offers any future firmware upgrades or not. You might want to look at the FA-06 instead, which gives you most of what's in the VR plus a whole lot more... the most notable trade-off probably being the loss of the real-time drawbars (it does have a clonewheel organ engine in it, but you operate the drawbars via a menu). A lot of other classic keys sounds (including mellotron) can be loaded into the FA, with the free downloadable expansion pack at

http://axial.roland.com/articles/exp-02-keys-collection/

[Craig MacDonald]

Anotherscott makes a good point, the FA and the VR are very different boards that overlap in many ways.. similar basic sound set, drawbar organ engine.. but the are a lot of differences.. for instance if the FA doesn't have real drawfaders for realtime manipulation, and I don't think it has C/V either (if I'm not mistaken)..

 

IF you're looking for a basic lightweight all-in-one and drawbar organ is important (with real drawbars) and your requirements for combinations/setups and multi-layered and split sounds is limited to two sounds at once, the VR may be the perfect keyboard for you.. The FA is more of a workstation.. with some sample memory, and the ability to create more splits and layers.

 

For the record, I thought the exp-02-keys-collection mellotron sound was crappy.. (just the one demo.. there may be other tron sounds).. but based on that demo I would prefer to use the sound I created using the VR-09's strings with compression and overdrive. My VR tron sound was much more raw and beefier, like the real thing. BTW it took me about 30 seconds to create this VR-Tron sound, I'm sure if I spent more time I could probably tweak it even further. That said, you could probably edit the exp-02-keys-collection tron sounds (or the built in FA strings) in a similar fashion as I have with the VR strings and get an equally good or better sound.

 

VR and FA are two different beasts.. choosing between them seems to me to be primarily a choice between a low cost all-in-one with drawbars that's limited to two sounds at once vs a workstation with all the same sounds (and more) that has no real drawbars for real time manipulation that can create more sounds at once with more sophisticated sound/keyboard setups/combinations.

[Ken Beaumont]

Very different beasts indeed, I just received my FA-08 yesterday.

A lot depends what it is you want. The FA has an arpeggiator and sequencer, combined with a sampler. If your doing modern electronic or dance music its a no brainer. But if a drawbar organ is important and you rarely find use for an arpeggiator, then save yourself some money and go with the VR.

I find that the FA-08 and the VR-09 on top is like Peanut butter and Jam, they compliment each other very well!

[AndrewOnKeys]

Craig -- very nice job on the tweaking! Definitely workable with what the VR-09 gives us to work with.

 

Yeah, thought about the FA-06 vs. VR-09 thing... the VR would be 2nd-tier over my Yamaha Motif XS-7, so I've got the "workstation" end covered. So sequencing's not a factor... the only place I'd ever use an arpeggiator is my JP-8000, and I'm too old to do modern electronic or dance ;-) It's all classic/arena/prog-rock, baby ;-)

[Bossbandbob]

Seems like you just need to hit the mode button to exit a registration. in organ it retains the drawbars but not splits as far as I can tell. When I have more time I'll figure out what, if anything else, it retains.

[To B3]

Been noticing something strange and maybe some of you can help: I often have t play directly to FOH, relying on monitors. Normally it works out fine. But on the gigs I used just the VR09 plugged mono to a DI Box and going to the FOH, the Organ sounds sound great on sound check by it self or when played with few instruments. But on the gig with full band and specially vocals, the leslie sim that I like very much becomes phasey, the sound becomes artificially cleaner no overdrive, as if half the sound becomes lost on the way. The drawbar changes are no more subtle... stuff like that... what can be happening?

[Craig MacDonald]

To B3,

 

I noticed a similar thing last Saturday at my first rehearsal with the horn band I'm sitting in with for the Beaches Jazz Festival.. I didn't use my own amp (normally I use my own QSC K10's) and in this case I just went through a DI box into the monitors (along with vocals and horns).. My sound was lacking bottom, it was phasey sounding (like a bit of extra chorus on it).. I didn't pay much attention to it because it was just a rehearsal (otherwise I would have spent more time getting the right tone) but I wonder if this is a similar issue that you've experienced.. I don't recall any lack of Overdrive but I didn't use a lot in this band.

 

The first thing that comes to mind is to check the phase (in case the DI has reversed the phase of one side cancelling the bass)..?

 

I don't have any answers here (except maybe a phase issue).. but I'll monitor this more closely next time, if I experience the same problem. For the record, I'm going to use my own monitor (on low volume) so I have better control over what I'm hearing.

[To B3]

Gonna check this phase thing on the DI next time. Strange thing is, same thing happened when plugged straight to the main mixer... When playing alone, everything great... When the band kicked in, the sound sucked and turned into a wimpy mess, almost rompler-like.

[WesG]

Flipping the phase in the DI box shouldn't matter, unless your keyboard is connected to something *other* than the DI.

 

Maybe if your monitor was out of phase with the FOH or something, but that's incredibly unlikely to happen. Unless some of the gear is 25+-year-old JBL.