the 1680 and why i cant get a date>>>

[reco]

UH never miond that date part...
hey im thinking about buying a vs-1680 my question is: can i get away with not useing rolands vs fx expantion boards? i want to just use a couple of fx processors a compressor and some other thing is it gona have a bad effect on the sound? also i want to use a digital mixer with the 1680 it has light pipe in/out on it, but if i want to add a second vs-1680 to my setup for more tracks do i need the light pipe i/o to do it or the coax i/o? and can i use both the 1680's and the mixer together?
thanks i know i ask alot of questions.
oh by the way who makes the third party software to control vs systems? ive heard cakewalk is the maker?

[This message has been edited by reco (edited 08-18-1999).]

[Jon X]

I can answer of couple of these questions, I think.

The Roland FX boards are more for convenience and provide a great option for people who already don't have outboard gear for effects. You should be able to use whatever effetcs you want and not degrade the sound quality. I only have the 880, but I would recommend the effects board for either the 880 or 1680. It's a good option, and not that expensive.

As for the digital mixer question, I know the 880 only has the coax digital I/O, and it is supposed to work connected to another 880 (or a 1680), so I would think you could conenct two 1680s via the coax. I'm not sure about using the mixer and two 1680 all hooked together.

There are several options (or soon will be) for software to control the VS workstations. Datasonics makes something called VS Studio Pro that looks cool. It's around $400 I beleive, and controls the 880 via MIDI connection. It's supposed to do lots of stuff, including all the transport controls, audio editing such as copy/paste, and they even have an add in that will print notation. The website is www.datasonics.com.au.

Another soon to be software option is the Logic VS stuff from Emagic (www.emagic.de). It's a scaled down version of their low end software made for the VS workstations. I don't think it will do everything that the VS Pro software does, but if it does what you need it's only $20 for existing Roland VS owners, and should come FREE when you buy a new 840/880/1680. It has been delayed several months already, but is supposed to be out end of August. I'll get it when it comes out even though I plan to try the Datasonics software too. It's worth $20 just to see how it works. Logiv VS will also require only a MIDI connection to operate.

Cakewalk does have an interesting thing that gives VS control from the computer using a console that looks like the VS workstation. I'm not sure how this works exactly, I'm guessing you only need a MIDI connection, and I haven't heard from anyone with a VS workstation and Cakewalk that could use this feature, so I have no idea how well it works.

I'm sure there are tons of other software options out there, and currently I just use sound forge to record a wav file from the 880 via a SB Live card. Then I can edit the wav file with whatever software I want. Only problem is that this eats up the PC hard drive space like crazy. 14 GB disappeared in about 6 months. Both the Logic VS and the VS Studio Pro leave the wav files on the 880, and don't copy them to the PC. This should save tons of PC disk space.