Roland VS1680 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Your VS-1680 has 16 tracks for recording and playing back. Each of these tracks has an additional 15 tracks which can contain recorded sound. You can specify which V-tracks will be used during playback which means you can have up to 16 different takes per track. Later you can choose your best take and use it for playback. You can also combine pieces of different takes into one composite track!

Music recorded on a hard disk can be recalled and played back immediately, no matter where it is located on the disk. This allows instant access to any place in a song with just a touch of a button. No longer will you have to wait to rewind or fast forward.

On an analog recorder you need to erase a previously made recording in order to modify it. Also, if you want to change the organization of a song, you must re-record it from the beginning. The VS-1680 allows you to copy or move data to any location in a song without affecting the sound quality or recording over a previously made take. The VS-1680 features 999 levels of undo which can return the data to how it was prior to editing.

A scene is group of mixer settings that can be stored for each song. This allows you to compare different mixes and recall them with a touch of a button. Each song can store 8 scenes.

The different mixer modes are INPUT-TRACK mode, INPUT MIX mode, and TRACK MIX mode.

In INPUT-TRACK mode the mixer is placed after the recorder. You can assign any input (1-6) to record on any track (1-8). This is a simple mixer mode, use it when you want to record the easiest way. Example, you could record a signal that is coming in from input 2 and assign it to record on track 5, therefore, the channel 5 fader would be the fader you would use to adjust the playback volume.

INPUT MIX mode and TRACK MIX modes are basically two parts of the same recording and playback mix mode. In INPUT MIX mode you can have up to six audio sources mixed in with the eight recorded tracks, and all going to one stereo output. You will use INPUT MIX to mix the incoming sources and TRACK MIX to mix the prerecorded tracks. Also, TRACK MIX is useful for bouncing tracks, recording effects, and recording multiple inputs.

The six recording modes are Multi-Track Pro (MT-PRO), Mastering (MAS), Multitrack 1 (MT1), Multitrack 2 (MT2), Live 1 (LIV1), and Live 2 (LIV2).

• Multi-Track Pro provides you with 16 tracks of 24 bit playback and the ability to record 8 simultaneous tracks This is the mode you want to record in!
• Mastering provides the highest sound quality, however, if this mode is selected your VS-1680 will function as a 8-track recorder.This mode is suitable mainly when recording and editing 2-track stereo. This mode will record 8 simultaneous channels.
• Multitrack 1 will still have a very high sound quality. Use this mode if you are importing VS-880 sessions.
• Multitrack 2 still has a high level of sound quality but offers a longer recording time than Multitrack 1.
• Live 1 mode has a longer recording time, however, the audio quality will be lowered. This mode is suited best for recording a live performance.
• Live 2 mode has the longest recording time, but the audio quality is lowest. This mode is suited best for recording lengthy live performances or speeches.

The VS-1680 will allow you to store up to 200 songs on one disk drive.

The recording time will depend on which mode and sample rate is selected for each song as well as your hard drive’s size. The following are recording times for one track on a 2 Gb drive:

• Multi-Track Pro: 792 minutes at 48kHz, 808 minutes at 44.1kHz, 1114 minutes at 32kHz.
• Mastering: 370 minutes at 48kHz, 404 minutes at 44.1kHz, 556 minutes at 32kHz.
• Multi-track 1: 792 minutes at 48kHz, 808 minutes at 44.1kHz, 1114 minutes at 32kHz.
• Multi-track 2 990 minutes at 48kHz, 1078 minutes at 44.1kHz, 1484 minutes at 32kHz.
• Live 1: 1188 minutes at 48kHz, 1292 minutes at 44.1kHz, 1782 minutes at 32kHz.
• Live 2: 1484 minutes at 48kHz, 1616 minutes at 44.1kHz, 2228 minutes at 32kHz.

Yes, to turn the VS-1680 off safely, you must first make sure you have saved any recorded data to hard disk, and that the hard disk heads are parked. Before turning the VS-1680 off, perform the following shut down procedure:

1. Hold down [SHIFT], press [SHUT / EJECT (STOP)]. The display will read “SHUT / EJECT ?”.
2. Press [YES], the display will read “STORE CURRENT ?”
   • Press [YES] if you want to save your song, [NO] if you don’t.
3. When shut down is complete the display will read ” POWER OFF / RESTART”. Turn the VS-1680 off.

The VS-1680’s SCSI connector allows you to connect external hard disks, removable disk drives, and Roland’s CD Recorder VS-CDR16. Please contact Sweetwater Sound or Roland for the most up-to-date list of compatible SCSI devices

Locate Points are used to memorize points in a song which you will want to access frequently, such as verses choruses, looping points or for punch in recording. You have a total of 32 Locate Points per song.

A song can have up to 1000 Mark Points. These are similar to Locate Points but there are more of them. You can use Mark Points with Auto Mix to set up for a fade in or out, set loop points, punch in recording, etc.

Yes, the VS-1680 can use MIDI Time Code, MIDI Machine Control or MIDI CLOCK to synchronize with your hardware or software sequencer. Also, your VS-1680 will sync to a video deck by using SMPTE Time Code.

The largest drive you can use with the VS-1680 is a 8 gigabyte drive. Your VS-1680 will partition the 8 gig drive into four 2 gig partitions.

Yes, you can chain up to 6 SCSI drives to the VS-1680. If you are using 8 gig drives, this would allow you to have 48 gig of online storage with the VS-1680!!

You need to back up the data and then reformat the drive. You can back up to other hard drives, removable hard drives, or CDR. You can also back up sessions to a standard DAT machine that is equipped with S/PDIF.

Yes, you can back up your sessions to the CDR option. The software will even let you backup files larger than 650 meg by automatically splitting the files across multiple CDRs.

It really depends on how much you use the VS-1680. Reformatting your drive should be done anytime you get an error message or have a problem with the drive.

• Reformatting the drive will erase everything stored on there.

Reformatting the drive will completely erase the data on the drive. Optimizing will rearrange the data and clean up the drive thus freeing up lost disk space. You should optimize your drive on a regular basis!

You should back up often and regularly. Your hard drive will crash one day (that day might be years from now or tomorrow) and the only to make sure your work is safe is to make a back up. I personally make a back up of my sessions every few hours!

The VS-1680 uses both IDE and SCSI drives. It uses an IDE drive as the internal drive. The drive that was shipped inside your VS-1680 is a 2 gig IDE drive. The VS-1680 uses SCSI drives on the external bus.

When you connect several SCSI devices together you create a “SCSI bus”. A bus is a path through which electrical signals are transmitted and received. An example of a simple SCSI bus would be a Macintosh computer connected to an external hard drive. The SCSI protocol allows you to have up to 8 devices connected together on the SCSI bus. Each device on the SCSI bus, including the CPU, is identified by a SCSI ID number. Each device must have a unique SCSI ID number. If two devices share the same SCSI ID# you will most likely experience a crash. It doesn’t matter what ID# you choose for your new SCSI drive as long as you don’t have two devices on the same ID#.

Changing the SCSI ID number of your new hard drive is very simple. External hard drives have an ID selector on the back of the drive with two buttons. The number by the two buttons is the ID number. Pressing the top button with increment the the ID # by one and pressing the bottom button will decrement the ID # by one. If you change the ID# of the drive with the drive turned on you MUST turn the drive off and back on again before the change will take place. Internal drives use small jumpers to change ID#s. There’s usually a chart on the drive itself showing the value of each jumper combination.

Here are some basic guidelines to follow when configuring a SCSI chain:

• Including a minimum of 1 foot for internal cabling of each device in the chain, the total length of the SCSI chain should not exceed 18 feet.
• No single cable length in the chain should exceed 8 feet.