XILS-lab has released XILS V+, a faithful emulation of the Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus.

Here’s what they have to say about XILS V+:

The Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus is also musically immortalized on celluloid thanks to Greek synth wizard Vangelis’ memorable early-Eighties electronic scores to the Oscar-winning Chariots Of Fire and Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film noir classic, Bladerunner, both of which made much use of the instrument’s signature Strings – ’emulating’ the sustained portion of orchestral strings – and Human Voice Ensemble ‘choir’ – remarkable and unique – sounds.

Fnding a fully-functional, pristine example of this 30-plus-year-old temperamental hardware has become nigh on impossible. Which is exactly where XILS V+ comes into play, of course, thanks to XILS-lab’s labours.

Here’s a demo comparing the XILS V+ Strings to the original Vocoder Plus:

This video compares the vocal sounds of the V+ to the original:

Like the original Vocoder Plus, XILS V+ features a 10-band VOCODER, Top Octave Divider-based STRINGS and HUMAN VOICES – or, indeed, sophisticated layering of any these three elements. It captures the Vocoder Plus Top Octave Divider oscillator’s unique sound (that no sampling technology or other simple synthesis techniques can reproduce); the ensemble (chorus) circuitry, featuring a compander and no less than four bucket brigade delays; the voice and vocoder ‘vibratos’ (based on two more bucket brigade delays); the 14 filters involved in producing that heavenly Human Voice Ensemble sound; the three filters used for the Strings section; the 40 ‘vocoder’ filters; and sophisticated Attack, Release, and Glide circuitry.

Visually, the main control panel section above the keyboard mirrors that found on its hardware predecessor.

Four additional panels boasting advanced settings: Mixer/ARP allows users to fine-tune the internal sound generators – from adjusting the relative level of the Male 8 and ML/FM 4 Human Voices to tweaking voice formants, the Top Octave Divider waveform, as well as the Strings filter shape – while a built-in arpeggiator is also provided; Vocoder allows users to adjust the analogue-like Pitch Tracking, the ATT (attack) and REL (release) of the ANALYZE algorithm, as well as FILTERS parameters; Effects provides three built-in effects (STEREO SPACE, based on XILS-lab’s Stereo Dynamic Engine; a simple, but efficient REVERB; and an analogue-like resonant PHASER); and Modulations with over 14 sources and 24 destinations.

XILS V+ is available to purchase as an eLicenser or iLok copy-protected virtual instrument and effects plug-in for 99.00 EUR/$128.00 USD until June 30 from the XILS-lab web store.(Thereafter its MRSP will rise to 149.00 EUR/$194.00 USD.)