36 thoughts on “Roland VT-3 Vocal Transformer (NAMM Leak)”

1. First!

   1. C’mon ,jealous?

2. “Effects unit intended for the human voice”
   Damn, I was all set to buy this for my dog till I read that part!

   1. it has “Humanizer” so may be it is somehow suitable for the dog

      1. “Arff she said”

3. Not *this* I’m definitely interested to check out. Their vocoder way back in the early ’90s on my Boss SE-70 effects unit was bad-ass and still sounds great.

4. Meh, it’s not analog, pass.

   /s

5. Yeah if it reaches Aussie shores for under $250 it’ll be mine!

6. Horrible design

   1. Any resemble with Yamaha’s CS01 will be pure coincidence

   2. Agree. It looks so ordinary

7. Roland have cracked it with the simple design, No complicated menus here.
   Well doenm Roland and this is a bit of kit much needed ( I have three vocoders all crap to use!!!)

   1. Looks like the design is heavily influenced by the old Boss VT-1.

   2. I’m curious which ones you’ve had experience with? I’ve tried the TC Electronics & EHX stuff & they both dramatically differed in their approach. (Super-digital to uncontrollably analog)

      1. funkilepsy: One thing I’ve learned about vocoders is that price doesn’t always equal quality… The vocoder on my Korg MS-2000b keyboard is amazing, while the one on my Virus TI2 is only OK. The Novation supernova wasn’t my cup of tea, while (strangely enough) the one on the old Korg Triton workstations was great… The Alesis micron/Akai miniak (same synth) were underwhelming… the doepfer modular vocoding stuff is exhaustive and can do almost anything you would want it to at a relatively high price tho….The one in reason is actually very good if you are a software guy.

         Things to take note of: # of frequency bands does not always equal legible speech. Also, I rarely use vocoders, so I may not be the best guy to ask on this one…

         1. sorry, I was wondering which ‘crap’ vocoders Brandon had used. I was actually curious about standalone units too. I have a few vocoders as additional fx on other units, but they all seem like an afterthought

            1. …but I’d be curious to try out the doepfer modulating vocoder if someone is foolish, I mean nice enough to sell one to Switched on here in Austin.

            2. Funkilepsy,
               powertran vocoder,(the name sounds better then what comes out of it)
               Novation Ks rack vocoder
               Roland Jp 8080.
               Boss Se 50.
               Various talk boxes.
               How is that ? , The real time control is what interests me.

8. My experience:
   Novation mininova – Superb
   Electrix vocoder – Sweet
   Vocoder in zooms rfx200 is surprisingly good
   Alesis Metavox – Different (in a good way)

   I hope this version of the VT come to the light with midi implementation

   thoughts?

   1. I can attest to the quality of the vocoders on the Novations. Really good, as is the one on my KingKorg.

9. This bad boy will sit on the other side of my (mint) SH-201.

   1. dude,sh 201 is the worst synth there is on this planet.
      Dump that synth and buy even whatever synth,it will always be a better synth than that toy.

      1. Nothing even comes close.

10. So boring, all presets. There are not enough editing possibilities, accessible parameters to play with, and so it’s a 9-preset effects box. These will become boring in no time, as we’ll hear them everywhere. Even the dreaded Autotune, for e.g., is way more versatile, no?

11. along with the Aira, it displays what may be a farly likeable green/black color theme.

    1. yes…classix design….I like it too….

12. I guess we’ll have to wait for a price point to be critical of it. I was really hoping this would be a bit more robust with features and more customizable. On the upside, it looks very portable. Hopefully it sounds good and has a mildly low price point considering what appears to be a small feature set.

    1. Thank you! Finally! Something positive!

13. Who gives a rat’s ass about how it looks? This is music, people. If this shit sounds good and makes people happy then the sound is all that should matter.

14. No way this thing will be rad, it’s just an update of the BOSS (Roland) VT-1, which had even less controls and options, and is very much a sought after effect. As I’ve said before you can hear that thing all over old Knife records etc, as well as being modified and used to conceal you real voice on telephones. Besides, vocoder editing comes mostly from the editing of the source sound.

15. http://c1.zzounds.com/media/quality,85/VT-1-4af333526bf6728ed050a87a0395b40a.jpg

16. Not a fan of the green… But hey, if it sounds nice I’ll jump on it.

17. fingers crossed for and sp-505 redux with a more detail wave editor in this range

18. In Reason there is an effect unit called Neptune! i absolutely love the voice synth option on it, maybe this one will have an awesome one too. i really like the concept of this product! … i would use it!

19. I’ve still got my vt-1, never realized its what the knife used. It’s not a particularly musical or high end thing but it has its own character which is occasionally useful or more often, funny. If this is in the same vein and sub 200 bucks it could be fun. More than that and I’d use a computer or something made by eventide.

20. The VT-1 is superb for what it is. Star Wars robot, kid voice, female voice (gender changer) and other wacky stuff – too much fun. The ultimate prank call device I could have used as a kid. Hopefully this new one will improve on that quality as well as the extra features at a good price point. The TC-Helicon Voicelive 2 or (higher) is currently the one to beat, but it costs way more.