Roland Gaia

[The Audacity Works]

Lots of other boards can do more than one arp, and have pitch/mod wheels.

They either license it from Yamaha on the cheap or build them anyway and aren't pursued for infringement.

 

It's like Yamaha says "sure, go ahead, as long as you're not Roland."

 

Say you really don't like your neighbor. One day you throw a Sunday BBQ and give everyone on the street a burger, some chips, and a beer. Your neighbor shows up and you say "Whoa, not so fast there, buddy."

[Bernard]

Why not? Lots of other boards can do more than one arp, and have pitch/mod wheels.

DAN from Roland mentioned:

''(And that Karma engine too is licensed from Yamaha. Yamaha owns the patent to multi-part arpeggiation systems (or rather arranging technology). So part of the price of an M3 is to pay Yamaha for their licensing.) ''

See link here:

http://forums.rolandclan.info/index.php?action=show_thread&thread=30730&fid=8&page=6

[Bernard]

They either license it from Yamaha on the cheap or build them anyway and aren't pursued for infringement. It's like Yamaha says "sure, go ahead, as long as you're not Roland ." Say you really don't like your neighbor. One day you throw a Sunday BBQ and give everyone on the street a burger, some chips, and a beer. Your neighbor shows up and you say "Whoa, not so fast there, buddy."

[Citizen Klaus]

 

DAN from Roland mentioned: ''(And that Karma engine too is licensed from Yamaha. Yamaha owns the patent to multi-part arpeggiation systems (or rather arranging technology). So part of the price of an M3 is to pay Yamaha for their licensing.) '' See link here: http://forums.rolandclan.info/index.php?action=show_thread&thread=30730&fid=8&page=6

 

 

I'm not sure I'd trust Dan as a reliable source for information on the M3.

 

He notes that "hat the M3 does not provide different bender modes. It's limited to the pedestrian up/down, while the 'G' has the five additional intelligent bender modes." What he doesn't mention is that you can use AMS to control how the M3 responds to pitch bend messages. With careful programming, you can emulate all the G's bender modes, and then some.

 

(Though to be fair, the G's bender modes are certainly easier to select, if those are what you want.)

[Bernard]

I'm not sure I'd trust Dan as a reliable source for information on the M3. He notes that " hat the M3 does not provide different bender modes. It's limited to the pedestrian up/down, while the 'G' has the five additional intelligent bender modes." What he doesn't mention is that you can use AMS to control how the M3 responds to pitch bend messages. With careful programming, you can emulate all the G's bender modes, and then some. (Though to be fair, the G's bender modes are certainly easier to select, if those are what you want.)

6 of one and half a dozen of the other

Swings and roundabouts

Horses for courses

[Bernard]

I got an MV for foot print and sequencer midi out x 2 etc...

If I were to go for a creative PCM board, my gut tells me the Korg M50 would be worth a look

[Citizen Klaus]

6 of one and half a dozen of the other Swings and roundabouts Horses for courses

 

True, but my point wasn't to argue that the M3 is somehow superior to the G. My point was that Dan has his own area of expertise, and it clearly isn't the finer workings of Korg products (nor, arguably, should it be).

 

Stephen Kay would be the person to ask about whether or not KARMA licensing involves any payment of royalties to Yamaha. My guess is that the answer is "no," and that this is the reason why the M3 and OASYS don't have traditional arpeggiators.

[Bernard]

True, but my point wasn't to argue that the M3 is somehow superior to the G. My point was that Dan has his own area of expertise, and it clearly isn't the finer workings of Korg products (nor, arguably, should it be). Stephen Kay would be the person to ask about whether or not KARMA licensing involves any payment of royalties to Yamaha. My guess is that the answer is "no," and that this is the reason why the M3 and OASYS don't have traditional arpeggiators.

Lost in translation.

I was agreeing with your point, it was my funny way of agreeing totally

[Citizen Klaus]

Lost in translation. I was agreeing with your point, it was my funny way of agreeing totally

 

No worries. That's what I get for being a humorless bookworm.

[The Audacity Works]

Stephen Kay would be the person to ask about whether or not KARMA licensing involves any payment of royalties to Yamaha. My guess is that the answer is "no," and that this is the reason why the M3 and OASYS don't have traditional arpeggiators.

A third option would be if KARMA's tech somehow squirms around the specifics of the Yamaha patent. Or perhaps Yamaha just gives Korg the go-ahead, seeing as they owned a percentage of them long ago.

 

The point is that Roland appears to be ravenous about developing new, innovative technology, because they don't want Yamaha getting there first.

 

Licensing is extremely common in MI

[Citizen Klaus]

 

A third option would be if KARMA's tech somehow squirms around the specifics of the Yamaha patent.

 

 

Actually, that's pretty much what I was implying -- that, under the hood, KARMA is probably substantially different from Yamaha's arpeggiator algorithms.

[zoink]

"I like this keyboard so that must mean it's innovative ." No. The OASYS is the only type of product in your list that hadn't been done by other companies long before, including Roland. To be innovative, you kinda have to bring some notably new technology (or unique implementation of existing technology) to the table. It doesn't even have to be good

[Citizen Klaus]

 

Korg's list of innovations from the past decade outstrip Roland's by a solid margin. KARMA was innovative. The entire Triton series was innovative (the first touch screen, MOSS, Radias, the first built-in CD burner, built-in tube distortion, even processor speed after the Triton Studio, etc.). Sometimes a fresh design and interface are innovative. Korg's MMT is innovative. Many other features of the Radias and R3 are also innovative.

 

 

KARMA is more Stephen Kay's baby than Korg's, though. (Korg did, however, decide to license the technology and run with it.)

 

And I've heard some debate about whether those "Valve Force" tubes really contribute anything that a transistor-based OD couldn't. They're a marketing innovation, sure, but I'm not really convinced that they helped advance the state of the art.

[synth_lover]

As if he really uses it :poke: That's only because it's true.

As if you know he doesn't really use it.

So you say.


If it's true why are these people using it then. How come they're not using the microkorg ? Hmmm ! The SH-201 is such a crappy synth and that's why (Marcus Brown, Jean Jarre, Hadouken, Milk Inc.....) use it. You know, because they're a bunch of clueless amateurs who dont know anything about synths. I guess they'll leave the serious synths, like the microkorg and micron to the professionals 'cause they aren't professional musicians or anything ...

[Megakazbek]

If it's true why are these people using it then. How come they're not using the microkorg ? Hmmm ! The SH-201 is such a crappy synth and that's why (Marcus Brown, Jean Jarre, Hadouken, Milk Inc.....) use it. You know, because they're a bunch of clueless amateurs who dont know anything about synths. I guess they'll leave the serious synths, like the microkorg and micron to the professionals 'cause they aren't professional musicians or anything ...

Why do you care at all about who uses it? Don't you have your own ears, your own judgement? Or you are able to think only whatever famous musicians command you to think?
If a synth sounds like crap to me, then to me it is crap, and it doesn't matter if Rudess or Jarre use this synth. After all, no one is perfect and famous musicians are allowed to have bad taste too.

[zzzxtreme]

Well, one man's 'innovative' is another man's run of the mill. Korg's list of innovations from the past decade outstrip Roland's by a solid margin. KARMA was innovative. The entire Triton series was innovative (the first touch screen, MOSS, Radias, the first built-in CD burner, built-in tube distortion, even processor speed after the Triton Studio, etc.). Sometimes a fresh design and interface are innovative. Korg's MMT is innovative. Many other features of the Radias and R3 are also innovative. That being said, I own more Roland synths and workstations than any other single make. But I still have to say that, looking at the Big Three only, the freshest ideas of the past ten years have been coming from Korg. Meanwhile, what was the last high-end VA (for its time) that Roland produced? The JP8080? Why didn't Roland at least make a VA plug-in for the Fantom? Korg has been doing it for over ten years. Yamaha also did it up to the Motif ES. True, the V-Synth XT is expandable. I have a V-Synth and like it quite a bit -- but in my opinion it's probably the only inspiring synth they've put out in the past ten years. Roland is overdue for a full featured VA. They're a capable company, and I generally like their products -- though they sometimes make me shake my head in a "what were they thinking" sort of way. But then, Korg and Yamaha sometimes do that as well.

 

 

just IMHO, isn't Radias or R3 just subtractive synthesis? where as the LA synthesis (Roland D50) something "more innovative" ? the only innovative Korg product I could think of is Wavestation, where as Roland has got D50, V-phrase, VSynth and yamaha has FM, Formant Synthesis, VL. again, just IMHO

[burster]

 

Well, one man's 'innovative' is another man's run of the mill. Korg's list of innovations from the past decade outstrip Roland's by a solid margin. KARMA was innovative. The entire Triton series was innovative... ...MOSS

 

 

Karma is licensed from Stephen Kay

 

Some of MOSS is licensed from Yamaha.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_modelling_synthesis

 

Read the bottom of the page.

 

http://www.korg.com/Product.aspx?pd=432

[zoink]

I'll qualify my position by stating up front that I own quite a few Roland products (Fantom X7, V-Synth, JD990, JD800 XP30, D50, JP8080, MC909, MC505, Alpha Juno, and some others).

While it's important to consider who originally conceived of a given feature, it's also important to look at which companies actually released it in a product and ran with it.

Korg, to my eyes, has over the past ten years steadily released new products and updated hardware at a rate that exceeds the other two major manufacturers. Korg took the original Electribe line (EA, EM, ES, EM) through the Mk-II versions, and then into the EMX and ESX. Meanwhile Roland followed up their late 90s MC505 with several flops (D2, MC307) before finally releasing the MC909 (well after the RS7000).

In workstations, Roland was the last of the Big Three to discontinue their 90s era offerings and release something updated for the 2000s. But they dropped the ball and released the original Fantom, which lacked sampling. Even the Fantom S fell short of the state of the art at the time and sold dismally, and then they finally got it right with the Fantom X. Even so, the X lacked a VA plug-in in favor of . . . you guessed it, overpriced ROM cards reminiscent of their 90s technology. Their latest offering, the Fantom G, looks good, but it seems to be going in the same direction as the Motif, which is not entirely a bad thing. It sounds pretty good, but they're really just giving people more pre-chewed food with large wave ROM sets that sound like they're straight off the radio. There's no VA option, and though the sequencer and audio track recording are nice, the feature set when it comes to actual tone generation is not very novel.

Meanwhile, Korg released the Triton, and later the Triton Studio, Extreme, and then the Oasys and M3. All had VA plug-in options, or in the case of the Oasys, additional synth engines built in.

It is difficult to compare workstations released over the past ten years, since each of the major manufacturers has timed the release of their products in leap frog fashion. But it's worth noting that Roland was quite late getting into the game in a meaningful way.

In VAs, Korg has the Radias, which has a feature set that in many ways exceeds that of considerably higher priced VAs. Meanwhile Roland has the SH-201, which to me sounded kind of plain when I played one, with a vanilla feature set and no display. The 201 is kind of cheap, and was probably intended to be so, but Roland should have placed it beneath a flagship VA as a lower cost option. I suppose one could say that the V-synth was/is their flagship in this department, but it doesn't really fit in that category since the VA section (Ver. 2 and after) is really an adjunct to what is essentially a sound mangling machine. The GT is also very nice. As I said before, the V-Synth is Roland's saving grace. They really did something good there.

Other things also count in Roland's favor, such as Vari-Phrase processing -- a late 90s innovation whose original implementation was kind of odd. But Roland also has a way of endlessly recycling old ideas (e.g. D-Beam), while Korg keeps putting out products like the Kaoss Pad (1, 2, 3, and soon the Kaossilator) and the DS-10.

Korg just seems a bit fresher to me.

[girevik]

just IMHO, isn't Radias or R3 just subtractive synthesis?

 

 

It also has sample playback (DWGS style) and something called Variable Phase Modulation, which I guess is Korg's version of FM.

[Tomkeen]

If it's true why are these people using it then. How come they're not using the microkorg ? Hmmm ! The SH-201 is such a crappy synth and that's why (Marcus Brown, Jean Jarre, Hadouken, Milk Inc.....) use it. You know, because they're a bunch of clueless amateurs who dont know anything about synths. I guess they'll leave the serious synths, like the microkorg and micron to the professionals 'cause they aren't professional musicians or anything ...

Those guys are all endorsed by Roland. They get a 201 for free, get some cash to show up with one every now and then to make people think they actually use them. They might even use them overy once in a while. But do you really think that JMJ is impressed with this toy? Look at all the stuff he has used over the years. Have you seen footage of his studio?

Also, the microkorg has been used by a lot more pro artists than the 201 has. But I guess "they're a bunch of clueless amateurs".

[ChristianRock]

[The Audacity Works]

Korg's list of innovations from the past decade outstrip Roland's by a solid margin. KARMA was innovative. The entire Triton series was innovative (the first touch screen, MOSS, Radias, the first built-in CD burner, built-in tube distortion, even processor speed after the Triton Studio, etc.).

How is processor speed innovative? And tube distortion wasn't even tube distortion. It makes D-Beam and V-Link look positively game-changing. And the KAOSSilator was done by Roland first

[Tomkeen]

Oh yeah, sorry... I hope you enjoy your 201


(really, I do)

[burster]

Zoink, I think you are missing the bigger picture. Sure Korg came out with a VA expansion for there romplers but, Roland has released Vari-phrase, V-Drums, V-Synths, more Guitar Synths, V-Accordians, MV-8000s and many other cool products in the last 10 years. If anybody has been lacking it's Yamaha. BTW. I also has a huge selection of Roland and well as Korg stuff.

 

[Metrosonus]

if anything, korg has enjoyed better success overall compared to roland's innovative and more expensive products, IMHO.

 

I, personally would be interested in a mega Sh201 synth. The main reason I don't have one is I don't have the space for it. But it is cheap, fun and can sound cool in some contexts.