Behringer Pro-VS Mini

This mini synth seems to good to be true for the price, and in a lot of ways the price should say a lot about what to expect. Firstly, a midi keyboard to hook up to this is a must as the touch sensitive pads on the unit are not really going to be any use to you outside of maybe creating little sequences on the unit. The included voices are just OK. You can fiddle around with the unit and make them more interesting, but unless you know what you are doing creating your own patches from scratch is the only option. You can of course buy 3rd party patches for this device, but this is where my unit let me down. I downloaded some patches I wanted to upload to the unit. The Behringer Synthtribe app is used to handle this process and also keep the units firmware up to date. Unfortunately either a hardware bug with my unit or software bug with the latest Synthtribe 2.7.1 kept cyling my unit through an unecessary firmware upgrade which kept looping. This left me unable to backup the patches on the unit or install new ones which was a dissappointment. I contacted Behringer but am still awaiting a response. On the back of this I decided to return my unit for a refund.

I was so excited for this synth, but unfortunately it didn't fulfill my expectations. The presets are somewhat interesting but when you try making your own sounds, as you go through the waveforms, they're all pretty boring despite of there being 127 of them. (Make sure to explore the waveforms with cutoff turned all the way up and resonance turned down). Sure, you can use basic waveforms just like you would on Minimoog Model D (and in fact, you can kind of think of VS as Model D with the ability to mix the waveforms through an envelope), but I really expected the waveforms to be more interesting and engineered rather than there being hundreds of variations of twang and buzz. Maybe I'm missing something here, I don't know. If only there was a way to load custom waveforms, then it would be perfect. Other than that, the touch keyboard is pretty unusable and the sequencer doesn't work step-by-step, it's more like a looper where you have to play in tempo. Definitely needs an external keyboard and sequencer. The OLED screen is extremely small and it being OLED means it'll suffer from burn-in after prolonged use. The case is plastic is feels like a toy. It doesn't run on batteries, which is a shame, but it can run on a powerbank. I can't recommend it, but your milleage may vary.

It's hard to imagine how something this clever could be made for the price of a cheap night out on the beer and curry...
Pros: fat sounds with luscious filtering, sequencer and arpegiator full of possibilities.. surprisingly easy menu access..good old midi 5 pin connectivity..solid build quality...
Cons: no battery power option, only USBC..very small (but positive) rotary pots..dreadful small print manual which may just as well have not been included...no power (USBC) cable in the box..a slip case would have been nice...
Overall, it's sound and scope just put a silly smile on my face, this is a sonic pleasure that just says "let play"...give them your money and let your creativity loose...

I had a chance to play a real rack version VS years ago, and still remember those swirling sounds. Later got Wavestations and that horrible TG33 module, but never gave in to the Dark Star. This tiny synth however, is cheaper than Volcas (not intended as a profanity... really), and sounds, well, like a tiny tiny VS. More just fun than actually awesome... has useful sounds and responds well to a proper keyboard or, in my case, guitar synth (for which four voices are more than enough). Shame that it has only 4 voices though for keyboardists... Would be nice to find a way to polychain them without spending twice the amount for a Blokas Midihub... Anyways, for the price and the sounds, it should be in everybody's studio.