Voce V3

[James McCarty <jmccarty@freenet.columbus.oh.us>]

It arrived a couple of days ago. So far I have only been able to test it
using headphones. I will run it through an amp this weekend.

First impressions: Not perfect (it couldn't be), but it is by far the best
B3 in a box I have heard. Voce really did their homework. It sounds like a
B3. The percussion keys correctly. Plus, it passed my favorite test: use a
drawbar setting with a lot of higher harmonics, hold a chord, and then
play notes in the octave above the chord. So far no module sounds those
higher notes like a B3; the V3 sounds them correctly. Also, because there
are 91 oscillators, the non-multiple drawbars sound correctly.

There are 20 Leslie simulations available. 10 are pre-defined, but editable.
This is the VOCE Spin, a good simulator.

There are 10 midi-mappings. One is defined. You can control everything
from midi. A bit overwhelming. The preset table is very usable.

The unit will listen to three midi channels (upper manual, lower manual,
and pedals).

Volume can be controlled by midi or the back panel jack as either VOLUME
or EXPRESSION where the later emulates the organ Expression pedal and its
related tone changes.

Each patch can contain 2 drawbar settings. You can morph between them. The
second setting of always the same. I wish some more thought had been put
into these second settings.

Through the headphones, the leakage setting was too high for my taste. I
was able to back it off easily and it sounds better.

Percussion can be velocity sensitive. Not authentic, but a nice feature.

The unit can also emulate two combo organs (Vox and Farfisa). Again, not
authentic but useful if you ever need that sound. The hammond vibrato
isn't quite right, but the four supplied presets do sound like their
namesakes.

VOCE advertises 128 presets, but there are only 65 unique patchs. They
recyle. This is no biggie as you can edit all of them to your liking.

You can set a global override for both the leslie and midi controller.
This is a simple way to "kill" the effect if you hook up a 122 (The unit
has the plug) or use a PRO-3.

Overall, this unit won't replace a B3. But, if your needs dictate a
module, I think this is the way to go.