My review of the Fantom G6 - Wow!

[G-Man]

i bought my FG8 back in dec 2007 .. and had a G7 as well.

Hey...wasn't that released in 08 in january... What do you mean by december 07...you were there before all of us ;D

[mojkarma]

Apparently I already have much more experience then some people on this site. I can't seem to find a single problem with the FG but lots of people do...

That's good for you. Nobody is questioning your love towards the FG. Nor does it mean that we don't love the FG if we criticize it.

I have read the problems people are having in these forums and most are not relevant and easily fixed but people just seem to be lazy.

That's highly unfair and it would have been better if you hadn't write this. Neither are all problems easily fixed, nor are people lazy. I guess that you are old enough to realize that different people work differently and that different people have different needs. I myself don't record. I play live and use a lot of samples. The sampling part on the FG is a disaster compared to any other keyboard when it comes to file handling, file transfer, preparing imported samples to be used in a multisample and so on.

I just did a test, I created a single phrase with 16 SysEx messages that instantly turns up all those reverb dials on each part without any patch editing... completely unmodified preset patches without saving to user locations!... that took 5 min to do and takes only 8 sec to add this phase to any one song eliminating your problems cleanly... and that one phase with only 16 messages was created completely on the Fantom without external tools or references.

Your test is absolutely worthless for anybody who doesn't use the sequencer. Is it so difficult to understand? There is a live mode in the keyboard. It has a strong focus for live gigging musicians. And those live gigging musicians have to save a patch every time when they change something on the PFX.
Let's make it short: IMHO, the effects should be part of a live/studio set when you work in those modes. That would save different effect settings as part of the live/studio sets. In its present form, the live/studio set just contain shortcuts to the settings in the patch mode. And again, you fill up your user memory with some crippled patches where you changed something on the effects and after a week you have no clue why you saved a particular patch in the user memory. You use the same piano for your latin tune and for your ballad song. In the ballad song you want it mellow sounding, and in your latin tune you want to hear the high frequencies. On any other keyboard you just adjust the EQ accordingly and save it as part of your live/studio set. On the FG you have to save two different piano patches in the user patch memory. You waste memory for the same sound with different EQ/Effect settings. That's the point. It has nothing to do with being lazy. Roland is the one who was lazy because the gave us a highly flawed system.

I think others need to spend less time bitching and more time playing and leaning what the Fantom is capable of... one thing is for sure it's not going to hold your hand and do everything for you.

Your assumption is that everybody is lazy or stupid. You should try other keyboards and workstations to see that the same things things can be implemented in a far better way. I never had to rewrite a patch on a Korg workstation because of some crippled send parameter. I was always able to add reverb on a patch in a multitimbral mode, regardless how dry it was programmed in a patch mode. Without the need to save the patch separately.
Let's bring this discussion to an end: nobody says that the FG is bad. But quite a lot of things are programmed in a strange matter. It's a tool. It should support me and not the other way around. The FG designers are the ones who were lazy to implement things correctly. Not the user.
Try to create ONE multisample in your project and then try to import it into another project. Then come back and tell us who is lazy.

[rbrucemtl]

I apologize I did not want to imply that "everybody is lazy or stupid" I was only trying to write a positive review of the FG and offer up some ideas to try and help people that seem to be struggling with the FG

BTW.. you can assign phrases with SysEx messages to a pad(s) that instantly sets your routing up for the 8 parts of your live set too. You might have to press it each time you change sets but it's super quick... just an idea to try.

I'm just offering suggestions, not calling people stupid... I got defensive because someone said in a previous post that I did not have enough experience... I still think if your resourceful enough you can over come most issues.

[mojkarma]

No need to apologize. We all have our opinions. And I respect yours. It happens often that new users have a extremely positive view and try to turn down some argumented criticism.
BTW, using the pads for sending Sysex messages would theoretically be an option. But often the pads are used for some other functions (triggering samples for example) and on stage you don't have the time to change the function of the pads. Therefor, saving the patches separately is the only option.

[Mystic38]

that is exactly what you did..

I apologize I did not want to imply that "everybody is lazy or stupid" I was only trying to write a positive review of the FG and offer up some ideas to try and help people that seem to be struggling with the FG
.

Any review needs to be balanced, and stating that the arpeggiator was fine (for your use) is hardly a healthy, qualified review... An ostrich with its head in the sand cannot describe an elephant.

The Fantom G, at inception clearly stated in the manual that user arpeggiation patterns were possible. That statement is fraudulent... and the myth of user arpeggiation patterns has existed largely to this day... the fact is that the Fantom G arpeggiator is of a laughable level of capability for a 2008 product.. and its capabilities in this regard are far surpassed by the Fantom X and Juno G, which the FG is supposed to be superior to... So given that the technology existed, there is no excuse for this to be missing.

My respectful suggestion to you was simply to develop use and experience of the Fantom G and then you will stumble upon some of the more telling issues, many of which could have been fixed in an o.s. update.

The requirement for every tweak of an instrument to be saved as a user patch IS a major weakness and an ongoing headache..i have 12 patches of variations of one simple piano patch to support 15 songs in a live set.. it is confusing and unnecessary... vs the more elegant solution as discussed by Mojkarma and present in competitive products.

Another major flaw is the inability to transfer a song with samples from one project to another... Given that the sequencer and song/phrase design is a development of the MV then again it is rediculous to assume that such a well thought out design such as the MV, where you had a library of sounds that could be pulled at will into projects, should be developed and improved into such a closed minded architecture. Again, the technology existed previously and so there is and was NO excuse for FG song/phrase/instrument management to be weaker in concept than a 2003 product...

IMO It is the responsibility of the customer base to highlight to the manufacturer and other potential users the weakness and errors in a product... after all, it is a reasonable customer expectation that a new advanced product has at least the capabillities of its predecessors.... in this case, the FG does not meet those expectations.

Finally I would take care of implementing flawed logic.. Just because I have identifed weaknesses and flaws in the FG does not mean that i do not like it and do not use it...(nor does it mean that i am stupid, lazy, and bitching).. it has many advantages over a Motif.. but is currently crippled by its o.s. and is clearly suffering poor sales as a result and none of that is my fault.:)

This is a user/user forum..you posted a review that you love the FG.. good for you... just dont describe it for what it is not.

[Quinnx.]

Well I can understand WOW!
especially when someone is coming in on v1.50 for the G

I know thats what my reaction would have been had the G started at this level from day one.
Its unfortunate that most people here now are sore from getting the G at v1.0 beta and has taken so long to
get to v1.50.

But have said that.. the G is rock solid and is now at the point that makes it usable even without getting to v2.0

[rbrucemtl]

Any review needs to be balanced, and stating that the arpeggiator was fine (for your use) is hardly a healthy, qualified review... An ostrich with its head in the sand cannot describe an elephant.

Reviews are subjective... write your own. My experience with the Fantom G is bliss.

The arpeggiator is basically unlimited. You can create user arpeggiations on the FG you seem to be taking about the fact that you loose the ability to apply a motif settings and that it lacks the "grid step editing" of the FantomX... if it's such a huge let down spend a hour in your daw to create a library of arps with custom motifs and it's done.

There is nothing fraudulent about the manual everything is described and functions as described.

"Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left."
;-)

---

I had a Korg M50 (the baby M3) and I had it for one year... I tried to make music with it but I found it was difficult to get anything done, but it did sound amazing. Since the Fantom G I've been having fun and making music effortlessly it just makes more sense then the korg system. I have not been stuck at all... anything I'm imagining the Fantom G is delivering.

One thing I notice here is that you and others are playing live... I'm recording and using studio mode as I stated in my review.

For me from a studio point of view... the effects routing is ultra powerful and I want the flexibility to send reverb at deferent levels from each tone in a patch.

Another major flaw is the inability to transfer a song with samples from one project to another...

You absolutely can... maybe you should try again... I admit it may be a little more complicated then it needs to be but you absolutely can copy songs with sample to new projects using only the fantom Gs file utility. You need to copy the samples, songs and phases separately. Ask me and I will write you some detailed instructions to do that... I've only had my Fantom G for a week but I seem to know it well. (I don't mean to imply your stupid - just in case your thinking that.)

IMO It is the responsibility of the customer base to highlight to the manufacturer and other potential users the weakness and errors in a product... after all, it is a reasonable customer expectation that a new advanced product has at least the capabillities of its predecessors.... in this case, the FG does not meet those expectations.

Please... the Fantom G rocks compared to all the other Roland products I've owned in the past... Thank you Roland!

but is currently crippled by its o.s. and is clearly suffering poor sales as a result and none of that is my fault.

The OS is very stable and well documented... the documentation is accurate and functions exactly as described. How is that flawed ? It is... what it is...

For some reason I don't believe Roland would share there sales results with you.

This is a user/user forum..you posted a review that you love the FG.. good for you... just dont describe it for what it is not.

It is exactly what I have described plus some... I will update the review soon I'm sure it will remain positive ... this is my review it was suposed to be positive... but I did not realize this community was so jaded.

You have not offered any solid information to change my views.

[rbrucemtl]

Well I can understand WOW!
especially when someone is coming in on v1.50 for the G

I know thats what my reaction would have been had the G started at this level from day one.
Its unfortunate that most people here now are sore from getting the G at v1.0 beta and has taken so long to
get to v1.50.

But have said that.. the G is rock solid and is now at the point that makes it usable even without getting to v2.0

Thank you... so there are people here that can be positive :-)

For me it's common sense to wait for version 1.?? to let the system mature. I don't think I would have payed $2800+ for the FG6 ever so I guess that adds to some people frustrations.

[timp410]

I stated two or three yeas ago that all the bitching and complaining would cause Roland to abandon the Fantom G. If I were a potential buyer and viewed the complaints on this forum, I probably would not have purchased one. If a company cannot sell a product, they will drop it. There is a better way to get a company to implements fixes than bitching. In the end, you just killed your on investment, congratulations. When I bought the NI Maschine, it had it's share of shortcoming but the community embraced the product and allowed it to mature.

[johnc]

ive just finished a demo song ( attached ) with a session singer from the usa. i live in the uk. it was done entirely on the fantom g with the exception of some vocal editing using sonar and melodyne in rewire. the piano sound is a gem rpx and one sound comes from an arturia cs80. these were all sampled on to the g. the mastering was done in ozone 4,( and that is a big difference maker). she is really happy with it and it might be used in a tv program. so i have lots of the supposedly better stuff, but i always use the g. its a great machine.

[mojkarma]

I stated two or three yeas ago that all the bitching and complaining would cause Roland to abandon the Fantom G.

Don't get me wrong, but your statement is a little naive. Constant bitching and complaining is a sign that there is something wrong with the product. Besides that, when we talk about Roland, we are not talking about little kids who decided to abandon their toy. Creating a workstation is a multimillion dollar investment. You don't abandon such an investment just because people complain about it.

If a company cannot sell a product, they will drop it.

Yes, if it's a total failure. But if it's not (and IMHO the FG is not a total failure) you try to make it better. And by far the most complaints are software related. Things which could have been sorted out in a reasonable time frame.

There is a better way to get a company to implements fixes than bitching.

And what would that be? Some people were bitching here. A couple of those were banned from the forum just because of complaining. Artemiy even collected a list of complains/wishes and send it to the main FG designer. What happened? Nothing.

In the end, you just killed your on investment, congratulations.

The customer is the one who pays the money and their salary. Not the other way around. The risk is not on the users side. Everybody will survive a "killed investment" of 2-3000 bucks. But if the company looses their customers, the damage will be much much higher for them. You should congratulate Roland for mostly ignoring their customers on their flagship product.

[timp410]

I stated two or three yeas ago that all the bitching and complaining would cause Roland to abandon the Fantom G.

Don't get me wrong, but your statement is a little naive. Constant bitching and complaining is a sign that there is something wrong with the product. Besides that, when we talk about Roland, we are not talking about little kids who decided to abandon their toy. Creating a workstation is a multimillion dollar investment. You don't abandon such an investment just because people complain about it.

I'm definitely not naive, I am a realist and that is why I new they would abandon the product. They were not going to sink anymore money on R&D without any return on their investment.

If a company cannot sell a product, they will drop it.

Yes, if it's a total failure. But if it's not (and IMHO the FG is not a total failure) you try to make it better. And by far the most complaints are software related. Things which could have been sorted out in a reasonable time frame.

Like I said before, they were not going to sink anymore money in a product they cannot sell.

There is a better way to get a company to implements fixes than bitching.

And what would that be? Some people were bitching here. A couple of those were banned from the forum just because of complaining. Artemiy even collected a list of complains/wishes and send it to the main FG designer. What happened? Nothing.

They abandon the board because it already had a bad reputation. Once a product has been tarnished, it’s extremely hard if not impossible to undo the damage.

In the end, you just killed your on investment, congratulations.

The customer is the one who pays the money and their salary. Not the other way around. The risk is not on the users side. Everybody will survive a "killed investment" of 2-3000 bucks. But if the company looses their customers, the damage will be much much higher for them. You should congratulate Roland for mostly ignoring their customers on their flagship product.

Well all I can say is they are still in business and the Jupiter seems to be selling. I'm pretty sure 2-3000 bucks is not pocket change for most consumers so it looks like we lost.

[mojkarma]

We didn't lost anything caused by our behavior. That's my whole point. At the beginning of the FG people were nicely complaining about some design flaws. Nothing happened. And people get more offensive in the way how they complain because of their frustration.
Yes, the Jupiter is selling. The question is just how well. It's impossible to know but I see that one of the biggest online seller in Germany (and Europe) ranks the Jupiter at rank 33. That's pretty weak IMHO.

[Leh173]

Hey rbrucemtl

I have had a similar experience to you with the FG6. Picked it up second hand a few months back mainly to use live and have found it to be a great keyboard. Obviously I've joined the party late, after having an eye on it for a year or so, so it has the 1.5 system. Generally it has been fine. Most problems I have been able to workaround. I also LOVE the pro edit! Been able to get good results out if. It's funny, it works very much the same as my JV-1080, yet I was always left cold by my programming on that, yet even using similar waveforms on the FG, the results have been so good. Much better than I expected. It's actually fun to program.

I have to say I did find the FX routing in regards to the send levels being set in the patch confusing at first as I was working in Live Mode and kept thinking I was saving all my send levels there. It was a disappointing to see that's not the case, but I don't find re-saving the patches to be a big deal as I usually edit most of mine anyway, but still I think Roland should have made it that the Live Sets saved their own send settings for the tones, perhaps using offsets so this could be avoided, but I guess their idea was make the patches work and sound the same in any mode so they avoided using the reverb and chorus in a lot of patches. Pros and cons either way IMHO. I also wish the mapping of parameters for realtime control was a bit more flexible and easier, but again I can't really complain as I have been able to achieve what I wanted regardless. Generally I find the G to be quite a good and satisfying system to use, despite one or niggles. The lack of being able to easily move a multisampled patch is a bad omission though. Also a MULTI CATCH mode should have implemented for Live Mode.

I did have a weird one the other day in that when I loaded a project off a USB stick and then later re-loaded my internal project again, it loaded really slowly and left out a few samples, The samples not being all loaded is apparently due to a bug with sync output being on. Not sure why the internal project loaded so slowly though, usually it loads very quickly when I first boot up. I work within the internal memory for my band to avoid long project load times. I only use a few samples.

Slightly OT I read the other day that Chicken Systems are going to release their Fantom Creator soon, so the perhaps moving assets between projects issues may be resolved.

http://www.samplerzone.com/forums/viewt ... =13&t=2754

I still think the G was the best choice for me at this point in time. A pleasure to perform live with. Really satisfying.

[Mystic38]

This is exactly the misrepresentation many in this forum has promoted, despite the facts being to the contrary... and yet you are taking me to task for being factual and accurate.

The arpeggiator is basically unlimited. You can create user arpeggiations on the FG you seem to be taking about the fact that you loose the ability to apply a motif settings and that it lacks the "grid step editing" of the FantomX... if it's such a huge let down spend a hour in your daw to create a library of arps with custom motifs and it's done.
There is nothing fraudulent about the manual everything is described and functions as described.

I have no idea why you would continue to support such misrepresentation, so I suggest you learn the difference between a step sequence and an arpeggiated pattern.. Wiki can help you if you need.

There is NO support for user arpeggiated patterns in the FG, simply user step sequences...so why contine this charade?..the FG arpeggiator is crippled.

FYI It no longer bothers me as I use a Nova with the FG for arppegiated patterns..but lets be honest here, or would you actually prefer someone to buy a Fantom G based on false pretences?