So back around 2005 I had a Roland V-Synth and the most fun I had with it was the Variphrase feature (the ability to independently alter time, pitch & formant of samples). Applied to vocals it was a totally unique experience.
Is there anything hiding in our Octatrack II that can replicate this level of sample control?
Thanks!
No.
Iāve got a VP-9000 and yeah, thereās nothing the OT (or any other sampler Iāve used in my life) can do that even comes close to the three or 4 things the VP-9000 does.
But on the other hand, the OT can do a few hundred things the VP canāt.
Your best bet (short of buying original hardware thatās not cheap like it was a few years ago) is probably to track down a copy of the Roland R-Mix software, use that for your Variphrase stuff, and then sample or load the results into the OT. Not ideal, but I think itās the only affordable way to get the actual Variphrase algorithms now. Iāve never actually used it myself, though, so I have no idea if itās any good or even if itās discontinued (I assume it is).
If you absolutely need a hardware option, the VariOS is the cheapest (but youāll still need a computer that can run the 20 year old software to actually program it, and even a VariOS is around $400 now, which is like double what the VP cost before people started to value gear from that era again.
Maybe the best option is to make a friend in Japan, because vintage gear is much cheaper on Yahoo Auctions Japan than anywhere else, but very few sellers will ship internationally so you need someone local to buy and test the stuff before shipping it to you. Depending on where you live, the shipping costs might offset the difference but the way global synth prices are right now maybe not. When I was shopping on there regularly for a little while in 2020 the stuff I saw was insane. Off the top of my head, some stuff I saw in just a couple weeks (the friend I had there moved before could get much) were $40 Akai S-1100, $1500 for two full racks of Roland System 100m modules, a Korg Mono/Poly that had fallen off of a stage and broken into to pieces for $1 (not a typo, it was actually a bit under a dollar and the same seller also had an even more broken SH-101 that was underneath it when it landed - both were unrepairable but had hundreds of dollars worth of salvageable rare parts inside, enough that even with nearly $200 shipping it would have been worth it for a professional tech). Iām sure itās higher now, like everywhere, but I jsut did a quick search and thereās a VP-9000 for $220 USD right now, which is pretty good compared to the $500-$1000 people ask on Reverb these days. If youāre looking for hardware and would rather deal with some hassle than spend North American/European prices, itās the way to go.
Almost everything designed to run at 100v will work just fine at 120v without modfication. Iāve been using the 100v Boss CE-300 rack chorus I bought on there for 80 bucks at 120v for maybe 5-10 hours a week for three years now and itās doing jsut fine (the power supply board inside is even marked 100v-240v, they just stenciled different voltages on the outside of the case depending on what region it was shipped to).
Not an OT, but the SP-404mkII uses variphrase for time and pitch now. Nice, modern, affordable way to get it in your setup.
Iāve unknowingly wanted a V-Synth ever since Daft Punk made Discovery.
I donāt get Roland. They make this amazing technology and then They just abandon it!
Why havenāt they made a modern VP-9000!?
Itās honestly mind boggling. Thereās nothing on the market till this day that handles time stretching like it doesā¦
Not same quality, but setting RATE to TSTR allows drastic timestretch (64 times slower iirc)
Couldnāt be happier that I decided to buy a V-Synth XT a couple of years back. The only thing that could threaten my NGNY2023 was if someone in Finland put their VP-9000 for sale. I would be doomed.
Oh, that rules! Misusing variphrase can get some really crazy sounds.
Is there any simple software (Iām sure CDP can do it) that can analyze an audio file and render the formant and non-formant components to two separate files? Some superficial Googling didnāt turn anything up.
If there is, you might be able to get some variphrase-like sounds in the OT by having the formants on a separate track so you could manipulate them independently. Even if it didnāt sound like variphrase it would probably sounds interesting.
21st century Roland is a mystery.
Thanks everyone. Iāve just spent a couple hours working with the OT and have been able to get pretty close to what I was doing with vocal samples on the V-synth. As sezare56 mentioned setting RATE to TSTR is an important step. After that Iām using the LFOās to modulate AMP-RATE & AMP-PITCH (along with a āneighborā machine with 3 LFOās modulating DELAY-TIME, DELAY-FDBK & DELAY-SEND) and am getting some wonderfully messed up and mangled random twisting and bending of the vocal sample. For my purposes, controlling the Formant would also be nice, but not nice enough to justify dropping $2000+ on a used V-Synth GT 
Iāve bought and sold many synths over the years since my first, an SCI Pro-One back in 1981 and there arenāt many I wish I had held onto, but the V-Synth is one. How was I to know Roland would completely turn their back on Variphrase? I did look at the SP-404 mkII but it didnāt float my boat. Maybe Behringer will make a knock off B-Synth with Baraphrase 
Result at 1m50ā¦
Itās not Variphrase and itās no longer cheap (all the Reverb listings are about 4x what it was when I got mine) but the Roland EF-303 has the original Boss VT-1 algorithms, and those let you pitch shift the formants independently from the main audio in real time. So thatās another option. The Roland VT-3 was a decent reissue from what I remember, too. The drummer in a friendās band had one and it was definitely in the ballpark of the old versions.
The thing with the EF-303, though, is full MIDI implementation, so you could sequence it from the Octatrack (or its own internal sequencer, which is what I do) and use it to do formant shifting on your cue outputs. Plus all of the other stuff it can do.
Excellent in a feedback loop, too.
Manā¦ 
So much (irrelevant) stories and walls of textā¦ fieeeuw
All you had to say was Serato Sample or Serato Pitch ān Time.
I used to love my VP9000 and V-Synth XT, I also had the VariOS rack unit which was pretty cool too. The new E-4 uses variphrase in a limited but still useful way, mainly suited as youād expect for vocals though, but I bet it can be repurposed for weird mangling too, albeit in a more limited way than the former.
Thanks OP. I was seriously considering putting my original V-Synth and two v-cards up for sale. This has snapped me out of it. Why Roland abandoned this technology is beyond me.
The V-Synth was pricey upon launch so it never had mass appeal. Roland, I think, has a habit of releasing killer bits of tech that are poorly timed in some regards. The MV-8000/8800 came out at the time and both were quite expensive to develop and purchase. The market for high end digital synths and samplers was shrinking at an alarming pace in that era so Iām not shocked they remained niche products.
I think as well it suffered from poor marketing, in that the demos released at the time didnāt really show the synth used for its intended purpose. Iām sure Iāve read posts by some of the original preset designers outlining their frustrations about this.
Which arenāt Variphrase?
There are tons of cheap and free formant pitch shifters that sound great, but Variphrase has a really unique sound to it when you push it outside of its intended use case.
I think part of it was also that the VP-9000 was something like $4000 on release, but they gave Daft Punk access to a prototype a year earlier and it was used for a lot, maybe all, of the vocals on Discovery (the stuff that people think is a vocoder or talkbox), and that was such a huge album that by the time it actually hit market it was already overused.