There goes Roland again...

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Lag
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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by Lag »

Lost to the Void wrote: I think its a great "my first analog", it fits in to a mix easily and you get lots of controls. But there's nothing really chacterful about it at all, it lacks the foibles and fuck ups to have the sound of character that is the thing that makes analog attractive (to me at least), especially when making interesting textured low end, which i like to do.
I would literally only recommend it to people who have never experienced analog before, and even then they might (as many have said) get less "wow this is analog!"-ness out of it than they are expecting.
It is a great buy for the money though.
It sounds equally good whatever you do to it which can't be said about almost anything else in that price range besides maybe the Evolver and the Mopho. On top of it it's got a thick, fat sound, greasy but not trying to be anything more than what it is (whenever I hear Volcas "screaming" at me like they wanna be more than just toys I wanna shoot my ears off) so whatever mix you put it in it's gonna sit well, and whatever effect you put on it - it's gonna sound well. This is the magic of (good, low end) analog like the SH 101 and TB 303.
All I hear on the upcoming Rolands is the same I heard on the System 1 - nothing that a VST1 can't do. Souding good for standard sounds, but breaking down at very low tones (didn't hear any of those in the demo but I can suppose that's what happens) and sounding shit whenever you fiddle with the filter, the distortion or the reverb.
Obviously this is all just my opinion. Unfortunately the only synth that I would buy in the low price range (aside from my beloved, and hard to use Evolver) is the Minibrute. Add some more cash to the pile and the options open up - Moog, DSI, Virus, hell I'd even go for a Nord...
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Re: There goes Roland again...

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Re: There goes Roland again...

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The minibrute is definitely not thick or phat, it almost gets there with the sub osc, but you really need a dual osc to get anything truly "thick". Its ultra ultra clean and pure for an analog, an amazing achievement for the price. You probably need to get some more proper analog, then you'll see what i mean. The wave folder and the brute factor give it grit, but it never gets thick. I ended up having to multitrack it to get a true "thick" sound.

It does fit in a mix really easy, but thats because its so clean and defined, it has no flab.
You cant get a better mono new for the money, i agree.
The only thing at that price point that actually does "phat" and thick, is the moog minitaur, personally i prefer the minibrute out of the two because of the features, if there was minitaur sound with minibrute features, that would be a mono worth getting.

Im guessing it's your first proper analog, I have never heard anyone that knows their synths call a minibrute phat or thick.
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Re: There goes Roland again...

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0:34
youtu.be/uU6vQrm0lHQ
There, now that you've heard it from someone else - can I have your permission to call it fat? ;) Jesus Steve, it's like no one else has ears and opinions.
I can pinpoint it in any track (like 1:02 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE_bxpn-GLg) and I've heard it being played live both on shitty and good soundsystems and it always stands out with the precision and fullness (fatness) of the sound it has. Literally, I go "that sound's the Mini" (well, Micro in that case), I go to the stage and I end up being right about it.

It's the SH 101 of the 2010s.
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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by nocernoc »

First listen to these and I thought full analog. I read somewhere they were virtual. Well they have done a good job emulating. They have a very analog sheen. Don't know about that low end. Need to hear some proper A/B on some proper speakers.

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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by Lost to the Void »

Lag wrote:0:34
youtu.be/uU6vQrm0lHQ
There, now that you've heard it from someone else - can I have your permission to call it fat? ;) Jesus Steve, it's like no one else has ears and opinions.
I can pinpoint it in any track (like 1:02 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE_bxpn-GLg) and I've heard it being played live both on shitty and good soundsystems and it always stands out with the precision and fullness (fatness) of the sound it has. Literally, I go "that sound's the Mini" (well, Micro in that case), I go to the stage and I end up being right about it.

It's the SH 101 of the 2010s.
That clarky link, apart from being processed to fuck, sounds like a soft synth. It doesn`t have that liquidy movement in the lows a truly phat synth has, and there is no weight, it`s woolly. That`s the steiner parker, it adds harmonics that are wonderful for mids, but they pull out weight and focus in the lows.

The problem with the steiner parker filter is that it loses low end weight as you open it up. This was my main issue with it. It`s a well known character of the filter, there was a 70 page discussion about it over on GS (people were trying to find if there were any hacks or mods to deal with it), which I found when the lack of "phatness" was frustrating me.
I was advised, rightly, against getting the Mini, by Chris Villain, as he had already trialled them, and went with the Minitaur (which is actually fat), and he understood my unhealthy bass obsession, but I wanted the features of the Mini, and so ignored him..... He was right.

I did find a workaround, kinda, to get more of that lovely liquidy moog-esque (unfair to compare the mini to moog I know, but...) phatness. What you can do is route the headphone out to the audio input. It`s almost the same as the brute factor, but the brute factor compresses slightly, whereas re-routing the headphone out is more unbridled.
If you combine that with a small amount of brute factor THEN it starts to come alive in the lows, but that damn filter lets it down.

I think the mini however trades off phatness for versatility, you get the wonderful waveshape mixer, which allows you to get, for a mono, a surprisingly diverse range of sounds.
It`s not a bad synth by any stretch, but it just isn`t phat man, it isn`t, and you really don`t see people claiming it is, that`s not really what it is about. I suppose to be more fair you could say it is phat, providing you don`t open the filter.
When you get a phat synth, you`ll see.


Wait `till you get a moog mother, then you`ll get it.
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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by nocernoc »

changed my mind after just watching the sweetwater vid. watched the roland intro vid before. without all the fx they do indeed sound very vst-ish. got that same thin buzzy quality about the filter movement on high res that i don't like; and the sounds are thin/spacey; hollow almost. i'd still go a notch or two up from actual vst sound.

i liken true analog to watching the flames of a fire on a bonfire and how the blue parts of those flames interact with the red. the sound is literally on fire. perhaps this is a quality imparted on the sound by the true behaviour of pools of electrons? who knows. digital stuff is, so far, static. while i believe algorithms will get better and better at approximating this sound and eventually reach a point where they're "virtually" indistinct, i also believe we're still far away.

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Re: There goes Roland again...

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Modern circuit emulation (though not necessarily rolands) pretty much nails it. Its so accurate in its simulation of electron behaviour that it is used (what is is designed for in fact) by engineers to test the behaviour of electrical circuits before they actually manufacture them.

This is why modern circuit emulation based stuff is so hard to distringuish.

Stuff like BIAS amp modellers are just stunning, they really do capture all the characteristics of amp behaviour, even proper valve sag, its stunning.
Stuff like wave arts valve saturator, is stunning.
The new line 6 amp modeller coming out is bafflingly good, all the tests so far have been sending valve purist guitarists in to shock, especially as you can back off, and the a o characteristics change character with the signal drop, something that so far has remained an illusive quality.
We are at a new and exciting age in digital analog synthesis. Its all electrons, makes sense really.
You would have to be sitting with some extremely high quality monitors in an anechoic chamber to even begin considering to comment on differences with stuff like the new amp modelling.

As for the rolands, i dont think they sound stunning, but the low end weight from the sweetwater demo shows no sign of aliasing, the weight was holding right across the filter range in the low stuff he played on the JX, which is how i judge the fatness of a filter.

Im going to get the juno version, and ill do an A/B myself, but it already sounds good enough for me. If it is, ill be selling my juno, if not, it goes back, ive had my juno since i was 17. It was my first synth.
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Re: There goes Roland again...

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amp and valve emulation maybe a way on. i really like the sound of softube's FET and tube-tech compressors. as to what algorithms they used, remains a mystry. are they using simulation? or are they simply trying to mirror the sound waveforms / transients. in any case, i think they sound better than any other vst compressors i've heard.

i have yet to find a digital analog distorition emulation that comes near the nuances of true analog distrotion. digital distortion has its place; stuff like waveshaping/bitcrushing gets really good results but they have their uses.

circuitry required for tubes and amps are simpler than a full blown poly analog synth. especially filters that need huge resolutions in the FFT to sound good in real time. yes it is true engineers are able to, and do currently, simmulate true electronic components. this is true for circuit design but don't know of this being used in actual synthesis apart from ACB which sounds similar. however, even these don't include some of the true error that elecronic parts exhibit and assuming that's not an issue, the simulation itself is extretmely processsor intesive. i am not aware of any software system yet built based completely on electronic simulation technology. still to proc hungrey for real-time applications as far as i know.

one could probably get much better results by doing the sound design in an offline manner then rendering the sounds non-real-time. something akin to the way ray-tracing algorithms are used to render graphics for cgi in movies like toy-story and shrek as opposed to games which need to generate in real time like quake and doom. this way, you could use extremely high resolutions for everything trading off time for quality.

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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by Lost to the Void »

nocernoc wrote: i have yet to find a digital analog distorition emulation that comes near the nuances of true analog distrotion. digital distortion has its place; stuff like waveshaping/bitcrushing gets really good results but they have their uses.

circuitry required for tubes and amps are simpler than a full blown poly analog synth. especially filters that need huge resolutions in the FFT to sound good in real time. yes it is true engineers are able to, and do currently, simmulate true electronic components. this is true for circuit design but don't know of this being used in actual synthesis apart from ACB which sounds similar. however, even these don't include some of the true error that elecronic parts exhibit and assuming that's not an issue, the simulation itself is extretmely processsor intesive. i am not aware of any software system yet built based completely on electronic simulation technology. still to proc hungrey for real-time applications as far as i know.

one could probably get much better results by doing the sound design in an offline manner then rendering the sounds non-real-time. something akin to the way ray-tracing algorithms are used to render graphics for cgi in movies like toy-story and shrek as opposed to games which need to generate in real time like quake and doom. this way, you could use extremely high resolutions for everything trading off time for quality.

You really need to go to some guitar forums then.

there has been a revolution in distortion and overdrive over the last 2 years in the soft domain.

Positive Grid BIAS
Positive Grid FX
Amplitube 3
ReCabinet
Le Pou FX
Distorque
Freetortion Series
Mokafix Audio
Nick Crow Labs (his tube driver is phenominal)
TSE FX
Ken Mclaren FX
Ignite AMPs

I did a thread over on the production forum listing a whole wealth of amazing distortion software out there now.

Basically I spent the first 5 months of this year working on my album, which is Doom Metal, so I really got in to investigating distortion, overdrive, amps, amp simulation etc, as essentially I have made an album where every single part is distorted, either hardware or software. Distortion has come a loooooong way in the software domain.
You can even get accurate feedback loops now, it`s amazing.

Secondly, modelling the circuitry of synth components is much much much easier than modelling tubes and power amps (toroidal etc), ask any audio coder, it`s why amp simulation has remained a sort of holy grail.

Circuit emulation is being used in a lot of new wave softsynths now, UH-e for example (check out DIVA), AAS, DCAM were doing it ages ago in fact.

Not that it matters too much, once you process and buss and compress etc.

I never even bother asking people what they make their music on any more when mastering because sometimes I think stuff sounds really analog and it turns out it isn`t, and sometimes I think stuff is software and it turns out they used gear, and or both or a combination.
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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by nocernoc »

didn't know DIVA was using PSPICE; must admit. or i did and i'd forgotten. last time i worked with PSPICE it really was very processor hungry. while i agree that DIVA does come closer to sounding analog than anything else i've heard, i have to say that it's filters still leave a lot of room for improvement; ie they are pretty crap in comparison to say moog filters. do you know if they used PSPICE on the filters too? i don't see why it wouldn't work for filters if it works for stuff like diodes, etc, and i imagine it would need less processor than an extremely high quality digital filter. for now, i personally think DIVA (on high setting) sounds better than the new roland synths DRY. as far as i can tell and from what i read on their website, ACB is the same thing as what PSPICE is but on DSP chips.

also do you know what modelling the amp guys are using?

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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by PixelKind »

I dont think PSPICE is used for any software emulations. They all run on special C++ libraries. I think JUCE is the most common and used by more than half of all software instruments. PSPICE is great for simulating electrical circuits but I dont think it can run in real time so you cant make software emulations with it.
You can also do great things with Reaktor. Look at the Monark for example. They really nailed the sound with that one

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Re: There goes Roland again...

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No that is true. But most simulation software these days is PSPICE derived. Thus gensralise to PSPICE. Same as mac os is freebsd based which is a unix.

But most vsts are programmed usinig modular digital synth frame works like MAX/MSP, reaktor or c-sound. This does not use simulation. It is strictly numeric.

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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by PixelKind »

I know all the simulations are based on PSICE. But if I remember correctly you cant program a VST in PSPICE cuz it doesnt process in real time. PSPICE is mostly used to simulate hardware before building it but not to emulate it.
For hardware simulation as a VST you use frameworks (as you said) and I think the most common one is JUCE. Max and Reaktor are not so common cuz they are limited to the software and you cant program a VST that runs outside of that framework. If someone wants to program a VST synth that runs independent from those frameworks they mostly do it in C++ and use the JUCE libraries

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Re: There goes Roland again...

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Well yes that is true. One would likely have a difficult time programming anything but electronic simulations in PSPICE propper. Much the same as trying to code DIVA in the original berkley unix release. The support just is not there. But whatever people like u-he are using (PSPICE derivative), it is only being used by a handful if any others at all. I would give those guys credit enough to derive there own in house solution. Who does really know?

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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by Planar »

nocernoc wrote:But most vsts are programmed usinig modular digital synth frame works like MAX/MSP, reaktor or c-sound.
No, they're not. Most commercial VST's are built using the raw Steinberg SDK or more likely a framework that wraps it like JUCE or WDL. Some are also built from tools like synth edit, but I don't think any credible developer is doing that. Reaktor can't be compiled to a VST at all, I'm not sure if Max can these days either as the Pluggo stuff is gone. Pure Data can be embedded via more wrappers and I'm sure stuff like Chuck, Supercollider and Csound can be as well.

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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by Mattias »

youtu.be/RjVpWsA-FjA

Must say I'm pretty impressed so far.
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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by Mslwte »

I'm quite impressed by these as well, which prompted me to fire up the jx3p last night. I wonder if these new units have pots inside that you can adjust like I have with the resonance pot in mine.

The JU is interesting to me.
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Re: There goes Roland again...

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The sliders on the Jupiter remake are just to small for decent operation.
Try to find a sweet spot on these 1 cm faders.

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Re: There goes Roland again...

Post by Críoch »

SO did anyone get one of this synths yet?

Keep seeing different release dates for them.. out of stock messages etc..

Were they available to buy? Or are they out 'soon' ?
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