Roland will never make a proper successor to the MV8800. They never even realized what they had on their hands when they made it the first time. Akai has just recently caught up to the MVs feature set and that only took 15 years. I think its safe to assume that Roland does not have it in them to even conceive what a proper follow up would be. I certainly do not have faith that, even if they tried, they would come anyway near what the MV was and still is.
Although if they were to try I would happily volunteer to be part of the design team!
It looks like there are 8 tracks, KICK, SNARE, HI-HAT, KIT, BASS, INST 1, INST 2 and VOCAL tracks. INST 1 and INST 2 can be looper tracks. And then there is the VOCAL track, which, you can do multiple takes with.
To look at it, itās almost has the size, layout, and somewhat-portability I would love in a follow up the the SP-555. But then they hamstring it by only allowing 2 tracks to loop/sample. Well, maybe 3 tracks, just not sure of all the features of the vocal track. And you can switch the types of tracks, yet, only INST 1 & 2 can be looper tracks.
They have a spreadsheet (which we donāt) that probably shows it didnāt make enough money. Considering the cost, time and effort it takes to design and produce a machine like the MV 8000, it is highly doubtable that the same people who made it then suddenly didnāt realize what they had.
This Verselab thing is for people who are singers and/or songwriters first and producers a distant second. It simplifies the workflow of groove boxes and you can sing into it. They donāt see what good an MPC or Octatrack is if you canāt sing into it (" You need a pre-amp? whatās a pre-amp?"). They are the vast majority, where as we techno/technology geeks are a minuscule niche. Most people lose interest when they hear āparameter-locksā and are long gone by the time you say āconditional trigsā. These same people do not have any nostalgia for MV 8000ās, which cost over $2k back in the day which is something like $3k today. There are no $3K groove boxes for a reason. Itās all about the spreadsheets.
I understand this but I do somewhat disagree with the premise. If you look at the retension of current users and what they want for a current iteration. Basically similar spec with better computing and memory in a smaller footprint.
I look at the MV as the DAW for people who think they donāt want one. I think what most of those people want is something that works every time at what it claims to do. A dedicated computer that does what it says on the tin without the headaches of being a computer and with the integration being more of an instrument.
I canāt imagine there isnāt a sizable market out there for something like given the recent trend towards DAWless stuff. Not to mention the other MVers who are waiting to pounce on something that resembles a sequel or, dare we hope, improvement!?
I pretty much agree with everything you say, and in fact I was exactly that person who, back in the day, wanted an MV 8000
I wanted it BADā¦ā¦but I would not cough up the money.
As you pointed out earlier, Akai caught up to the concept of a groove box with a few audio tracks many years later. Being the cheap MF that I am a duly purchased a second hand MPC Live for $800, and because of cheap MFās like myself Roland realized that this is the price the market will bare for an MV and so we now have the Verselab.
If it sells really well, then there is a good chance we will see a true MV8000 successor. Or maybe the answer is again with Akai, how are MPC-X sales doing relative to MPC-One? The market trend, including Electron seems to be towards small, cheaper, simpler units.
So if you used the AR to create a song in the arranger, and you had three different patterns on the A4 that you only wanted to play for 2 bars each in different sections of the song, then the AR could tell the A4 when to play each pattern and when to stop playing anything (silence) without you having to touch the A4?
there has gotta be some weird conspiracy out to take sampling on beat machines backwards, this is kinda ridiculousā¦still I like the form factor and can see some creative potential.
However, I do think at this price point this thing is going to be an early competitor to the digitakt mk2 and I think the mv is gonna get slaughteredā¦ unless you compared it as an sound bank module.
neither any elektron nor mpc user will ever find any new gimmick, trick or new function in this machineā¦yupā¦the only thing thatās not booooooring but challenging on this one is itās priceā¦
A good breakdown showing the differences as well as how the real MV can do almost all of what the verselab does and more. He also acknowledges who itās for and why roland did a good design job on it.
marketing wise this seems to be aimed at trap producers with the retrigger features and autotune. not sure if that audience needs a device like this. Might be a prejudice but I have the feeling that most trap producers are happily using FL Studio, brostep VSTis and ripped samples from youtube I predict a 100-200 euro price drop within a year
maybe I am wrong and this will spawn an entirely new genre and is their next big thing, who knows.
anyways, still hoping they will chase the sp404-ghost sometime in the future and release an updated version
Just over a Kg, so probably made from the same plastic as the MC-101, plus a 2 lines of text screen, in 2021?
I tried a MC-101 and hated the feel of the cheap plastic and the menu diving. This looks like more of the same, so for sadomasachists, luddites and people already sold on Roland gear think, plus maybe vocal performers.
I also hope they focus on a sampler and come up with a 404 successor, and maybe a 555 successor. They just keep tossing zencore into a different box, and calling it good. Watching that dude go through the menu diving to adjust envelope settings of a sample on the Verselab MV-1 is painful. Why even have those three parameter knobs if they wonāt actually be used for something like that? Instead he had to click, turn, click, turn, click, turn, click, turn, the main value knob. Bad user interface right there.
And it is kind of a joke at this point that the SP-404A is $550 brand new. Although, at least it feels like a somewhat solid build. Because yeah, these new grooveboxes from Roland are very plasticky feeling.
The MC-101 is actually pretty fast and simple to use once you get past the 2 line LCD and encoder, I have 101 and 707 and for quite a few things 101 is faster to use, despite less dedicated controls than 707.
The MV-1 isnāt for me though, but I bet for some people it will be a nice little package, the zencore engine is hella capable of most synth and instrument sounds.
I think that the 12 minutes isnāt sampling time, but available sample ram, if it follows the same convention as 101/707 then the max is 62s. I might be wrong though the MV-1 might not have this daft limitation.
I like the use of pads/sequencer combo here,dedicated buttons for song mode. Dont understand why they didnt include midi file import,mc101 can open .mid
Roland,pls make mv nostalgia machine, the 8800 software on new faster/smaller hw.
I predict a 100-200 euro price drop within a year