Kees van der Meij's homepage, VS1680 section

Roland VS-1680

This website originally was all about the Roland VS-1680 virtual studio, of which I own one. Since then it has been withdrawn from sale and has been superceded by a number of models with better specifications or lower prices. I'm still quite happy with mine though, and haven't ever had to use it's full capabilities, so I'll stick with it for now. As most if not all of the VS-1680 email lists are now defunct, I include what little information I have for those interested.

Some tips and information

I have installed a 10 Gb Toshiba MK1011GAV drive which is not on the Roland approved media list. Nevertheless it works fine, and installation took less than 10 minutes (Initialising took quite a bit longer, though!).
By the way, the maximum capacity a VS-1680 can use on any disk is 8 partitions of 2 Gbyte each, so that's 16 Gbyte per disk. However, you should be aware that diskdrive manufacturers are a bit more optimistic about their drive capacities than Roland, Microsoft and most other people, so on a drive advertised as 16 Gbyte you can fit only about 7½ partition (the last being only about 1 Gbyte). If you buy larger (i.e. 20 Gbyte), you'll just waste some capacity, but it should work fine.
Should you require even more, you need to use more disks, which will need to be external SCSI ones. The narrow SCSI-3 bus used by the VS-1680 can address 8 devices, but it's own SCSI controller will use one of those. So if you just want to use disks you can use seven, but only six if you still want to use a CD-R drive. This will still give you plenty track minutes...
I have converted the sticker with the button shortcuts to a PDF document. Right-click here and select "Save Target As..." to download it, it's only 38 kbyte.
For digital transfer from CD to the 1680 I've used a Sony Discman model D-E705, which is one of the few available (if not the only one) with an optical output. Drawback is that when it is stopped, the 1680 loses it's digital clock, so I have to put it in 'pause' mode, fix the input settings and then start recording.
For evaluation mixes I like to use a MiniDisc recorder.
I've demolished the CDR-II from it's fancy housing and mounted it in a plain 2-bay external housing I already had for an extra 6.4 Gb Quantum Fireball SCSI disk.

last update: December 8, 2003