I'm a songwriting planning to publishing my songs. For long time I was doing a research to select between PC-Based recording system and Stand Alone machines, I finally decided for the PC-Based way. Recently I found the " Roland Studio Pack" wich comes with the VM-3100Pro mixer, a PCI audio card (RPC-1), cables (R-Bus) and the Emagic Software. In order to select the best one, Does anybody have experience dealing with this gear? I want to recieve advices about it.
I have the mixer but not the studio pack which comes with the computer interface and software. The quality of the effects alone justify the cost (if you can still get it for $389 at zzounds.com) I am still toying with it to explore its features and possbilities. One frustrating thing about it is Roland's manual is pretty shite, though not as bad as their usual attempts. I am kicking myself in the arse now for not thinking ahead and buying a gina instead of my darla so I could go digital in and out of my computer. Another good place to go for opinions about this set up would be vs planet though watch out for their crazy cast of characters they starting posting here en-mass when their site was down and acted like they owned the planet
Thanks very much for your info. Let me ask an other questions: Can the VM-3100Pro support other software than Emagic, the one that come with it? Like pro-tools, sonar etc...?
Is the VM-3100Pro a reliable and professional solution to publishing songs?
The VM pro with comes with rolands RPC-1 PCI interface. Roland teamed up with Maudio to develope this card. The interface allows you to sync with a special version of Logic audio. As far as compatability with other programs goes I would assume you could atleast get sounds, effects, etc into your computer from the mixer but using the VM as a control surface? I doubt it. But their is another way to achieve this if you have a midi interface and a program (such as logic, fruityloops, cubase) that allows you to assign their parameters to midi controls then you can connect your VM via midi to your computer and walla no more mixin with the mouse.
Since I don't have the RPC-1 I need to go through my sound card in order to get what comes out of my mixer into my computer. If you can find a cheap spdif interface it my behoove you to just opt for the roland vm instead of the studio pack (if they are still selling it for $389 at zzounds ) Then you can go from your mixer right into the spdif of your sound card. One note on this is make sure that your soundcard accepts sample rates of 44kHz as the vm is permantly set to this rate.
I think that the VM is a great hands on way of getting prosumer sounding results.
