Why Buy Roland Anymore? What In The World Is Going On With T

[johnc]

same here quinnx. its a shame that just a small amount of time and money could really improve the os. however i use the g at the centre of all my music productions even though i have sonar and numerous excellent soft synths. infact these have been a great add on. these with the still unbeaten sound of my gem rpx piano module played from a roland digital piano. the perfect set up for me. im keeping the g and all its friends until they fall apart.

[Ansilatoms]

I hear ya. I've been disappointed in what Roland has been releasing, but more than that, in their pursuit of the newest and sparkliest, they are horrible about letting older products just die. I've had a number of units that I've held on to, because I liked them, and when they've ceased working correctly, Roland has been of NO help either with repair, or parts. They should either use more parts of generic configuration, or actually hire people who can "repair" electronics, as opposed to just plugging in modules and boards. I have no electronics training, and yet I've been able to repair a couple things I'd been told they couldn't do anything with. Customer service is definitely lacking.

[comradec]

misuspita: "Well, as others said before me, the only real purpose I see today for a hardware workstation is in the live gigging situation. Even as far advanced as computers are today, they are not reliable enough to keep going along at -20degrees C or at +50, windy, dusty, humid athmosphere, like my G (and before it other keyboards) does."

Regrettably, the Fantom-G is not the hardware workstation for such a live gigging situation.

It's fine if you just playing live keys. But if you are using programmed sequences and samples, it's not up to the job.

Having discovered that it was nearly impossible to transfer songs between projects on the Fantom-G - which is essential if you're compiling a set list for a gig - I had to look for alternative solutions.

There's no point even trying to load stereo audio files of complete mixes as the Fantom-G will take several minutes to boot. In a live performance situation, this is not acceptable. Even if you have the luxury of loading the set in advance of your performance, there's always a risk that it might be disconnected from the power for some reason (engineer accidentally unplugging the wrong piece of gear or whatever) and you would have to reboot again.

The solution I have found is to go back to another synth workstation I already owned and which cost me just a quarter of the price of the Fantom-G. I refer to my Alesis Fusion, which has an internal hard drive. I'm not saying that the Fusion is superior to the FG in all respects, but it is able to store 24-bit WAV files of stereo backing tracks on its hard drive and I can program these into songs alongside the synth patch I'm going to play live.

The tracks don't all have to be loaded at once, as happens with the FG. I can stream them from the hard drive as and when I wish to play them.

--
Steve Cooke
http://soundcloud.com/stevecooke
http://www.facebook.com/comradec

[jur451c]

I've never really understood the need to use 'sequences' in a live situation. Surely the most efficient way of doing things would be to mix down each song that you want to do live to a stereo wav, then it's very easy to import each wav into songs in a new project.
But hey, what do I know ; )

[mojkarma]

Let's be honest. None of the workstation is really designed to act as an audio wav player. The fantom g is not really that much worse in that regard as are the other workstations.
If you create songs with multiple tracks, there is a great chance that you will fill up the sample memory long before you come to the part to think about how to use all those songs live on stage.
If you use midifiles, you are possibly limited to the available remaining tracks for the live parts.
And if you create backing tracks, my math tells me that for a 4 minute song (stereo wave) you'll need about 40 Mb of sample memory. That means that you can have only about 20 songs in the sample memory area. And it requires a significant amount of time to load all that staff into the ram.

In that case, using a mp3 player would IMHO be the best and cheapest option.

The Alesis Fusion streams from its HD. That's true. As a downside, it needs to load even the patches into the ram before you can play anything on it. It makes fast changing of patches impossible and it especially can't change patches seamlessly as the FG does.

I would say, for the stage, the FG has some very strong points and tools, making it better as the rest in a lot of ways. But none workstation was designed in the way that you can trigger a lot of audio backing tracks and play simultaneously other parts live.

For a heavy use of backing tracks on stage, as I said, I would consider an ipod or a netbook and the problem is solved. The FG is not the best tool for this, but neither is a Motif or a M3.

[comradec]

jur451c: I've never really understood the need to use 'sequences' in a live situation. Surely the most efficient way of doing things would be to mix down each song that you want to do live to a stereo wav, then it's very easy to import each wav into songs in a new project.
But hey, what do I know ; )


Have you actually played live using programmed material?

One reason to use a sequencer is that you have more control over its mix than you can have over a stereo WAV. Yes, of course, you will try to get the best mix for the audio file, but different venues and different PAs have different results and it could be that adjusting the mix in real-time, during the gig, is the best way to accommodate a particular acoustic environment.

You also have more flexibility for other unexpected circumstances. Say, your bassist can't make it to the gig for some reason (stuck in an airport or whatever). Working with full sequencer control, you might have the option to activate a bass guitar part that will fill in the gap.

You have also not really countered the key objection to doing what you suggest on the Fantom-G, which I did mention in my previous post: it takes a very long time to load a song-length stereo WAV on the Fantom-G. It's about 30MB of data for a three-minute song. Multiply that by, say, 12 songs, some of them possibly even longer and you will find it takes several minutes to boot the Fantom-G to load your project. What if you were playing even more songs?

What if the power supply is disturbed during the gig? It can happen, you know. You would have to wait around, looking like a fool, while the project reloaded. A power interruption wouldn't have to be the sort of thing anyone else would notice. Just a temporary blip in the supply, causing only a light flicker elsewhere, would empty the Fantom-G's RAM instantly.

That in itself is a good reason to use sequencer data. It requires much less memory than audio. Even if you use samples in the song, it is better to have two/four/eight bar loops that can be repeated and looped in a sequencer than to have the audio file spread across the whole song. It will load much more quickly on the Fantom-G. Assuming, that is, you could transfer the data to the live set project in the first place - which is rather unlikely.

--
Steve Cooke
http://soundcloud.com/stevecooke
http://www.facebook.com/comradec

[comradec]

mojkarma: "The Alesis Fusion streams from its HD. That's true. As a downside, it needs to load even the patches into the ram before you can play anything on it. It makes fast changing of patches impossible and it especially can't change patches seamlessly as the FG does."

It's true that a patch takes longer to load on the Fusion. But not in a way that's been an issue for me personally in a live situation. I tend to have a single patch that I'll be playing on each song - usually a piano, electric piano or strings - and that loads as soon as I turn the dial to the song I'm playing next. It takes about a second to load. Nothing noticeable. If I was trying to switch between patches during the middle of playing something, it might be noticeable. But I don't need to do that. I could also program the Fusion so that the second patch was located on a second track within the sequencer and simply switch to that track, where the patch would already be loaded. Slightly more fiddly than on the Fantom-G but not a big deal.

The proof of the pudding though is that I've got both of these hardware workstations at my disposal. I actually know the workings of the Fantom-G much better than the Fusion. But which one am I using? The Fusion. Because its limitations are far less of a problem at gigs than the Fantom-G's.

I do, by the way, have an MP3 player as a backup option in case of failure in my main synth workstation. I also have a Roland SonicCell, which is what I was using for my backing tracks initially after finding that the Fantom-G was not up to the job. That works okay. But it's easier to have everything done from a single place and now I'm using the Fusion for that.

--
Steve Cooke
http://soundcloud.com/stevecooke
http://www.facebook.com/comradec

[comradec]

Don't get me wrong. The Fantom-G has great sounds and many of my songs were programmed on that in the first place (I also work in Ableton Live). It's just that once they're programmed on the Fantom-G, they're effectively trapped within their projects and can't be moved around in order to compile a single project for live work. I am therefore having to export the Fantom-G's WAV files to my Alesis Fusion (via a computer) for the live purposes that I have described.

--
Steve Cooke
http://soundcloud.com/stevecooke
http://www.facebook.com/comradec

[mojkarma]

comradec:
"he proof of the pudding though is that I've got both of these hardware workstations at my disposal. I actually know the workings of the Fantom-G much better than the Fusion. But which one am I using? The Fusion. Because its limitations are far less of a problem at gigs than the Fantom-G's. "

See, you are using the Fusion because it has far less "problems" for YOU. That's the important part. For you, it's a simple one performance setup where you play one patch during the whole song. I on the other side use often more than one setup during a song and than the switching could be a problem. It could be especially a problem because the song is running and there is the question how can you run a song and change patches at the same time.
For that kind of work, I would use an arranger keyboard.
The way how the Fusion works is actually what live keyboarder don't want on stage. At least, most of them. I want immediately accessible sounds/patches which can be selected during the song/show, without thinking whether it needs 1 or 10 seconds (depending on the sample size of the patch) to load the next patch/live setup, especially during a song.
So, just to make a point, the Alesis Fusion is an option for some and for others it is not. Not to mention that it was supported equally "well" as the Fantom G but at least, the Fantom G didn't have as serious problems as the Fusion.
Power failure on stage is also not a problem really. There are power backup systems and they are quite cheap. I use one all the time. It not only prevents the keyboard from power failure, it also assures the right voltage all the time. It's well invested money.

Bottomline is, there are 50 songs possible on the FG at once with up to 1Gb of sample data. If you do your work in the same project, the FG will do its job. The more samples you'll be using, the longer the loading times will be. Loading even 1 Gb of data shouldn't take more than 15 or 20 minutes and that's IMO acceptable. But as I said, you could always use power backup and be sure that you don't have to load something again if the power goes down.
But bottomline is also that none workstation is really dedicated to be used in the way you want it to use. That's where the arranger keyboards come into the game.

[Mystic38]

I've never really understood the need to use 'sequences' in a live situation. Surely the most efficient way of doing things would be to mix down each song that you want to do live to a stereo wav, then it's very easy to import each wav into songs in a new project.
But hey, what do I know ; )

@jur451,
Sure there is no NEED to use sequences, just as there is no NEED to use a backing track at all for some people....But, if you want to use a backing track would you not wish to be able to:
a) have control over part mix (adapt to different room conditions)?
b) can mute or solo tracks on the fly (cope with a guest musician)?
c) change tempo and instruments (fundamentally change the mood of the song)?

So I see the question in reverse.... Why would you mix down to a single wav file for backing when you have a 16 part mixer and sequencer in front of you?... You lose all control and gain nothing.

Cheers!

[Mystic38]

Anyway, back to the thread topic...,

Even if Roland were to produce a new workstation next year....given how they have disenfranchised Fantom G owners who do they think will be buying the new machines?..

.......and that is a serious question.

[johnc]

mystic exactly ! their marketing department havent figured that one out yet lol

[comradec]

Mystic38: "Even if Roland were to produce a new workstation next year....given how they have disenfranchised Fantom G owners who do they think will be buying the new machines?"

I doubt that they will bring out another synth workstation next year. On specifications at least, the Fantom-G looked to be the best workstation on the market at the time of its release, which is why many of us bought it then. In practicality, it hasn't turned out that way and the potential it had, and still could have, was not realised.

(To some extent, the same could be said of the Alesis Fusion, whose praises I was singing earlier. It does some things much better than the Fantom-G, but there were whole areas of potential - some promised, some just implied - that were never harnessed by the manufacturer due to its relative failure on the market. It's possible to be very positive about the Fusion's feature-set if you purchased it a year or two after it came out and its retail price was halved, and even more so if, like me, you got it towards the end of its production run at a quarter of the original price, but you might not have been so satisfied had you acquired it at the full price early on.)

If, as has been suggested by those who work in music retail, the Fantom-G is indeed the worst seller among the major workstations, it may be that Roland will write off the Fantom range.

Roland would have to give its existing owners a real boost in terms of an OS update a year or so before releasing a successor if they wanted to carry all of the existing user community with them. I suspect that many of us would soon forget our complaints if an update that addressed the concerns came out in the near future. Although we might be more cautious about believing Roland's claims for a follow-up workstation, we would likely feel more goodwill towards the manufacturer and therefore be more likely to trust the new product.

--
Steve Cooke
http://soundcloud.com/stevecooke
http://www.facebook.com/comradec

[aftertouch]

Hi there,

Just to give my 2 cents.
I am a roland fan, but only for their hardware, not the software. By that i mean the numerously discussed software updates.
I have been playing keys for almost 20 years now, and for the first fourteen years i always played yamaha, with some help of cubase.
When i got a Fantom X, i was blown away. What a beautifull sounds. It made my Yamaha PRS9000 sound like a coffeemachine in my opinion

Nowadays i own a fantom G, A v-synth XT, a G70, a sp-404 and a TD9-KX.
And off course the great tweakbooks from art
Altough i have a fully functional DAW up and going here, i don't use it. Much to much hassle with windows 7 64 bit.

Now, with the topic: i find myself working less with the G than i did with the X. I can't put my finger on it, but it has something to do with the differince in workflow. I got much quicker around with the x, altough i own the G now much longer. I am finding myself checking out other workstations, and reading a lot of the forums to see what the status of their software updates are. I think for the G it is lacking.
I know that there are some who say: 'stop talking and make music'. I can dig that, but i think there are two sides on that.
I mean the following:
When i buy a computer, tv or even nowadays a car, there are frequent software updates. Some to enhance and improve, some to fix errors.
For the amount of money a Fantom costs, it is normal in the today world to offer those updates regularly (for example: i bought a server this summer. It was working and doing it's job. Still: every month there are one or two firmware-updates to enhance this product. It makes you think..). But the Fantom did not sell well, some say.. To be blunt: that is none of my bussines. Roland is a big company, they gotta act like one. Big sales on an item or not, it's all in the game.
As for the ARX expansion, it's the same. When you introduce it as a company and implement it on a costly workstation, you have to do better than this. It is a laugh! Besides the overpricing, they are too slow on bringing new ARX expansions. They had to do better research at first, and then desided to go with the same expansion slots as the X did. When they brought the ARX feature, they brought an expectation towards their costumers. An obligation to bring at least a wider choise than they do now, it's a missed chance. I had fully confidence that there would be more choice of ARX cards. My confidence is now at point zero. No way i will ever invest in a new product with a new system of expansion cards.
I don't mind if they bring out a new workstation, even if they did a year ago. That's also their bussines. But don't forget the fantom owners.

To end with: i hope i didn't offend anyone. I am following this forum for a few years now, and loving it. It is a great place to get priceless information on the gear. The only reason i don't write often enough is that my English is poor.

To all a wonderfull and musical 2011!