Watch out Moog!

[Cole Gaskins]

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/ ... d-of-sexy/

Not true analog so don't worry too much.

[Just Me]

64 note polyphony and 37 keys???? (Still seems like the next big thing at that price point.)

[EricK]

Roland needs to stop with the freakin d beam. Enough already. If you buy a roland coffee cup, theres a d beam on it and its features section lists the d beam like everyone thinks it justifies the price.

THe D BEAM sucks.

[DontBelievetheHype]

I don't think anyone looking at Moog gear will be tempted to spring the the Gaia instead... rehashed 15 year old Roland synth. Nice interface I guess, at least, but sounds like crap. Its not even fully 'VA'..

[Cole Gaskins]

Your handle says it all Don't believe the hype.

[Mr Arkadin]

I, along with many others, are quite disappointed with Roland these days. I have a lot of Roland kit from yesteryear, but nothing post-JD-990. I suppose they see their market in a different place to Moog, or even to the Roland of past. In a way I think this SH-01 is likely to be a lot of kids' first synth. The SH-09 was my firt synth (Moog Rogue was second) and I still have it and use it. Roland want to squeeze the last drop of the D-50 technology - their staple S+S engines. I wouldn't mind a Roland VA but for some reason they just can't do it properly - I think they must all sit around on scopes and not actually listen to the things: remember their take on their own TB-303 and Jupiter 8 in VariOS? Exactly. If VariOS had sounded like a Jupiter 8 it would have sold shed loads just for that one synth (it could only do one synth at a time).

Please Roland, come back to us, you were once great.

[Mitchell Chastain]

i agree with the comments about the new roland synths, with one exception... i love my v-synth gt. versatile and amazing.

[EricK]

I think Roland is still great. Their V-Drums are some of the best pieces of equipment Ive ever played on, I have always loved their Fantom X and G series and my father bought a G8, Kc880 combo.

I have also always liked their VS series multitrackers, I have the 840ex and still use it ocassionally, though Im in the transition to computer based DAWS now.


THey make some great equpment and are quite the versatile company. I also dug the crap out of the V Synth. Before I bought a Voyager I wanted one of those, and I used to want to get the Voyager and have the Rack mounted V Synth to go with it.

EricK

[Voltor07]

I still like Yamaha better...Korg has some nice stuff out, as well...SV-1, anyone?

[Franz Schiller]

The Gaia LOOKS cool, but the demos I've seen and heard indicate it SOUNDS like crap.

[_DemonDan_]

Roland needs to stop with the freakin' D Beam. Enough already. If you buy a Roland
coffee cup, there's a D Beam on it and its features section lists the D Beam like
everyone thinks it justifies the price. The D Beam sucks.

The Gaia LOOKS cool, but the demos I've seen and heard indicate it SOUNDS like crap.

Nice interface I guess, at least, but sounds like crap. Its not even fully 'VA'..

Hi Gang,

While I do understand that this is a Moog forum, whose members are very pro Moog
(at least most of the time), I believe that this forum is also made of people who are
really into all forms of synthesis and musical gear.

With that in mind, I feel that it benefits all members of this forum to speak as honestly
and as accurately as I can about all equipment that I get my hands on. My Moog loyalty
should be clear as I own an LP Solar, EwP, MF-101 thru MF-107, CP-251, MP-201, 3 Bags,
1 Cover, and 1 T-Shirt. (I won't write the total $ down in case my wife glances at this post.)

But in this case, I'm pretty certain that I'm one of the very few (if not only) person on this
forum who *actually has* a Roland SH-01 GAIA (as of April 14). I'm doing advanced
programming for it and and have spent many hours digging for cool, over-the-top things
I can do with it.

So... starting with the first quote:

I have to say that the D Beam is pretty cool on this synth. It modifies not only the common
things like Filter Cutoff and Volume, but many unexpected things like:
LFO: Rate, Fade-Time, Pitch Depth, Filter Depth, Amp-Depth
OSC: Pitch, Detune, PWM, PW, Pitch Env Atk, Pitch Env Depth
Filter: Cutoff, Resonance, Key Follow, Atk, Dec, Sus, Rel, Env-Depth
Amp: Level, Atk, Dec, Sus, Rel
Effects: Control, Level
Portamento Time
Pitch Bender
Modulation
and... You can also trigger sounds in realtime like Kick Drum or Stabs.

So yes, I'd have to say that the D Beam justifies the $699 price.

Second quote:
Yes, I agree, it *is* a nice interface. All of us here appreciate one-knob-per-function.

But "Sounds like crap"? Sorry, I have to say that it sounds good. Does it sound exactly
as good as a $3,000 16-voice Andromeda? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it's a
64-voice, 3-oscillator VA synth, with effects, for $699.

Third quote:

I'm curious as to what you mean by "not fully VA". The 64 voices are truly VA.
They are not sample-based. There are a lot of furious statements out there on the
internet by people that seem to get very angry anytime a new product is announced
by anyone.

I suspect that they're confused by the fact that there is also a 15-channel,
multi-timbral, sample-based GM set that can be played from an external MIDI source.

Is it a Little Phatty? No.
Is a Little Phatty a Voyager? No.
Is a Voyager a Moog Modular System? No.

Am I having fun creating lots of polyphonic and monophonic patches for it?

Hell yeah!

[eXode]

I don't think anyone looking at Moog gear will be tempted to spring the the Gaia instead... rehashed 15 year old Roland synth. Nice interface I guess, at least, but sounds like crap. Its not even fully 'VA'..

I find it funny to be mentioning a rehased 15 year old synth (and making it sound negative) on a forum based partly of a rehash of a 40 year old synth. Not to be cheeky or anything, just saying.

If Roland woud do a rehash of a 30-40 year old synth instead a lot more people would be pleased...

... or we'd all complain over how it doesn't sound the same as the original!

[Mr Arkadin]

I find it funny to be mentioning a rehased 15 year old synth (and making it sound negative) on a forum based partly of a rehash of a 40 year old synth. Not to be cheeky or anything, just saying.

If Roland woud do a rehash of a 30-40 year old synth instead a lot more people would be pleased...

... or we'd all complain over how it doesn't sound the same as the original!

I actually have lots more Roland than Moog, so I think I have a balanced view on this stuff. My Moog consists of: Taurus 3 and Rogue. That's it. My Roland kit consists of: Jupiter-4, JD-800, JD-990, R-8M, CR-78, CR-80, RE-501, RE-3, MC-202, SH-09, CSQ-600, DC-50, PB-300 plus many Boss pedals. I'm no Roland hater.

Here's the problem: unlike analogue, VA can always be improved - until perhaps you reach a point where they are indistinguishable. So 15-year-old VA technology is not good because many things can still be improved. Are you really telling my a JP-8000 sounds analogue? Sorry but Roland's COSM is not good. You want modelling? Then people like Sonic|Core and GForce do it better. Just hire those people will you Roland?

The SH-01 has some good points. The interface is great: proper old-school Roland. I like the D-Beam, it' not like you have to use it. But why oh why the cheapo plastic construction? My SH-09 is mostly metal and looks as good as when I bought it all those years ago.

These days I am looking more and more towards Moog and boutique companies. Roland just make boxes for the masses with the occasional interesting thing like the V-Piano or V-Synth.

[_DemonDan_]

So 15-year-old VA technology is not good because many things can still be improved.

Just curious... How are people determining that GAIA is using "15-year old Virtual Analog Technology?"

I'm hearing a huge improvement over all previous Roland Virtual Analog synths when it comes to the
LFO Rates and OSC frequencies, which both go significantly higher before aliasing.

I won't say that I can't make the GAIA alias... but I have to push almost everything to its extremes
to make it do so. Push "Oct +" three times, set OSCs to +24 steps, use 2 Octave Pitch Bend, play the
highest key, and then bend all the way up. And, even then, it's more subtle than it used to be.

More often than not, if I can get it to alias, it's because the digital effects alias before the Virtual
Analog Oscillators do. And if I wanted to get that tweaky with high-frequency sounds, I would use
outboard effects anyway.

And finally, not to sound like a broken record... But it's $699. At $699 it's going to be lightweight
and made of plastic. It's just not in the same price point as keyboards made with rolled steel and
wooden end caps.

[Mr Arkadin]

Well I haven't heard the SH-01 in the flesh - but the JP-800 was OK sounding, but the SH-201 was pure crap, sorry. What I've heard of the 01 (admittedly on compressed internet videos) didn't sound much of a leap from the JP-8000. For $700 I would imagine a bit of metal might be nice, I mean my SH-09 was almost all steel and I think the equivalent price would not have been equal to $700 even in 1982 (plus it has all-analogue components and internal PSU). Why not have a metal version with a bigger price tag?

Hey I'm not dissing on this - no doubt it will be a lot of kids' first synths, but I just don't think their modelling is all that (in fact the Boss RE-20 is the only COSM product I think sounds anything like what they were trying to achieve - their amp modelling just plain sucks). I would like a better basic sound - those layers of effects are too much. There's more to oscillators sounding good than whether they alias or not.

I may even get one for live work (although the plastic puts me off in this scenario).