Hello people!

conclusion: Roland VA-7 misses important things to buy it. Shame shame shame!
I just registered and want to join this group. I am looking for a new keyboard so I tested everything except the Ketron X1 so I think I can give a good impression about the VA-7. My personal favorite is still the Korg i30 because of the beautiful looks! It seems to me that everybody forgets about that. It looks professional, with not many buttons, touch screen etc. The PSR9000 looks like a childinstrument in that way. The only problem is that the Korg hasn't got speakers!

Ok the truth about the Roland VA-7, you have been wating for that! About one week ago the instrument came in a local stoor (The Netherlands, Apeldoorn) with a demoplayer demonstrating the instrument. After that I played for about 1 hour with it.

first impression:
The sound that is produced is unbelievalble. The drums are indeed the best ever heard. It is a life drumplayer sampled completely. There is NO difference between real drums and the styles on the keyboard. The first downside: there are not many styles that take these drums out of the background: the drums in the styles are almost always background, so more concentrating on bass and accompaniment which is a shame, cause the drums are really PERFECT. If you e.g play the hihat, you can actually hear the difference between end of hihat working to the middle of the hihat by using the touchresponse. But like i said, you need to ajust the volume every time to listen to the drums.
Than Variphrase: this is incredible. You just cannot believe your ears!! I mean this. You can actually sample your voice, like on other synths, but by playing the notes, Roland managed to take out any wave, so that there is a sample left without pitch: you hear one tone. That means if you take a C and then a F, the pitch is the same, but the voice actually sings in an F now, without fasting the wave! This means you can finally PLAY with samples. You can play chords etc without changing the rate. When you sample BORIS in C you hear Boris in C. When you press the lowest C you dont hear BBOOORRRIIISSS anymore (like other keyboards) but you hear BORIS in low C !
You just have to hear his too believe this. If you press C and D and E (chord) than you actually hear 3 people saying BORIS!

There is a beautiful flute: you play some notes and then you hear voice breathing in some air! Than continue playing as if it's a real man playing flute. What a great detail Roland!

Total sounds of 3649 is impressive.

second impression:
But there is a BIG downside of the instrument which prevents me of buying it. Roland made some VERY big mistakes according to me: you all watch out! The ammount of 128 (+64 ZIP) styles looks normal, but is below average. Looking at the fact that they have more than 3 thousand styles (1500 NEW ones) they could do the same great job at the styles, but not. I tried to look for a variety of Blues and Dixie, but not enough, at least not what I liked. This is a simple example. Like always there are no oriental styles (when are the boys realizing that it CAN BE important like GEM does). The biggest problems are these:

1. You cannot acces Transpose and Octave UP anymore by a single touch on the keyboard. Roland thought it was easier to press first the touch screem for the correct menu and then once again to transpose! In life-performance for me this means: cannot buy the Roland!! Why did they do this? This counts for more functions. No more easy one button: now need two presses for the same function (always by touch screen on menue).

2. The 4 variations can ONLY be accesed via the touch screen!!!!! This is real crap. If you have a menue screen open (for example the tanspose button screen) you CANNOT change your variations without pressing (again) 2 buttons! EVERY keyboard should have the basic functions on a click ON the keyboard and NOT in a menue! For live performance this means FAST DEATH OF A KEYBOARD.

3. One other big lack: you cannot press FILL to variation or FILL to original anymore! There are only two fills. One normal one (to variation) and one to basic again but this is ONE button! This means you need to HOLD the button if you would like to return to your Original! I just couldnt believe this! Where other keyboards have 4 FILLS (even a Gem from $800) but this $3000 Roland has only ONE button with two functions. This is just unacceptable. I just need 4 Variations with 4 fills EASY accesible, because that counts in live performance. There is no BRAKE MUTE or Tempo Change button easy accesible hahaha.

One last matter: Roland says you can now make out of 2 styles one style. You use the bass of the one, the drum of the other etc. Is this braking news? NO! The KN-6000 had this possibility 2 years ago. Creating one style out of 200 styles!!

I can conlude by saying that the drums are perfect. That cannot be anymore better and that the Variphrase options (playing voicesamples as chords) is something that cannot be believed without heard. And a LOT of sounds available.
But: The Roland VA-7 cannot be used in LIVE performance, which for me means the death of a not yet born keyboard.

Sorry for making this so long, but all the positive things I heard are probably from people who havent played the instrument!
On demo it is good: but first check it out!

If the above things dont bother you (transpose, fills, easy acces to certain function): BUY THE THING! NOTHING IS BETTER!
But I think it is all about live performance.

Big shame....

Ilija Petkovski