So, Had a chance to play with the new puppy last night.
First impressions:
Nice unit - aesthetically
Sturdy
Feels solid in the hand, controls feel good
Using the WAV recorder, didn't find the functionality very intuitive. I'm pretty computer/gadget savvy but trying to work out the functions and buttons without the manual was not as straightforward as I would have thought. No biggie. After a brief look at the manual all was good.
I was using an unusual test mic (from work) for recording.
AKG C747
http://www.akg.com/site/p...id,2,_language,EN.html I get the impression that this mic needs alot of juice, as I had to put the gain up quite high on the vs-100.
But saying that, the unit appears to be quiet. Looking forward to trying my CAD M179, AT 3035 and others
I've got to say (and even I am surprised to confirm this), the reverb sounds really good? I'm hoping the verb can be printed?
I am a person that always struggles to get the reverb right to my ears in a mix, but I really liked what I heard with the 'room' setting.
The compression I found a little strange to get working correctly, will spend some more time with this. As others have said, not have a gain reduction meter is a shame.
The EQ was certainly usable too. Only briefly tested.
Hooking up to Laptop:
I was using an old Powerbook Mac (PowerPC CPU) and got all drivers installed and upgraded firmware of unit.
I only have Reaper on that Laptop (not much else works) and I managed to get the vs-100 set up as a control surface and Audio unit with little fuss.
The control surface aspect worked ok-ish under Mackie mode. Basically the transport buttons worked, the fader and limited other buttons. trying to switch tracks with the 'Track' select buttons on the vs-100 wasn't working which perplexed me but after changing the control surface mode from 'Sonar' to 'Other' in the vs_100 options I could switch tracks and control the fader. The behaviour is odd though. moving along tracks keeps the previous track highlighted so, after doing so and then trying to say turn down the fader, both tracks are controlled.
Looking on the Reaper forums, it seems that this is an age old problem with the vs-100. Some lucky folks on Windows have a guy that has created his own curface layout but alas not for MAC.
At least I can click on the individual track and use the fader of vs-100.
However, I managed to get some multi-track recording as a test in reaper and all seems good. I can see how this would be a great little mobile recording setup.
Bearing in mind that I haven't even used this with my Sonar X1 rig yet. I imagine that to be a truly magical experience :)
It's a shame in some ways if I go with the vs-100 over my Firebox as I went to so much effort to ensure my Sonar rig was firewire perfect. Oh well. I was thinking that I could always use the FireBox for 2 more pre's for the vs-100 anyway.
A few thoughts/concerns with the vs-100:
I was hoping that in stand alone Wav recorder mode, the recorded files could be grouped together into a folder or (song) grouping in some way. I've noticed that by pressing, IIRC, the shift button, the text "no song" is displayed but I can see no option to create a song, nor is there any mention of it in the manual.
If true, this is disappointing. It means that any song specific files are just all over the place.
Nor can you rename files? It does clearly state that files in folders CANNOT be played back (hmm)
I feel that these are oversights by Cake/Roland.
I had a cool idea that although you can only playback one track whilst recording, you can at least record a guide scratch track of say guitar, and then play that file back whilst recording different parts one take at a time. Ending up with whole song.
Only prob is, if you come back to lay a track down for a sone previously recorded, the tracks get mixed up. Oh well. I guess you just copy them over to the Laptop, or write down the file names.
Once I have spent more time with it, I would like to come back and share with you how I have learnt to work with this machine. Perhaps we can all share our working methods and provide insight/work-arounds for each other to increase productivity/workflow.
All in all, excited about this unit. Time will tell if I return it or not.
Watch this space...