Roland VB-99 Modeling bass processor Review

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http://www.performing-musician.com/pm/jan10/articles/rolandvb99.htm

Roland VB-99 Modeling bass processor
Published in PM January 2010

Review by Phil Ward

2007 saw the launch of the groundbreaking VG-99 guitar processor, and now Roland's COSM technology has found its way into an instrument, amp and effects modeller for bassists.

It's actually difficult to know where to start with the VB-99, in terms either of writing a review or using it in music performance or recording. It is such a fully featured and capable product, with so many different facets, that if you find yourself owning and using one in anger, I suspect it will be quite a while before you are fully exploiting its potential. Similarly, trying to describe it completely in a couple of thousand words is a big ask. What I'll try to do in the following paragraphs, however, is to describe a good dose of the flavour, potential and performance of the VB-99. I resolved to cogitate on this for a while so I turned to the user manual fully expecting to find a description of how to get the VB-99 to make a cup of coffee. But after fruitlessly leafing through the pages, I was forced to concede that making coffee is one thing not within the capabilities of the VB-99. At least it's a feature I won't have to write about. So admitting defeat I made my own coffee (maybe something stronger would have been an idea) and got stuck in.
The VB-99 is primarily designed for live performance, but its capabilities potentially make it a useful addition to a bass player's recording arsenal too. Conceptually, it can be seen as a parallel pair of instrument modelling processors, a parallel pair of amplifier modelling processors, a single conventional stereo effects processor and a bass-to-MIDI interface. To reach its full potential, the VB-99 must be used either with an instrument fitted with a 13-pin output socket that provides independent signal feeds for each string, or fitted with one of Roland's add-on divided pickups, which do much the same thing (Graphtech and RMC also manufacture suitable pickups). The amplifier modelling, conventional effects processor and bass/MIDI interface elements can be employed with traditional instruments, and while the first two work well, generating viable MIDI data from any low-register stringed instrument is, shall we say, challenging. More about bass-to-MIDI later.
The VB-99 modelling processors employ Roland's proprietary COSM (Composite Object Sound Modelling) technology. COSM takes the pitch, amplitude and dynamics of the input signal and, drawing on a stored library of predefined parameters, morphs the sound in real time to take on an alternative identity; anything from the relatively subtle, such as the characteristics of a classic instrument or amplifier, to the radical transformation of the sound into a completely different instrument — real or imagined.
Construction

Real-time control of the VB-99's parameters comes courtesy of the six rotary encoders, and the freely assignable ribbon and optical D-Beam controllers.
The first thing that strikes about the VB-99 is that it feels reassuringly solid, with not the slightest hint of creaking plastics or wobbling knobs. The VB-99 is not an inexpensive item and some of the pennies have clearly been spent on build quality. I'd have few worries about its survival when thrown into a bag at the end of a gig. Its solid feel is a good start and one that generates confidence. The second thing that strikes is just how many knobs, buttons and connection sockets populate its just larger than A4-sized top surface and long, slim rear panel. The top panel also carries a 13-pin input socket for appropriately equipped bass guitars, a generously sized display, a ribbon controller that enables manual performance manipulation of assignable parameters, and a D-Beam controller that offers yet further performance possibilities. I'll come back to the D-Beam and ribbon controllers later on. The VB-99's sounds are saved in 400 preset locations. 200 of these are un-editable factory presets, and 200 are editable versions of the factory presets. The factory presets are divided up into categories such as Acoustic Bass, Electric Bass or Synth, and offer enormous variety — from, say, a simple Precision bass plus Ampeg amplifier emulation to some pretty wild bass-synth sounds.
Around the back of the VB-99, looking left to right, the connection sockets begin with unbalanced jack instrument input and output sockets, a left and right pair of balanced subwoofer outputs, left (mono) and right unbalanced outputs, a headphone socket, and a coaxial S/PDIF digital output. These are followed by two jack footswitch sockets, a USB socket, an interface socket for the matching Roland FC-300 foot controller, MIDI in and out sockets, and finally a power input socket. On the underside of the VB-99 are location points for the optional stand attachment hardware.
Plugging in

A recessed back panel houses all of the unit's input and output connections, which include a USB port for direct MIDI connection or editing patches via a computer.
Despite the healthy population of knobs and buttons on the top panel, most of which demand a quick visit to the user manual to uncover their function, getting started with the VB-99 is relatively straightforward. I had access to the 13-pin-output-equipped Godin A5 SA bass (reviewed in the December 2009 issue of PM), so I'll begin to describe the use of the VB-99 with that instrument. First things first, however. A 13-pin lead is supplied to connect the bass to the input socket on the top panel of the VB-99, and its five-metre length seems a little meagre to me for live performance. On anything other than a small stage, just five metres means that the VB-99 will almost certainly need to be located somewhere near the front rather than at the back of the stage.
As well as feeding the VB-99 with the discrete string output signals, on the A5 SA the 13-pin cable also feeds a conventional 'composite' bass signal, which can be split directly from the VB-99's rear-panel Bass Out socket, or mixed in with the processed sound.
With a 13-pin instrument connected to the input and an amplifier connected to the output, getting sound from the VB-99 is a simple matter of switching on and playing. The VB-99 starts up with user preset 1, or the last preset used, automatically selected so that the fun starts immediately. Or, rather, almost immediately. I found that the Godin output levels were far too high for the VB-99, and I had to dive into the System Setup menu pages to reduce the input sensitivity and stop the decidedly nasty digital clipping distortion that arose with all but the lightest of playing. Once the sensitivity was down to a level I felt would handle vigorous playing, however, hiss began to become audible. The hiss wouldn't be a problem for live performance use, but for recording it could become an issue.
Performance
As ever with factory presets, not all the VB-99 presets are entirely successful, but many of them are, and they provide an enormous number of musically valid options. All this before you've even started to tweak the sounds to make them your own, and the detail of tweaking is remarkable. In the VB-99 Acoustic Bass category, for example, adjustable parameters include body resonance, body size and buzz sensitivity. Each 'classic' model in the Electric Bass category has adjustable parameters based on the control that would be found on the actual instrument — although of course you can add some more.
In the Synth category there are upwards of 20 parameters adjustable for each class of synth. In addition to all this, there's the conventional effects module that offers compression, EQ, delay and reverb parameters, which can be linked to each preset. And when you've adjusted the parameters and found sounds that you like, there's nothing to stop you, say, applying them independently to pairs of strings on the instrument. So you can have, perhaps, a double bass on the E and A, and a singing lead-synth-inspired fretless electric bass on the D and G. I hesitate to write that, "the possibilities are, quite literally, endless", because it's a tired old cliché, but in this case it may well be true.
And there's more. Along with having, it seems, almost any sound you like from a bass guitar, you can also use the VB-99's performance controls to add some character to the sound in real time. Run a finger along the ribbon controller and you can bend the pitch of a note or sweep a synth filter frequency. Similarly, move your hand, or maybe the neck of the guitar, up and down in the zone of the D-Beam, and pitch or filter adjustment is again at your mercy. And it probably won't surprise you to learn that parameters other than pitch or filter frequency can be assigned to the ribbon and D-Beam controllers.
I had half expected the VB-99 to show some of the tracking, latency and note definition issues that have bedevilled previous attempts at this kind of bass-synthesis hardware. Technology, it seems, has moved on, because with the proviso that you play in a style that suites the selected sound, and that you play accurately, the ability of the VB-99 COSM processing to track what you play near instantaneously and faultlessly is impressive. Try playing a fast acid-jazz figure with a delay-saturated synth pad and the VB-99 won't keep up with you, but then, that's not really the fault of the hardware. It's the fault of the player. But play sounds in an appropriate musical context, and tracking or latency are simply not an issue.
Tracking and latency is an issue with the VB-99's bass-to-MIDI function, however. Bass-to-MIDI attempts to take conventional or 13-pin instrument signals and turn them into MIDI data to drive an external synth. To begin with, playing my Steinberger electric upright bass and having a piano sound forth from the speakers was uncanny and entertaining, but uncanny and entertaining does not necessarily make music. In my view, the latency and tracking issues really render the bass-to-MIDI function more of a curiosity than a viable musical technique. As expected, latency was lower using MIDI connected to a hardware synth than it was using USB connected via a Mac to a software synth (within Pro Tools), and tracking was better using the 13-pin Godin than with a conventional bass, but I never felt I was able to adjust the VB-99 bass-to-MIDI settings to the point where the guitar became a genuinely viable MIDI controller. I'm sure there'll be the odd occasion when a VB-99 will be used for bass-to-MIDI, but the occasions will be few and far between, and on each one, I suspect, whatever it is that was done, it would have been done more easily and more quickly using a keyboard.
Perfect partner?
Along with the VB-99 supplied for review, Roland also sent its partner FC-300 foot controller. The FC-300 appears to be built even more sturdily than the VB-99, which I suppose is understandable as it's intended to spend its life being trodden on. The VB-99 and FC-300 communicate via a proprietary Roland interface standard called RRC2. This enables the FC-300 to control VB-99 preset selection and a variety of COSM amp and effect settings. It can also display the currently selected preset, and can duplicate the VB-99's tuner screen. In theory, of course, pairing the VB-99 with an FC-300 will potentially enable far slicker use of the VB-99's capabilities in performance, however it is very much an optional extra reserved for the serious VB-99 junkie. The real star here is the VB-99 itself
I was hugely impressed by the VB-99 and will regret seeing it trundle off in the back of a van. It's an expensive route to new bass sounds in live performance, and if you don't have a 13-pin-output instrument then there are far more cost-effective options for amp simulation and conventional effects. But with a properly equipped 13-pin instrument, I don't believe there is anything else quite like it.  0

Published in PM January 2010


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Side by Side: Roland VB-99 and GR-33B Bass Synthesizers ( by Wayne Joness)


Mention the words "synth guitar" and the mind conjures up images of '80s techno bands and a George Jetson-inspired future that never quite arrived. But mention "synth bass," and that's another thing entirely. There is nothing second rate or cheesy about a solid, voltage-controlled oscillator-driven bass track. So why have bass players let keyboardists take the bottom end in so many top hits?


In the early 1980s, after the success of the GR-300 guitar synthesizer, the Roland Corporation followed up with a lesser-known bass version, the GR-33B. The GR-33B addressed some of the shortcomings of the GR-300: it had an envelope generator with two presets, each with attack and decay controls. The filter on the GR-33B could be switched from the more dramatic –24 dB per octave sound associated with the Moog and Arp synths, to the softer –12 dB per octave sound of Oberheim synthesizers. The GR-33B envelopes could also be assigned to a voltage-controlled amplifier. And the GR-33B added something new to the LFO circuit: a nifty lag generator that could swell the vibrato in after a variable delay.

Like the GR-300, the GR-33B had excellent tracking, and the sawtooth waveform at the heart of its sound was satisfyingly aggressive. But the GR-33B never became the sound of "synth bass." And the GR-33B only worked with two basses: the Roland G-33 and G-88. Both were reminiscent of a P-bass, and very similar to the Ibanez MC-800. This is not surprising, since all these basses were reportedly built in the popular Japanese Fuji Gen Gakki guitar factory.

Perhaps it was the limited bass selection, high cost, or the popularity of the ubiquitous Minimoog, but bass players continued to play second bass fiddle, as it were, to keyboard players, despite efforts by Roland, Peavey, Electro-Harmonix and others to update four string technology.

GR-33B Revived Via VB-99
Undaunted, Roland recently launched its latest bass synthesizer, the VB-99. Like the VG-99, the VB-99 is an updated version of an earlier system, in this case the Roland V-Bass. Modern Roland technology uses the GK-3B bass pickup, which easily fits to a variety of bass guitars, or third party piezo systems found in basses made by Brian Moore, Godin Guitars and others.


Like the VG-99, the VB-99 has an emulation of vintage Roland GR synth technology. But if bass players were expecting to find a clone of the GR-33B under the hood, they will instead find the same virtual GR-300 as found in the VG-99, only working in the bass register.

This might be disappointing for bass players who were looking for an exact clone of the only polyphonic analog synthesizer made just for them. On the other hand, when I compared the tracking and response time of the VB-99's virtual GR-300 with the original GR-33B, the two synths were almost identical, with a response time in the 14-18 millisecond range. This surprised me, since the real GR-300 slightly outperformed the virtual GR-300 in the VG-99. This may have something to do with the qualities of tracking low frequencies, or perhaps the VB-99 has a slightly faster processor than the VG-99. And the VB-99 is even faster when emulating acoustic or electric bass sounds. In any case, the VB-99 certainly packs many buzzy, snarling synth bass sounds in its preset menu. And the flavor of its vintage GR-inspired synth engine matches the general sound of the GR-33B.

VB-99


If you are a bass player who feels that people are just not paying enough attention to your musical brilliance, the VB-99 will certainly help you cut through the mix. And the VB-99 actually lets you layer three bass sounds together! Whereas the previous V-Bass had one sound, the VB-99 has two independent synth engines, plus a "Bass Direct" switch that adds the regular output of your bass to the blend. This is a great idea, and recognition of the performance difference between guitar and bass guitar. The Roland VG-99 guitar synth has almost no factory patches that use the regular output of the guitar, while the VB-99 has a switch to punch the direct bass sound right in the mix.

In fact, some of the best patches of the VB-99 work so well because they blend together two different bass sounds. Typically using one synth engine for a traditional warm, fat, low end sound, and the other engine for a bright synth element, or an octave shift effect that brings out clarity. And the VB-99 has dynamics capability to cross fade, or layer sounds, depending on how hard the notes are played.

For a test bass I bought a red Squier P-bass off of eBay for less than the cost of the GK-3B pickup, thinking I would need to drill some holes to get everything fitted. The GK-3B offers several ways to mount to a bass, and I was able to properly secure the whole rig with one strip of double-sided tape for the pickup element and a simple pressure adjustment to hold the GK-3B electronics module in place.

Broadly speaking, the bass sounds of the VB-99 fall into three categories: synth bass, electric bass, and upright bass. And the banks are laid out so that five similar sounds are grouped together. Using the VB-99 with the optional FC-300, you can step through banks until you reach say, acoustic basses, and then you have five or ten variations on that particular theme. And this is handy on the gig, when inadvertently going from "Warm Wood Bass" to "Pulse Dual Attack" could cause serious problems.



VB-99 Testing the Patches
To evaluate using the VB-99 live, I recruited bassist Mark Harris, who does a wide-range of gigging in Los Angeles, and well as international touring with the band Venice. Initially, we checked out the VB-99 in a studio situation, and there was certainly quite a bit of "wow" factor. Mark immediately remarked that the tracking was excellent, but the VB-99 is more of an extreme signal processor, and does some heavy-duty DSP work on the raw string sound from the bass, rather than simply tracking the pitch of a note and triggering a sound.

We listened as the VB-99 reproduced a range of sounds from upright acoustic bass tones to grungy, prog-rock Rickenbacker bass, to over-the-top saturated lead guitar. Like all synthesizers, whether bass, guitar, or keyboard, part of the secret to success is knowing how to play to the sound. It may be novel to play a bass line from a Ramones tune with an upright bass patch, as I did, but if you want to convince somebody you have an acoustic bass, a walking bass line works much better.

On the gig the VB-99 was slightly less distinct. In this case, "the gig" was a noisy bar situation, always a place without much subtlety. We realized that maximizing the potential of the VB-99 might require something beyond a typical bass amp. A lot of the detail in the sound that was so obvious through studio monitors was lost with a bass amp. The VB-99 does have global settings that include line output, and amp output with and without a tweeter. But using a full-range system with little coloration, like a keyboard amp, seems to yield the best results.

To VB-99 or not to VB-99
Unlike guitar players with their vast expanse of floor adornments, bass players seem to do fine with (maybe) one pedal and a decent amp. In that case, it may be hard to justify the expense of a rig like the VB-99 and GK-3B. Not that justification has anything to do with buying cool new gear. But for the bass player in a demanding cover band situation, the VB-99 could easily be a lifesaver. Rather than a rack of basses, a player could focus on one or two premium instruments and use the VB-99 to recreate the necessary tones. And the VB-99 does more than just turn a Squier P-bass into a Les Paul, it also simulates a wide variety of amps, cabinets, mic'ing configurations, and just about every Boss effect ever made. Plus reverb and delay. Did I mention the unit has pitch-to-MIDI output as well?

Mostly, the VB-99 is still all about potential. While it's certainly very cool to instantly switch from Music Man, to Upright, to SH-101 synth bass, the VB-99 easily suggests new techniques and approaches. I would love to see a solo bass set using only the VB-99 and a looper. After all, it only takes one imaginative player to write a killer riff with the VB-99 to change the way people think about "synth bass."