Roland GAIA SH-01

i had a microkorg (later sold it to fund buying some real analogue haha) but it's a decent wee synth if you set up the software patch editor and/or MIDI controllers controlling it's guts (although the filters are the purest of wank). as far as i could tell the vocoder was also really good, and was one of the reasons i bought it.

i can understand the hate to an extent, but let's be fair; it is a different generation's 303 and the trade-off is eclecticism over quality. i assume there were near as many gurning douchebags picking up 303s back in the day, except they wore kangol hats and made tape packs instead of trilbys and myspace pages.

roland could make a sick budget analogue if they wanted, but the 303 was designed as a bassplayer accompaniment for bands, and surely they were always a company moved with the times for profit. regressing to making analogue wouldn't swing in the board room, and there are plenty of decent analogue 303 recreations and companies doing proper analogue. so if you want something non-vintage with character then buy doepfer modules, if you want an intuitive VST in a box that just gets most jobs done then buy a gaia or simialr.

  On 3/28/2010 at 3:45 PM, Lube Saibot said:

I've got a TI Snow so yeah... no experience with problems of the sort. But even in the older generations... you'd get a reverb, a chorus, a phaser, a delay and a distorsion unit. That's pretty much standard fare, FX-wise. How is that "drowning"? Or do you mean that you find the presets to be designed in such a way as to fool you with FX? And the stacking\unison detune? I find that pretty much indispensable for a workhorse lead synth. And what exactly do you "not find on Nord" of the above?

 

Sorry to be nitpicking your post, I'm a fan of both Access and Clavia, just think you're jumping the shark a bit.

 

Then again i really didn't buy nor use the Virus for "analogue poly" sounds. I'd get a real analogue poly for that as well, tbh. Though i really wouldn't know one in the same price range as the Snow... Any suggestions? I mean, besides the Prophet '08 and the Tetra. Not being sarcastic, could really use my eyes opened a bit wider in this dpt.

I dunno this is looking horses for courses, I love the precise full sound of the Nords without the need for layering and I'm of the philosophy that you shouldn't have to layer sounds to make them stand out rather they should be good from the outset but I have been spoilt with analogues in the past and speaking of which the 08 is one of the best analogue polys made imho. Ironically the detuned 8 voice stack unison on the 08 is the fattest analogue sound I've heard even if its not necessary for my needs.

You can also get a half decent Jupiter 6 for around £1k these days and if your not bothered too much about DCO's the Matrix6 and MS6 are excellent buys.

from Roland comes

SEARING LEADS

THROBBING ACID™ BASSLINES

EUPHORIC SPACE PADS

GAIA?

GAYER?

GAIA.

  On 3/28/2010 at 3:55 PM, idrn said:

i had a microkorg (later sold it to fund buying some real analogue haha) but it's a decent wee synth if you set up the software patch editor and/or MIDI controllers controlling it's guts (although the filters are the purest of wank). as far as i could tell the vocoder was also really good, and was one of the reasons i bought it.

The filters are suppose to be better on the new microkorg. Don't really care, only reason i'd buy one would be for the vocoder really, same as any other douchebag.

  On 3/28/2010 at 4:02 PM, soundwave said:

I dunno this is looking horses for courses, I love the precise full sound of the Nords without the need for layering and I'm of the philosophy that you shouldn't have to layer sounds to make them stand out rather they should be good from the outset but I have been spoilt with analogues in the past and speaking of which the 08 is one of the best analogue polys made imho. Ironically the detuned 8 voice stack unison on the 08 is the fattest analogue sound I've heard even if its not necessary for my needs.

 

You can also get a half decent Jupiter 6 for around £1k these days and if your not bothered too much about DCO's the Matrix6 and MS6 are excellent buys.

I've got a Voyager myself so i couldn't possibly agree more with the difference that fullness of single oscs makes. And, granted, the Access is as flimsy as any average VST when it comes to using a single osc; i even made a thread a while ago discussing the fact. However, there's sounds and sounds man. The JP-8000's supersaw pretty much invented a few genres and now that's become pretty much a bread-n-butter sound. So for your hoover, reece, strings etc. needs, you can really rely on a single osc, or the usual 3 osc fare. Arguably, you don't have to rely on stacking\unison either, as there's hard PWM and FM and the like for the trademark "hueg" sound, but there's a certain character to each. To be honest though, i don't use the Virus for that, i just use Sylenth1. I turn on the Virus when i genuinely need wavetable mangling and FM and the mod matrix and good FX in one package, which recently has been quite often.

  On 3/28/2010 at 4:04 PM, idrn said:

GAIA?

 

 

GAYER?

 

 

GAIA.

IRL spit-take. I was drinking some cocoa. Lol of the fucking day.

I have read one review so far that states that the Gaia is merely this:

repackaged

but reviews are not ALWAYS the best source for determining whether something is useful or not.

Yeah any synth/groovebox can be useful in some way. I've toyed with the sh-32 in a store and actually found it fun, though I am just not a fan of the digital my ears are bleeding sound of the roland filters. That said I'm sure it would make it's way into some tracks if I had one. Filters aren't the only important synth component :)

ok but guyz eloctronic accordinz guys

http://www.rolandconnect.com/product.php?p=fr-3x

for the digital age guys

edit dammit where's that picture idiron made of the breakcore accordion ladies

  On 3/28/2010 at 1:08 PM, idrn said:

well it's essentially gonna be a very decent affordable virtual analogue with nice presets that'll sell in droves, thereby annoying those who feel special for having only expensive chunky non-portable vintage gear that needs servicing every 5 years.

sounds about right. all the demos i heard sounded pretty nice!

[youtubehd]IlA3Vmo8Oes[/youtubehd]

lol

  On 7/2/2010 at 8:14 PM, BCM said:

[youtubehd]IlA3Vmo8Oes[/youtubehd]

 

lol

but it has Cutoff AND Resonance...

I would like to make my own synthesizer sounds. I bet I can get them by editing those 64 presets.

well, technically you can do that of course, and you can probably get some good sounds out of it....... but it's just so plastic in every sense. when i see it lined up with all those other SH series synths and they try to pass it off as part of the same lineage, i want to shout at someone.

sounds like a bluetech song...

  On 7/2/2010 at 11:47 PM, BCM said:

when i see it lined up with all those other SH series synths and they try to pass it off as part of the same lineage, i want to shout at someone.

Well, the video makes it pretty clear people like us are not the target audience. Seem like it's intended as a stepping stone between gateway synths & "real" synths. Something for people who are vaguely aware how synthesizers work, & that the SH series = famous old school synths, but don't know the finer details.

  On 7/3/2010 at 12:13 AM, Cryptowen said:

  On 7/2/2010 at 11:47 PM, BCM said:

when i see it lined up with all those other SH series synths and they try to pass it off as part of the same lineage, i want to shout at someone.

 

Well, the video makes it pretty clear people like us are not the target audience. Seem like it's intended as a stepping stone between gateway synths & "real" synths. Something for people who are vaguely aware how synthesizers work, & that the SH series = famous old school synths, but don't know the finer details.

im sure something can be done with it...+ saving patches is clutch but seriously...thanks for the fruitiest demo vid in the world roland

  On 3/28/2010 at 3:45 PM, Lube Saibot said:

I've got a TI Snow so yeah... no experience with problems of the sort. But even in the older generations... you'd get a reverb, a chorus, a phaser, a delay and a distorsion unit. That's pretty much standard fare, FX-wise. How is that "drowning"? Or do you mean that you find the presets to be designed in such a way as to fool you with FX? And the stacking\unison detune? I find that pretty much indispensable for a workhorse lead synth. And what exactly do you "not find on Nord" of the above?

 

Sorry to be nitpicking your post, I'm a fan of both Access and Clavia, just think you're jumping the shark a bit.

Nord Leads didn't have reverb nor delay (not 100% on the delay). they had a chorus button, and that was pretty much it really.

as for phaser on the nords, it wasn't really an "effect" as such, but more a synthesizer patching modulation.

so soundwave is pretty spot on there really.

I don't see it is a sin to buy an SH-201 or GAIA, but now I've heard the difference between analog and those models and I personally don't want either.

That said, I actually really like the aesthetic, and the front panel is nice. I would have fun with it.

Screw synthesizers, I'm buying a marimba.

I tried that GAIA synthetizer at a Roland show at the Montreal Mutek festival in June... played with it for at least 45 min. The interface is really easy to understand but the sound is exactly the same as using about any softsynth VST instruments if not cheaper. The effects sounded quite cheap compared to the tons of freeware VST effects you can find on the net. I don't understand why a company like Roland cannot make better effects that the top of the crop of the freeware effects found on gersic or KVR! In my mind, if you sell something it must be at least better than what's available for free...

I also trid the Juno line... why do they called their Workstations line "Juno" I have no idea! To trick people thinking they're buying an analogue synth?

don't get me fucking started on Roland's new "Juno" synths....

wait, why bring sharks into this?

  On 8/3/2010 at 12:30 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

why, because they're so damn good?

no.

  On 8/3/2010 at 2:31 AM, SampleScience said:

why do they called their Workstations line "Juno" I have no idea!

Maybe they're trolling people who spend obscene amounts of money on analog synths.

Juno 106s, 60s and Alpha Junos are very reasonable actually...you can definitely get a 106 (which has midi) for the same price as a new Juno-D (probably less actually).... and the 106 is an infinitely superior synthesizer.

I did not know that. I admit I don't know a great deal about Roland synthesizers, & was just running with the common perception that old analog synths = $$$.