Edirol V8 is aimed to take place between very popular V4 and a bit more ‘high end’ V440 HD. It’s construction is based on V4 however many improvements have been made, which seem to meet expectations of potential customers (people who cannot afford V440 but have ‘outgrown’ v4) very well.

Let’s take a qucik look around.
Basic conception of the mixer is very similar to V4 (using buttons to sellect inputs assigned to busses A an B), but there are some new things:

- EIGHT INPUTS. you can now connect up to eight inputs, and mix between two. That’s the most important new thing in V8. Inputs 1-8 accept composite signals, inputs 5-8 accept S-video, and input 8 will accept VGA (!). My only grief about V4 was that it could not handle more than two s-video signals. Now you can use four.

- all COMPOSITE CONNECTORS have changed, from RCA to more professional BNC. That means that you can directly connect your long rolls of video cable to your mixer without using an adapter (of course you can use even easier available adapters to connect DVD’s or consumer cameras using RCA).

- inputs are now mounted on the back of the device. Many of us loved vertical connectors facing up on V4 - it was perfect for desktop live setups where look at the connectors is sometimes very useful, but that many connectors would just clutter the space.

- each video input has it’s own monitoring output, perfect for mixing live cameras. For those prefering to use one preview monitor, there are eight preview buttons! Nice, roland!

- there are two VGA inputs on the back of the device, (only one of them can be used at a time, switchable form the top). V8 has a built in scaler, which can convert video from your computer, from up to 1600×1200@60Hz to video, to either PAL or NTSC. Very useful feature - s-video outputs are becoming rare on newer laptops. Still, the machine does not have DVI in, or VGA/DVI out.

- please take note, that output from the mixer is still SD, however if you have HD content it can be internally downsized to SD. you can even take composite output of the down-conversion from it, using separate connector.

- effect/transition list seems to be pretty much the same, however you can spot few additions (Full-Additive-Mix, Strech, Afterimage, Feedback, Flip)

-Output fade controller has been changed from knob to a fader, good idea. Maybe they will withstand a bit more torutre Same with effect parameter controllers, which are now switchable to fade (which can fade out given channel)
Tempo and program selection are still knobs.

-Silver T-BAR can be replaced with crossfader, V8 and V4 share this element, so you can use same spares.

Hard to say anything about build quality, as I have not yet had my hands on it, but knowing Edirol/Roland’s standards, it will be top notch.

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