Roland Introduces SH-32 Synthesizer in Japan

(Click for a close-up)

Rear Panel (Click for a close-up)

The annual Music Fair in Tokyo, Japan has brought the preview of several new products from Roland. Among them is the SH-32 desktop synthesizer, a 32-voice polyphonic, 4-part multitimbral analog modeling synth with built-in effects designed to recreate classic sounds of it's predecessors as well as new and unique sounds.

Each part is created with a dual oscillator arrangement along with an independent filter and amplitude envelope. Available waveforms include saw, square, pulse, PWM, triangle/sine, spectrum, and noise, with a total of 67 total waveform sub-types. The fourth part in the SH-32 can be used as the rhythm set, which borrows sounds from the TR-808 and TR-909.

The front panel lays out all of the controls and features physical sliders for many of the parameters and providing a visualization of the settings. 13 buttons also function as a one-octave keyboard for programming, so no external hardware is required. However the SH-32's MIDI implementation makes it ready to work with your other hardware, but it a controller keyboard/workstation, another Roland product like the GooveBoxes or EF-303, or your computer.

The SH-32 also provides an insertion effect and reverb/delay, available to all four parts. Available insertion effects include:

• Stereo EQ
• EZ Filter
• Isolation
• Auto Wah
• Overdrive
• Distortion 1
• Distortion 2
• Stereo Compressor
• Stereo Limiter
• Phaser
• Rotary
• Hexa-Chorus
• Tremolo Chorus
• Space-D
• Stereo Flanger
• Step Flanger
• Sync Step Flanger
• Ring Modulator
• Lo-Fi
• Lo-Fi with noise
• Slicer
• Sync Slicer
• Tremolo
• Sync Tremolo
• Auto Pan
• Sync Auto Pan
• 2-voice pitch shifter
• Feedback pitch shifter
• Stereo Delay
• Sync Stereo Delay
• Resonance Delay
• Reverb
• Gated Reverb

The Reverb/Delay effects section includes:

• Reverb - Room
• Reverb - Stage
• Reverb - Hall
• Stereo Delay
• Sync Stereo Delay
• Long Delay
• Sync Long Delay
• Panning Delay
• Modulation Delay
• Stereo Chorus

Additional information should be available at the upcoming Winter NAMM show in January. This information is still somewhat preliminary and may be subject to change.