Roland announces the RD-700GX SuperNATURAL Piano Kit

[GregC]

and to think, 30 years ago, general midi had such great promise

[curt]

What a long, strange trip it's been!

[shadowfax]

I finally got my K-RD700GX1 expoansion yesterday. In a few words, I love it! It's worth every penny. It's a nice improvement over the already very good stock pianos. I find the new sounds much more round, powerful and dynamic. I honestly think that this is a must for every RD-700GX owner.

PS: Would there be other ARX expansions in the SRX format for our RD's??

[dewster]

Can anyone explain to me the technical differences between the SuperNATURAL piano kit SRX card and other SRX cards? For instance, it would be really great to plug the SRX piano into the Roland Sonic Cell, but that's not possible, correct?

[shadowfax]

Although I'm not sure about this, because Roland doesn't give much information, I think that the K-RD700GX1 cannot work on any other SRX synth because it makes use of the SuperNATURAL technology built-in in the RD-700GX (which is the same as found in the Fantom G), and it's not just a collection of samples and patches, as "normal" SRX cards are.

[dewster]

So this is one of those "when is an SRX card not an SRX card" riddles? It's really an ARX card in SRX clothing?

[delirium]

>>>So this is one of those "when is an SRX card not an SRX card" riddles? It's really an ARX card in SRX clothing?

looks like, I think that RD700GX should have ARX and SRX slots.
IMO roland screwed up design of this.

[shadowfax]

Hi all,

After having played the new pianos for around 10 days, I have to say that my opinion about the K-RD700GX1 is just as good or even better as my first impressions. I find the new piano sounds to be very round, polished, warm and dynamic; more natural, in a word

Nevertheless, I'd like to share a thought and to know the opinion of other owners about one point. The point is that, actually, I doubt that this card includes new piano samples at all. In fact, I suspect that it uses the piano samples of the RD-700GX and the card "merely" contains the necessary hardware and software for using the hybrid sample/modelling synthesis. However, that wouldn't mean at all that the card isn't worth every penny, as the piano sounds are fantastic, and that's the important thing, after all.

If my ears don't fool me, after accurate listening I'm pretty sure that the "Grand Piano 1" patch is based on the Expressive piano samples; the "Grand Piano 2", on the "Superior Grand" samples; the "Grand Piano 3", on the "Ultimate Grand" samples; and the "Grand Piano 4", on the "RD Grand" samples. Do you guys feel the same? I'd like to hear some opinions about it.

[orangefunk]

> If my ears don't fool me, after accurate listening I'm pretty sure that the "Grand Piano 1" patch is based on the Expressive piano samples; the "Grand Piano 2", on the "Superior Grand" samples; the "Grand Piano 3", on the "Ultimate Grand" samples; and the "Grand Piano 4", on the "RD Grand" samples. Do you guys feel the same? I'd like to hear some opinions about it.


Hmm.. I hope so as I love the Superior Grand sound... will have to see tonght.! I have mainly stuck with Grand Piano 1 which does sound a lot like Expressive piano to me.

I did a soul-jazz gig with a singer usng just the new RD700GX piano sound and it worked out very fine... very dynamic...

[jagannath]

The great advantage of having the new supernatural card is, above all, the precision in dynamics; of course the previous stock tones were very good, but now the touch response is much better, especially if you're accustomed to play a grand piano. And also I find the new tones more "balanced".

[orangefunk]

Shadowfax, I did an A/B by putting the pianos together in a layer and switching between them...

SN01:Grand Piano 1 is kind of based on Expressive Piano... some samples have changed but yep the character is definitely there.

SN:05 Grand Piano 2 is Superior like you say... but the Superior is slightly more woody in the 2nd and 3rd octaves...

So yep the card actually uses the existing sounds and provides some kind of smoothing between samples and additional resonance/blending technologies.

So... this is the reason why the SN will not work with the SRX enabled boards (e.g. Fantom).

[kenchan]

might be a silly question, but have to ask because i read the manual for the expansion kit but does not say.

After loading the contents of the USB drive you can remove the drive right? no need to have that connected after the update?

[orangefunk]

yes you can remove it... the drive just contains the info for the OS Update to upgrade the internal flash ROM

[dewster]

I'm not sure what hardware the SuperNATURAL Piano Kit has on it (could someone take a photo of the chip side and post it?) but SRX expansion boards are usually 64 MB of samples. If they were able to give you that with a mere algorithm update all you would get in the Piano Kit would be a USB stick.

I think the similarity of voices between the Piano Kit and the stock RD-700GX voices is due to the use of the same fundamental sample sessions for both, and not that they are utilizing built-in RD-700GX samples for the SuperNATURAL expansion. 64 MB is (sadly and bizarrely) a huge sample memory for a hardware DP, no way the built-in RD-700GX piano samples are that large.

The above is 100% conjecture, but I'd be very surprised to be wrong. Anything else wouldn't make any sense.

[kenchan]

thanks, orangefunk!

dewster- nord has like 512M of sample memory so i think the RD has about that if not more. a user did a sample of a real piano for our fantomG and that was like 500M and it wasn't 88 key sample for one piano.