Roland finally releasing evolution to TR-808

yeah i 2/3 agree

but the other 1/3 of me is thinking that i'd like to make some choons with all this

  On 2/14/2014 at 8:51 PM, Shabax said:

 

 

  On 2/14/2014 at 10:24 PM, Audioblysk said:

 

  On 2/14/2014 at 8:51 PM, Shabax said:

Yes. That's a D-Beam.

lol

 

Agcg made the drums sound a lot better than i thought. Honestly i feel stupid for calling these awful.mtheyre not necessarily the best thing feature wise but if that drum machine cost 100 bucks i think it could be a good thing to have. Then again that video may just prove that its what you do, not what you use, ultimately

  On 2/14/2014 at 9:50 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

it just doesn't make any sense considering how many real analog cheap-ish knockoffs have been made of the 303 and 808, not to mention things like the Novation drum station which are digital 808 emulations... but so is this. Roland really wasted a lot of time, i hope all these products bomb to be honest

For 303s, and please correct me if I'm wrong, there's the x0x and the TT-303, which are very nice. They ARE double the price, but yay analog. $300 is totally reasonable for something that sounds close enough to a 303 (plus the non-303 type sounds) to me. I really don't care that much about a true facsimile to the TB-303 or that it's ACB tech. I started off with Rebirth and I still love playing with it, so I'm easy to please. I think this would be really fun to play with live which is what I care about most these days. And I don't really care about how it looks either. It's all about banging out some acid!

  On 2/14/2014 at 7:20 PM, paranerd said:

I'm getting the TB-3. $300! Maybe TR-8 too.

 

 

  On 2/14/2014 at 3:28 PM, xox said:

toys for todays kids

I'd rather feel like a 36 year old kid than feel like a 21 year old snob.

snob?! NO! i feel like a kid too, just not feeling like one of todays kids...that's all

  On 2/15/2014 at 12:38 AM, xox said:

 

  On 2/14/2014 at 7:20 PM, paranerd said:

I'm getting the TB-3. $300! Maybe TR-8 too.

 

 

  On 2/14/2014 at 3:28 PM, xox said:

toys for todays kids

I'd rather feel like a 36 year old kid than feel like a 21 year old snob.

 

snob?! NO! i feel like a kid too, just not feeling like one of todays kids...that's all

 

Sorry, I wasn't calling you a snob. I was calling my 21 year old self one!

  On 2/15/2014 at 12:40 AM, paranerd said:

 

  On 2/15/2014 at 12:38 AM, xox said:

 

  On 2/14/2014 at 7:20 PM, paranerd said:

I'm getting the TB-3. $300! Maybe TR-8 too.

 

 

  On 2/14/2014 at 3:28 PM, xox said:

toys for todays kids

I'd rather feel like a 36 year old kid than feel like a 21 year old snob.

 

snob?! NO! i feel like a kid too, just not feeling like one of todays kids...that's all

 

Sorry, I wasn't calling you a snob. I was calling my 21 year old self one!

 

oh ok. even if u did i wouldn't really felt insulted

The System 1 looks interesting, but I'd probably rather get a Microbrute, because it's cheaper and smaller. Why do these things have to be so huge? The drum machine is ridiculous!

I'd probably make a lot of use out of the VT-3 though, tbh.

  Quote

 

 

Four oscillators for buckets of fat synth tones

+

http://www.roland.com/products/en/SYSTEM-1/

=

lulz.

to be honest, it doesn't seem like it will be bad, just not really anything I plan on buying. I do like she SH-style layout of the plug out keyboard. EDM type kids are going to start making some acid with these things, the future is the brown acid.

its sort of depressing how much bad/lazy acid is being made these days. in the SF bay a lot of electronic locals will default to it to get a dancefloor going. people think all you need are a few roland boxes (or clones) and good/passable acid will immediately somehow emanate off of it , very far from actual reality. it would just be kind of cool if these did perfect 808/303 emulations + a lot more, like tunable/melodic 808 kicks and just things that will justify their existence . Right now I don't understand it at all personally. The 303 one especially sounds very flat to me, and not better than most existing software 303 emulations. Maybe if it had a nice built on distortion/waveshaper/compressor/bast booster type of situation it would be something justifiable, but man these are weak as fuck so far from what ive seen.

  On 2/15/2014 at 2:53 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

its sort of depressing how much bad/lazy acid is being made these days. in the SF bay a lot of electronic locals will default to it to get a dancefloor going. people think all you need are a few roland boxes (or clones) and good/passable acid will immediately somehow emanate off of it , very far from actual reality. it would just be kind of cool if these did perfect 808/303 emulations + a lot more, like tunable/melodic 808 kicks and just things that will justify their existence . Right now I don't understand it at all personally. The 303 one especially sounds very flat to me, and not better than most existing software 303 emulations. Maybe if it had a nice built on distortion/waveshaper/compressor/bast booster type of situation it would be something justifiable, but man these are weak as fuck so far from what ive seen.

Don't let bad acid get you down, brother.

I'm not going to rubbish these too much but I'm not exactly keen on them either. For sure, they could be fun to play with an I'm sure decent music could be made with them but given the amount of competition there is these days in the hardware market - for the money you'd fork out for each there are so many other options that would appeal to me before these.

  On 2/14/2014 at 11:00 PM, paranerd said:

For 303s, and please correct me if I'm wrong, there's the x0x and the TT-303, which are very nice. They ARE double the price, but yay analog. $300 is totally reasonable for something that sounds close enough to a 303 (plus the non-303 type sounds) to me. I really don't care that much about a true facsimile to the TB-303 or that it's ACB tech. I started off with Rebirth and I still love playing with it, so I'm easy to please. I think this would be really fun to play with live which is what I care about most these days. And I don't really care about how it looks either. It's all about banging out some acid!

 

I get your point but this TB3 falls between stools for me. The analogue purists/303 evangelists are going to be happy (that's no my particular concern) and for it being a VA it doesn't go far enough into offering new features. Example being the other sounds over and above the saw/square - why can't there be a VST editor that would let you get in and edit the core sound and then save it for use when the machine is disconnected? Similarly, that theoretical VST editor could be used to allow editing of the fx so that you've proper control over what that one knob does rather than just relying on whatever factory setting happens to be applied to that sound. That little bit more flexibility and I might've been tempted. But then at this price you could more or less get a Volca Bass *and* Volca Keys.....

So as it stands, it's a glorified version of 90s groovebox rather than an exciting re-imagining.

And the more I think about each of the options, the more I feel they've fallen just a little too short of what could've been genuinely cool for the money. If the TR8 included models of, say, the CR78, the 606 then the box can be something more than an 808/909 emulation. Starting to feel more like something worth the cash. I suppose the System-1 does interest a little bit with the Plug-Out idea but again you get the feeling that Roland aren't going to be pricing the SH101 and other emulations cheap so again it feels like it's competing products are more compelling.

If JohnE's desire for this being a commercial calamity came true then I wouldn't be adverse if I saw a deal on the go.

definitely agree that I'd really like to have seen the TR-8 include more than just 808/909 modeled sounds. if you're going to go down the modeling route you may as well get the most out of it. would have been awesome to have the TR-8 capable of also reproducing the 606 and 707 at the very least. maybe they could add this with a software update?

  On 2/15/2014 at 1:36 PM, jeyemusik said:

 

If JohnE's desire for this being a commercial calamity came true then I wouldn't be adverse if I saw a deal on the go.

i was hoping they would fail, but i don't think they will simply because most people don't remember the groovebox calamity that happened in the late 90s of roland, or at least a lot of people who were only 10 years or 0 zero years old when that happened wont remember/care

it just seems like they put out something very very basic. If this was a fully modelled 808/606/909 hybrid with elektron style parameter locks and kick drum tuning i'd be all over it as a cool new product. It just seems like a very straight forward completely non-daring or new product development.

I'm not blown away with them at all. I think they're overpriced myself. Korg are bringing analogue to the market at literally a half to a third of the price so I can't see what they add. Plus Korg have nailed portability by making their products small so they can be taken anywhere etc.

  On 1/23/2014 at 3:56 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

 

  On 1/23/2014 at 1:46 AM, impakt said:

I wouldn't call those awful ui-less DX synths good instruments, even if they can make good sounds. There are good DX synths and bad ones - in terms of "instrumentality".

 

i guess this is an opinion thing, but it's pretty hard to deny their impact on all sorts of electronic music, especially the sort of music watmm is about

 

even the "crap" dx synths have a cool lofi quality which makes them stand out in this virtual analogue, physical modelling world.

 

plus software editors make the ui point kind of moot. patching them is easy like a vst.

 

Yeah man, I'm not saying they can't make awesome sounds and that they haven't been important to the music world. I'm just saying they could have been crafted as better instruments. I love DX synths, don't get me wrong here :D

What the fuck-- kind of exciting, though. Despite ze acid bandwagon already happening several times in the past 15 years, it always does feel good when it comes back. Like I'm making acid in my sleep and shit, but there's something very nice about everybody cutoff'ing and resonance'ing like mad to get booties shaking.

Lotta shit acid will come of this, but perhaps PERHAPS, might be a new- if even short-lived- era of live acid ravez, with individual tracks actually being performed live and going on for like 45 minutes and shit. Like you know, lives. Where people dance. And shit. And performers feel and feed the crowd and shit.

I played a live in Tokyo several months ago, and I just pressed play on iTunes. Fucking IDM travesty and insult to myself who used to practice live sessions for hours on MC-505, MC-303, SP-202.

someone in the comment thread of the 808 VS TR-8 video had these wise words, and i agree with him 99%

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I have a solution to this: The 808 is tired and over-used already, get the fuck over it. It served its purpose historically and has been rehashed in every conceivable way, I think it’s time to embrace the so-called “progressive” nature of electronic music and MOVE ON. i think the biggest disappointment about this whole line is that they’ve completely shat all over the benefits of digital in my world is that it only makes 808 and 909 sounds and has VERY LIMITED SOUND DESIGN CAPABILITIES. In a sense, it’s a joke to me that they would limit these devices in the way analog devices are limited, YET STILL MAKE THEM DIGITAL. Do you see my frustration here? it’s literally the worst of every world… not to say that I’d be much happier with an analog 808 either (unless it was volca size/pricing which I think would’ve actually been the right direction to go with a box that only makes 808/909 sounds).

he hits the nail on the head in terms of how inflexible these seem. Why bother making digital recreations of them if all they do are very limited range 808 emulations? Why not have midi/parameter lock tunable bass drums at the very least? Then you'd be able to get some nice melodic kick lines going. Besides the attractive low-price (which i think is still over priced) these are very poorly thought out machines. If Roland had real balls they'd throw in an engine like Chromaphone or Image Line's drummax in here, besides Elektron nobody has really pushed or spent any time creating a decent *hardware* based digital synth engine, it's about fucking time and not this digital 808 pussy shit *barfs*
This whole slow roll out Roland marketing campaign has once again turned me off to finding roland drum sounds attractive. I think if i get anymore eurorack stuff i'm totally staying away from anything designed to sound like Roland and focus on analog drum modules made buy companies like MFB instead.

roland needs to listen to their hardcore fans and buyers. i'm sure they did some research and noticed how popular xox's are but if they dug a little deeper they could have created something much better agreed

also , didn't roland already learn from their mc-303?? or was that popular?

  On 2/17/2014 at 2:05 AM, yek said:

also , didn't roland already learn from their mc-303?? or was that popular?

it was popular but didn't have as much buzz as these seem to be getting, plus a lot of people investing in those 90s roland groove boxes weren't getting it with the intention of sounding exactly like an 808 or 303, it was sort of the Korg electribe of it's era, with a low enough price to be a good entry level 'electronic music' groovebox for people who didn't own one previously. Before that, most of the modern groove boxes were things like the Boss DR-5, designed as sort of a band in a box for bands without a proper drummer. I would argue those 90s Roland products were a lot less of a fuckup than these are. Plus those even seemed more powerful in terms of functionality

these new boxes have totally convinced me to go off Roland drums for a while, at least the 808, 606 variety. MFB all the fucking way

yeah price is definitely pretty serious if you are poor, but not so much if you are rich. $300 means nothing if you make that much in a day, so yeah it's worth the money for the course materials. Same with if you are rich enough to pay for the labour fee for fixing your car instead of DIY.

All very good points, John! I agree with you for the most part. Except I still pre-ordered the TB-3 for one main reason - that my teenage self would have flipped for this and I'm sure I'll be entertained thoroughly. :)

  On 2/17/2014 at 5:10 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

these new boxes have totally convinced me to go off Roland drums for a while, at least the 808, 606 variety. MFB all the fucking way

But that SCATTER though!! lol