Roland has officially announced the AIRA VT-3 Voice Transformer – a new vocal effects processor.
With the VT-3 Voice Transformer, you can alter pitch and formant in real time to introduce heavily processed vocal sounds into your music. It also has the power to transform your voice into synthesizers, synth basses, hard-tuned and lo-fi sounds, and more. The VT-3 also offers built-in reverb, smooth wet/dry fader control, and instant bypass.
Vocal processing options include:
- Pop and electro sounds with two distinctive Auto-Pitch effects
- Create VP-330-style Vocoder sounds without the need for a keyboard
- Scatter function for glitchy effects that sound like something’s broken (in a good way)
- Loads of lo-fi character with Megaphone and Radio settings
- Synthetic sounding voices with the Robot button
- Synth, Lead, and Bass settings for synths you can sing
Features:
- Create heavily processed vocal sounds in real time
- Smooth control with dedicated Pitch and Formant sliders
- Large dedicated Reverb and Mix Balance sliders
- Save three favorite settings for instant recall
- Connect an optional footswitch for additional control in live performances
- Pure green LEDs and brightly lit controls for great visibility
- Lightweight and durable construction for easy portability
- Standard XLR/TRS combo jack (with phantom power) and 1/8-inch mic jack (with plug-in power)
- Stereo outputs can be configured as separate mono wet/dry channels
- Built-in USB audio interface with loopback recording to overdub vocals on existing tracks
- Powered by USB bus or included AC adapter
Pricing and Availability
The Roland AIRA VT-3 will ship before the end of Q2 2014 and will retail for a street price of $199. For additional information, see the Roland website.
This is the only product in the range that seems slightly interesting to me. Something I couldn’t do faster and simpler with some iPad app or a laptop with rebirth.
Will be awesome if it can send effected audio over USB into your DAW. Like a mono audio interface with built-in effects.
keep your brave old’ Boss VT1 …
I’m never getting rid of my VT-1, she’s a little scratched up these days but she’ll always be beautiful to me.
My VT-1 is doesn’t have a gender, which is the point of the VT-1…
No MIDI input, no carrier input.. so you need a computer to make it play any notes, and are stuck with the internal synth sounds. Next…
Instant Buy!
the more i look at this unit, the more i find myself justifying a purchase.
the default attitude is to be more worried and passionate about whether i should buy this product than try to make better music. its a good product, though.
just received it today. pretty disappointed though, ( why is it always too much Vs. nNO parameters with these machines (the latter in this case) )
The bad things:
the scatter is a joke: u have no control over the timing of thescatter it just does a steve aoki sidekick 🙂
@nd not so great thing:P please just give us the decay of the reverb to control, do u think we always wanna use a cathedral reverb .. seriously, or u guess we buy another reverb for aLL our other reverbs..
Anyway the reverb itself is really good quality and immediately fits in the mix perfect. Altough it is pretty quick on to wet, so the scaling of the reverb mix is pretty steep (read way too).
the good:
A Mix button (someting that other effects with vocoder or pitch correction lack)
both Autopitch are really good, one more harmonic than the other.
Thevocoder i expected a bit more from. but vocoders are very specific i guess.. so i can notsay before i actually found a nice vociepart to vocode on.
synth/lead/bass could have a decay parameter. Soundwise both synth and bass are very aggressive . the Lead is nice vintage thereminy style
the manual button does not make sense, since u can always manual adjust the parameters, so a 4th memory would have been much more handy.
the robot button i also dont get it adds a nice lower octave (or maybye even 2 octaves) and removes any pitch nice but so little hands on parameters a bit of a waste of ergonomics.
yeah.. its probably gonna be send back.. if they have just added one parameter per effect (INCLUDING the REVERB) it would have been gold. no its just bronze
The locked sample rate is somewhat disturbing….never had something with this limitations….something from XXI!
The very useful shift functions!
Sound
– Control PITCH and FORMANT using the faders
– Add REVERB with the reverb fader
– Hold BYPASS and turn the CHARACTER knob to set a noise gate
– Hold ROBOT and turn the CHARACTER knob to set a low cut filter
Characters
– Use the EFFECT fader to mix in the character
– Press ROBOT to lock the pitch to the pitch fader
– Scatter reacts to the speed and volume of the input
– Every character has an alternative mode
– Hold MANUAL and turn CHARACTER dial to access alternative mode
– Hold 1, 2, or 3 to save your sound
– Hold MANUAL to access 3 more slots
https://www.roland.com/global/support/knowledge_base/b387d1cd-3677-4e1b-b3f4-27f9ba2e4fad/
..o yes and the audio clocks at a 96000 rate (not changable) which is not so great i guess if u have a different soundcard for for instance output
Sorry but. It’s unusable live as when you turn up the effects the volume drops , it’s a real shame !
Totally agree with Andrew I thought there was something wrong with the one I got. the volume drops dramatically. I have to turn the gain up on my mixer to compensate.
This could have a MIDI out, at least one MIDI-out over USB, but it has NOT.
Another useless item, so useless, as lacking any possibility to edit anything, just as the user an3 reported.
The MIDI-OUT would have been stellar, use your voice to recognize “notes” and play any synthesizer you want with your voice, thats what I had expected here, but you can not, you can only use the internal NON-editable synthesizer.
VT-3 = not well thought out.