I just bought a used Roland VP9000 at a good price ,(150 Euros
- @ £130), but the person I bought it from had no idea how to use it, so knowing his address, ( 3 hours drive from mine) I went for it, he assured me that it was in excellent condition & that he had recently acquired it from a friend who was selling his studio & going software & has relocated to Norway at very short notice.
So I got home & loaded the factory demo ( on zip disc) & played with that for hours & proceeded to be even more impressed than I was expecting with its sound quality & processing..
if you'll bear with the preamble, I didnt get to start sampling my own sounds until last night & I was horrified to find that anything I sampled or processed via the inputs sounded badly distorted & weak, & I spent the whole night trying all the inputs,
( : stereo inputs, coaxial & optical inputs & mic input,)
- all with every different setting I could find; I tried the outputs from both my mixers, & a mic & electric guitar directly in the front input, & unfortunatly every time the sound was the same horrible distortion.
So, my delight in my good fortune & the possibilities of my new instrument obviously quickly turned to disappointment.

The seller doesn't speak fluent English, being a recent immigrant from the Czech Republic so I havn't contacted him yet.

Advice please: Should I spend another 60 Euro on petrol , & go & get my money back..Thats @ 120 Euro for two return trips on fuel, almost the price of the VP9000, or should I try & get it fixed?
Im hoping that maybe it might be a case of just a loose circuit board on the inputs or something similar & easy to repair, but Im not a electronic engineer.
The unit sounds fantastic with the demoes loaded & processed, but unusable otherwise.
Im just hoping that maybe a VP9000 user has had a similar story with a happy ending. Im going to upgrade the OS later, but I cant see how that would help.
Any technicians out there who can tell me anything useful?
Im far from any repair or service centers or Roland dealers.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks. Take care P

Is there any other way you could get sounds into the thing (USB, SCSI, something like that?). Does alter the fact that you'ce sold a broken unit, but might be a workaround.

It has a two SCSI ports so you can connect it to a computer and transfer files to it that way. Recycle is good for this, but you will need a SCSI interface for the computer; Adaptec are probably the best bet for that.

Otherwise, check the quality of your cables, give the inputs a clean with a switch cleaner and try again. Make sure you are not recording too hot into the sampler as this will make the recording distort.

--------------------
http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Thanks for the help Wigworld & Richie,
Yeah I must get that SCSi / firewire or USB adapter, that would be really handy as I still run a couple of other SCSI devices.
It has a built in Jaz drive & you can load Wav or Aiff files, ( the demos come on a jaz disc & once in they sound fine) so I will try to convert some sound waves/ samples to WAv or Aiff with my Emu E5000 sampler & save them to its external jaz drive.. that should work, very clunky, but it should work, but I wanted to use the VP9000 more as a live processor, for prosessing mixs on the fly & vocal stuff.. I know there are myriad software apps for this & I have a few, but Im a bit old school & prefer working with hardware, ( especially as I am one of the few like yourselves who still use hardware)
Anyway the good thing is Im getting my money back & travel expenses , & get to keep the malfunctioning VP9000 as well , so things are looking up.. Ill get it repaired hopefully eventually if I can, along with half of my other gear, which is obviously the downside of 'vintage' hardware.