VR User Registrations

One of the nice features of VRs is that it’s really easy to create registrations for specific songs or ‘music-genres’ which can be saved to an USB flash drive and share them with other VR owners on Internet. We describes howto use ‘user registrations’ and adds a list of known collections of external- and user=registrations

Warnings:

Registrations created on VR730 may ‘struggle’ on VR09 if they use split(s) beyond VR09 key range (see next point)
Registrations created on VR730 may ‘struggle’ on VR09 if they use ‘VR730 exclusive sounds’ (like Y2K Concerto): on VR09 the sound will be set to a default 09 sound
Registrations that are shipped with ‘.dat’ files probably use VR synth-sounds modified by VR ‘Virtual Analog Synth’: if you load such a registration the specific ‘factory’ synth sound of your VR will be ‘globally’ overwritten with the modified sound – globally means in the entire VR including your own registrations
User registrations could have been created using CTRLR V-Combo EDITOR, making use of ‘VR hidden features’ like ‘hidden sounds’, multi-zones, multi-layers etc etc etc. If you see ‘curious things’ on VR display and VR behaves ‘strangely’, you most likely have loaded a registration with ‘hidden features’.
If you want to ‘customise’ this registration on your own, you will have to use the Editor.

How to load user registrations

Some things to consider:

Before you load new registrations or complete registration sets, BACKUP your existing registrations !!
To import (export) registrations you need an usb-stick (thumbdrive) (see GEAR for recommended usb-sticks)
to load single registrations (not only entire sets) VR must run on firmware 1.02 or higher (we highly recommend to update to the latest VR Firmware)
‘VR menu ‘Media Ultility’ is THE menu for handling registration ex/import
User ‘registration files’ may contain an entire collection of registrations: you might first load the entire set to pick up the registrations you like, the reload your p[ersonal (backuped) registration set and add single registrations from the user set

Registration ‘file types’

If you backup/import/export registrations to upg-stick VR uses two types of ‘files’:

files named ‘VR09_nmk.UPG’ (where nmk is a number – like 001, 002 etc) – the so called ‘upg-file’:
each upg-file contains all 100 registrations.
When you save (backup) a registration set it’s always named ‘VR09_nmk.UPG’ with the nmk-number linearily incremented.
You can manually change the file name (on the usb-stick), e.g. ‘SetList2022.UPG’: VR can ‘read’ renamed upg-files
eventually a file named ‘VRSYN000.DAT’:
this file contains ‘synth sound data’ of VR synth sounds that have been edited with ‘Virtual Analog Synth’.
This file is ‘created’ and ‘only created’ if you have modified VR synth sounds with VA-synth (using the IOS app or CTRLR Editor)
‘VRSYN000.DAT’ is a ‘unique’ file-name, VR CANNOT read ‘incremented numbers’ like VRSYN001.DAT, VRSYN002.DAT: take care and don’t ‘overwrite’ the file

Backup your personal registrations

plug the usb-stick into VR
Dial to VR menu ‘Media Utility’, execute option ‘Save Registration’ (saves to upg-stick)
plug the usb-stick into your PC: the root directory will show a (several) upg-file(s) (‘VR09_nmk.UPG’) and, if you have edited synth sounds with VR-synth, the dat-file ‘VRSYN000.DAT’: copy the files to a save folder on you PC.
We recommend to perdiodically backup ‘upg-files’ and the ‘dat-file’ to your PC : an upg-stick can easily get lost 🙂
Particulary backupping the ‘unique’ dat-file is important: if ever this file is overwritten, your personalised VA-synth sounds are lost

Restore your personal registrations

After you ‘tried’ user-registrations you might swap VR back to your own registrations:

copy your personal registration – upg-file, and, if existing, the dat-file – to the upg-stick.
If your own registrations don’t have ‘dat-files’ (because your never VA-edited synth sounds), simply delete and eventual ‘user-dat-file’ from the usb-stick
plug the usb-stick into VR
Dial to VR menu ‘Media Utility’, execute option ‘Read Registration’

Import ‘User registrations’

Finally after all the blala we come to the essentials:

Download the ‘user registration set’ from the WEB, e.g. as plain ‘upg-file’ (file with ending ‘.upg’) or as zip-archive
An archive will contain the upg-file and eventually the VA-synth-data file ‘VRSYN000.DAT’
backup your actuall upg-file(s) and dat-file from the usb-stick to a subfolder or – better – to your PC
copy the new upg-file and eventually dat-file to the usb-stick
plug the usb-stick into VR, open VR menu “Media Utility”, then ‘read’ the entire set or single ‘one’ patches.
If the user-reg-set contains a series of patches you might like to ‘browse’ them all and import the entire set. If you found registrations you want to keep, reimport your own registations (don’t forget to also ‘swap’ the dat-file), then use ‘Read one registation’

NOTE: users of CTRLR V-Combo EDITOR can use the ‘REGISTRATION ORGANISER’ to insert (‘merge’) registraitions from ‘user-upg-files’ direcly into upg-files on the PC/Mac. The Editor cannot handle the ‘VA-synth-dat’ file though – import of registrations containing VA-edited patches must be done on VR.

‘User registrations’ : sources in the WEB

Roland ‘Cover Band Collection’ :
The ‘official’ Roland Axial collection. It contains 32 ‘signature’ sounds (only a single sounds) of ‘classics’ of the 80th/90th (Axel F, Relax, Heart of Glass etc) with a ‘dat-file’ that reprograms VR factory synth sounds.
Some sounds well made (‘1999’, ‘Tained Love’), some mediocre (Relax), some you question yourself ‘what the hell is this?’
Super Duper Important Warning: apart from 4 organ patches all other patches use heavily VA-edited synth sounds which will overwrite your VR factory synth sounds. Example: the patch for ‘Tainted Love’ transforms VR factory ‘Tekno Lead’ into the a ‘pluck sound’.
To repeat it again: loading the entire set will replace 28 (of 128) of your VR ‘factory synth sounds’ with (totally) new sounds!
So the recommendation is: if, after loading the entire set, you found a sound that you want to keep:
– restore your personal registrations (don’t forget to deal with the ‘dat-file’)
– check if your regs contain the synth-sound that would be overwritten by the cover-band patch
– if overwriting is ok, import the cover-band patch as a single (‘read one’) registration
BandSoundCollection for VR:
A selection of 32 sounds for a handfull of japanese rock/pop songs like ‘Don’t say “lazy”‘. The pack comes with VA-edited synth sounds (see note for ‘Cover Band Collection’)
Sweetwater Sound Pack
There’s a lot of myths about Daniel Fishers soundpack: it seems, that it’s not ‘for sale’ anymore. US customers may email to Sweetwater, non-US customers reportedly cannot purchase it.
The pack contains not ‘song specific sounds’ but ‘general patches’. Carefully watching the YT video one might be able to recreate some on ones own.
VR09/730 on Facebook:
VR09/730 group on Facebook has the most complete collection of ‘user-patches’. After subscribing to the group, go to the ‘Files’ section. You’ll find excellent patches e.g. Mellotron collection’, ‘Vox Conti improved’, Lord/Steppenwolf organs, “Improved Piano” or personal user-collections.
Note that non of these user registrations use VA-edited synth patches
Marks FB mirror:
This is a copy of the Facebook Group user-registration collection for those not on FB (it’s a bit outdated so we recommend FB)
Raymonds Sound Library:
Raymond saved all hidden VR sounds – the ATLELER Organ sound set and ‘extra sounds’ – on upg-files. This allows to load ‘hidden sounds’ without using the CTRLR Editor
Frankies Sound Library:
This lib contans a zip-file with all hidden VR Rhythms (VR has not only the 50 rhythms available in VR menu but a total of 600 rhythms). This allows to load a registrations with a ‘hidden rhythm’ (e.g. Walz, Fox, but also some freaky rock patterns) into VR
Note : you can change (hidden) rhythms directly in your personal upg-files by editing it with CTRLR Editor ‘UPG Organizer’