VS-880 Control Room

A browser front-end for the Roland VS-880 (V-Xpanded, with the VS8F-1 effect board). It makes the inside of the machine visible: both effects with every parameter on a knob, the full mixer with EQ and routing, and the song settings that usually hide behind menus and the jog wheel.

Use it: open VS-880 Control Room in Chrome or Edge (Safari has no Web MIDI). Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Status

Personal project, built for my own studio and shared as-is under the MIT licence. Free to use, copy and change. It is not actively maintained: I update it only when I run into something while using it myself. No support, no feature requests, no update schedule.

What it does

Effects (FX1 + FX2)

• Reads the loaded patch and shows every parameter of all 20 VS8F-1 algorithms as knobs, in the VS-880's own menu order
• Drag, scroll or type values; each knob can learn a knob or fader from a MIDI controller (tested with a Korg nanoKONTROL2), with its own range and pickup
• Preset browser for banks A, B and U (with names), rename, revert, bypass, and a red Safe button that loads a harmless delay
• Snapshot A/B with a morph fader
• Keep patches in a library in your browser, or save/open them as .syx files

Mixer & routing

• 8 channel strips + master that follow the VS-880 live
• All three mixer modes (Input → Track, Input Mix, Track Mix), each with its own channels
• Track status, FX1/FX2 send mode, level and pan (including the "one insert per effect" rule), 3-band EQ, pan, faders, AUX master

Under the hood

• Song list with sample rate, record mode and protect
• Current song: rename, protect, tempo, MTC type, V-track per track

Lab tools (switch on at the top): raw SysEx read/write, Program Change test, memory scanner and memory compare, log.

Setting up the VS-880

SYSTEM → MIDI PRM: MIDIThr = Out · SysEx.Rx = On · SysEx.Tx = On · CtrType = Excl · P.C.Eff = On · Device ID 17

Good to know:

• These MIDI settings are stored per song. A new song starts with SysEx off, so set them again (or start new songs from a template song).
• Don't open the MIDI settings while creating a new song; my VS-880 hung (a restart fixed it).
• Nothing becomes permanent until you store it on the VS-880 yourself: WRITE for effect patches (U bank), SHIFT + STORE for songs.
• Reverb and Gate Reverb only run on Effect 1. Sent to Effect 2, the VS-880 overloads with a loud beep. The page blocks this, and Safe fixes it if it ever happens.

How it works (short version)

• Roland SysEx, model ID 7C: write F0 41 10 7C 12 [address] [data] [checksum] F7, read F0 41 10 7C 11 [address] [size] [checksum] F7 (the VS-880 only answers 128-byte requests)
• 04 00 / 04 01 = FX1 / FX2 patch: algorithm, 12-character name, switches, then 2-byte parameters
• 02 00–02 05 = mixer: most settings are rows of 24 values = 3 mixer modes × 8 channels; EQ uses 25 steps with 64 as centre
• 01 00 = current song (name, sample rate, mode, protect) followed by the disk's song list
• 00 00 = song/system settings (tempo, MTC type)
• Effect banks: Bank Select CC 32 (A = 0, B = 1, U = 2) + Program Change on channel 1 (FX1) or 2 (FX2)

Not possible (as far as I found)

• Writing directly into the U bank (loading works; storing is done on the machine)
• Reading the time / measure display or remaining disk time
• Audio from the disk

Thanks

• The untidymusic VS880 Ctrlr panel, whose messages were the first map into the VS-880
• Roland's VS-880, VS-880EX and VS8F-1 manuals for parameter names and ranges

Credits

Made by Maurice Hissink (harmonicworks): idea, design and testing on my own VS-880, with Claude (Anthropic's AI) doing most of the reverse-engineering and coding from dumps and captures I made. Built over one long day and evening.

MIT licence.