Roland VP-03 Vocoder In Depth Review

This video, via Kosmic, takes an in-depth look at the new Roland VP-03 Vocoder.

The new VP-03 ($349) takes cues from the classic VP-330 Vocoder Plus, using ACB tech to emulate the original’s fusion of synthesized sound and the human voice.

The VP-03 has vocoder, human voice, and string sound sources on board. It also includes a gooseneck XLR microphone, and can be paired with the optional K-25m Keyboard Unit.

See the Roland site for details.

12 thoughts on “Roland VP-03 Vocoder In Depth Review

  1. A vocoder is pretty hard to demonstrate if you can’t play like this guy.
    Shame, I really want to hear some funky lines.
    The ADSR video was useless too.

  2. For the price of this cereal box synth, you can get a microkorg off of craigslist and a used kaossilator pro for this price, and achieve 10x what this one unit will do. Congratulations Roland! Korg has whooped yer butt 10 times over. Lame Lame Lame. My old outdated microkorg trumps this crap by a million miles. The strings, human voice and vocoder on the microkorg all sound better than this.

    1. Except the Microkorg is a good but limited synthesizer with a built in BAD vocoder. This seems to be a good vocoder with a built in limited synthesizer. Good synthesizers are easy to find. Good vocoders are not as readily available.

  3. This piece has a lot of potential, and I’d like to try one my self. I am a little bummed though that the only input is an xlr. It would be cool if it was an xlr/trs combo, so that a drum machine could be used as the carrier without a clunky adapter

    1. I hear ya; a 1/4″ instrument input would’ve been nice. You could get an XLR/TS cable if you want to avoid the clunkiness of an adapter.

  4. I own a VP-03 and trust me it sounds amazing. This poorly produced video does not do it justice. The vocoder sounds great if you turn off it’s ensemble and adjust the formant to your own voice, which this guy didn’t bother to do. And the strings are very close to the original, about 90% there IMHO.

    The voice section sounds a little bit thin to me but when you record each voice note of a chord separately and pan them to different positions in the stereo field it sounds HUGE! For the price this tiny synth is a bargain.

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