This is gonna be an instabuy for me, been waiting for a preamp/vocal box and they fixed everything I didn’t like about the VT-3: smaller box, better looks, better interface, din midi input, TRS out, better algos. Just waiting on price.
Very rapid non-promo demo - lots of fx variety crammed into this thing.
Let‘s see how that goes. I really wanted to like thr VT3, but it just didn‘t deliver. Thanks for sharing!
Seems great!
Is it possible to fine edit the engines maybe with a computer editor, or is it only a preset box with very few editable parameters?
I have Izotope Vocal Synth 2 and i found myself frequently tweaking the Advanced parameters to match my song.
Watched the video. First half I was like “meh, big deal” then the midi keyboard came in and everything changed!
I looked at the VT3 some time ago and it was just missing some key stuff for me. If they keep this at a not too dissimilar to VT3 price point then will be keeping an eye on this one!
Want!
Oh hells yes.
I’m imagining picking one of these up and flexing on the other dudes in my band, one of whom insisted on running his vocals through terrible pedals into his guitar amp…
I am impressed by the new Roland. They really seem to be interested in designing interfaces with a high level of direct manipulation that are deeply useful for live performance. Good stuff.
Yeah, I mean I think that was the original stated aim of the whole Aira line. But the more recent products seem to have refined that concept a bit. I think they realised they left a bit too much out of some of the first products, feature-wise.
There’s a really fuckin dumb discussion on reddit right now full of people who can’t hear that the snare in this tune falls on beats 2 and 4. The artist herself even showed up and told them so, and one guy is still arguing. Oof
That’s hilarious.
It must be really hard for the poor dude to accept that she can both sing and play the drums way better than he ever will… 
Haha I love it when folk make complete tits of themselves like that. Pure cringe.
I had the Roland VT-4 for about a week and decided to send it back. Playing the robot voice with an external keyboard was fun, but I found the vocoder voices to be pretty unusable. Worst of all, you can’t control the amount of distortion, robot or vocoder separately. Their volumes are all on the same fader, the delay/reverb has its own fader. However, none of the robot, distortion, vocoder and effect are editable. The delays sync to midi clock, but you can’t set up at what intervals. Autotune works fine. All in all I’m disappointed.
Edit: bought the vt-4 again just for playing the robot voice with an external keyboard.
Actually the VT-4 has an extensive MIDI implementation (via System Exclusive MIDI messages, though) and all its functions can be edited via MIDI.
Using MIDI you can create very different patches, ranging from natural (little autotune/EQ/Reverb) to classic-electronic (different tastes of vocoder/robot/talkbox harmonies) to extreme and out of control (feedback, synthetic sounds, glitches). It is much more flexible than you would think of from a first sight. Much wider range of effects than the VT-3 (which was only preset-based, MIDI only via USB and limited to a few MIDI CC’s only).
My guess is that Roland decided to get the price down and limit the interface to only a few knobs, so many features have gone in the background (only partially available through preset “variations” and of course MIDI). The alternative would have been a much more expensive box I suppose. The negative aspect is that unless you dig the MIDI side of things (and know how to handle MIDI System Exclusive requests and data transfer) you cannot get these sounds out of the box, which is a pity.
Gr J74/Fab
Here a list of parameters which are available under the hood via System Exclusive MIDI (there is no shortcut or access to these via the unit unfortunately).
See here for the MIDI specs:
Thanks for posting the additional information on the midi implementation of the vt-4. If these parameters could all be controlled via midi cc I would have never returned this machine. Especially in combination with the digitakt, this could have been a very powerful box. I don’t have a lot of experience with sysex though and it seems like it would be very complicated to change things up.
I have to admit that I quite miss the feature to transpose my vocals with the robot voice and a midi keyboard. Does anybody know if there is a vst or another fx box that can do that?
Looking at the implementation it seems like it’s controlled exclusively via sysex. Could someone try firing some CCs at it anyway just to see what happens?
I did quite some testing on it based on the MIDI documentation.
Roland has published the MIDI implementation here:
https://www.roland.com/us/support/by_product/vt-4/owners_manuals/
The rest is only via MIDI SysEx.
PS: I have a prototype working for the Vocoder part in Max for Live / Ableton Live and it works well. I can change the type of Vocoder and I am able to modify (0…255) the Release, Tone, Colour and Level (of the internal synth carrier).
Thanks! Enough to do some damage, I guess. Shame the pitch slider isn’t on there though.