Terry,
Variphrase is not the D-Beam roland uses in the VA products and the older EM2000. the D-Beam is a controler, just like a mod wheel or pitchbend wheel. Anything you can do with those controllers you can do with the D-Beam. You just wave your hand over the D-Beam controller up and down or side to side and you can do things like pitchbend, vibrato, tempo up and down or even on and off of drum track, bass track, etc. The Variphrase is something completely different. It is being able to sample a voice or instrument and then play it on the keys of the keyboard, being able to play up and down the keyboard and not have the speed of the sample be altered like most samples do when you play say a full 5 fingered chord. In most samplers, the speed of the sample will get faster the higher the note, but on Variphrase, the speed stays the same while you play several pitches at once. Also, you can use the variphrase sample to play on the lower side of the split point while playing single or fingered chords as well, thus haveing the real voice play along with the style and it even syncs perfectly to the tempo without effecting the sample.
George Kaye
kaye's Music Scene