NEW FANTOM-G - THREAD #2

[thekeymaster]

Well there's an easy way not to offend anyone....tell it has it is

Hi my names Neil Alcock,I am totally and utterly 100% a nobody who plays professionally and writes songs for a living with my band here in England,UK,owns a bunch of gear and just requires truthful,honest comments on the Fantom G.If some of you have had hands on experience and want to share it with us without being too wound up about who you are,what access you've had,whether or not you will be given respect and don't wanna land anyone in the shit,please share it with us.We need input......tis good.

Audacity has given us some invaluable info here....I aint gonna knock the guy.He has his opinion and we welcome it.

Tom T i'm sure you're just as qualified to give us your opinion if you have been privy to such access ,let rip mate,share your thoughts,or your friends thoughts. Give us your professional opinion.

Anyone want a biscuit?...................and a cup of tea?..........


.......Ok back to EQ are we.....well I've said my peace really.I will say this though,the EQ may be a valuable point for Audio tracks but the internal synth sounds should be covered with the effx and filters.Maybe Roland will add it to the final OS revision,its not finished yet is it.

[The Audacity Works]

Tom T—

So you're saying that someone in the upper echelon of Roland invited you (and others) to a private listening session, and that you spent enough time personally playing the unit that when one Fantomized user asked:

"Those of you who have played or heard the Fantom G, do you think this board will cover all styles of music?"...

—Out of the blue, after ignoring nearly all Fantom-G posts before, decide to jump in with:

"No not by a long shot... Sounds are subjective and you might disagree but I seriously doubt it. In terms of sounds, I am disappointed from what I heard at NAMM over the past few days."

So you're close enough to Roland to gain their audience over the course of a few days, yet that's the only thing you could find to write?

I understand your request for anonymity, but I'd have a much easier time believing you if you offered up at the very least the initials of this "friend" of yours at Roland. If he's truly been instrumental in the creation of the G, he must be either Japanese or...

Or since you've allegedly spent a decent amount of time with the Fantom-G, you must have at least one piece of information about the thing that hasn't already been written. You know, to show you've actually played it. Understand that lots of people can make grand statements on an internet forum.

Sorry, I'm really not trying to be rude—But when the majority of one's posts are negative—especially about a product that so few people have actually gotten to play—you must understand how suspicious that looks.

[The Audacity Works]

For the 34,000th time, the Fantom-G can have EQs for each of its parts.

[Doug Crazy]

WOW... now the "G" threads are getting stupid. I think i will wait to touch the Keyboard personally. No more plus/minus B.S. . This is so crazy and it happens everytime a new piece of gear comes out.

[rezfactor]

Audacity said, "For the 34,000th time, the Fantom-G can have EQs for each of its parts."

I guess I missed the other 33,999 times that's been stated! I was asking about per-track EQ in the audio tracks recorder mixer interface. You're saying that individual EQ is available "per part," but not "per track," right? (e.g., for non-internal sounds).

Doug said, "No more plus/minus B.S. . This is so crazy and it happens everytime a new piece of gear comes out."

Yeah, but what else would we talk about then? We need something to bide our time until the G ships!

[Jim Stout]

I would just like to thank Audacity.

I don't know this guy but he has done his homework!

The bottom line is the Fantom Gs sound is improved over the X.

It has a lot of new features and it's a great performance keyboard/ workstation.

It will be in stores soon then everybody can listen for them selves.

So the Korg and Yamaha fan boys/trolls can banter about this at their local guitar center. I'm sure the GC guys love hearing people argue about this.

Is the Motif XS a good keyboard? Yes... Is the M3 a good keyboard? (for the right person) Yes...

When you can play the Motif XS, M3 and Fantom G all next to each other
then and only then, come on this forum and post your personal opinion.

The only person I met at the NAMM show from this forum was Dan (Still Learning)

The only reason he got to play the Fantom G8 was because I escorted him to the G8 and let him play it. I wanted somebody from this form to hear and play it so they can post a users point of view.

Nobody from the public was allowed to play it unless you were with a rep.

As far as "recycled samples" go... Listen to a Motif or M3 and see if you hear and TR-808/909 or and TB-303 emulations.

That's recycled!

[piaknowguy]

Hey Jim! Pimp my Fantom!



Cheers!
PiaKnowGuy

By the way, a big "Thank-you" to Roland for another amazing keyboard! =)

http://www.piaknow.com

[rezfactor]

Okay, I'm bored and I have nothing else to do but yap more nonsense here . . .

Someone mentioned that an ARX board for "strings" will be due out for NAMM '09. Sounds like it's gonna be worth waiting for. So, in the meantime, we'll have the selected SRX strings resident in the new G right out of the box. By definition, the re-generated SRX strings should sound "better" on the G than the old SRX boards sounded on the X-series, right?

[The Audacity Works]

"Someone mentioned that an ARX board for "strings" will be due out for NAMM '09."

A) No one who would know would talk about products a year away.
B) ARX is a different type of synthesis itself—It's not a bunch of samples sitting in ROM. I'm not sure if a string card fits the profile. A VK card certainly does. Or maybe, just maybe, a JP-8000 card?
C) Chick Korea is a troll. Ignore everything he says.

[breakbeatah]

I will be handling special orders at the best price too. Hit up the marketplace when you guys get a chance. Looking forward to making every one of you happy.

Roland 4-ever! =) -joel

[geppastro]

The Audacity Works:
Can I assign multiple MFX processors to single patches or single parts? Right now, it doesn't look like it. In fact, I couldn't get parts within Live Sets (where the FX switching is seamless) to assign to the two extra MFX processors at all. Things might change, but right now, it seems to be one MFX per part, with the two extra MFX processors (plus reverb plus chorus/delay plus input MFX) for the audio tracks.

Jimknopf:
I'm still not sure if I got the MFX thing right:
Let's assume Live mode, 8 parts.
Then I can have
- one MFX insert per part, as I understood (not more from the 22)
- plus Reverb/Delay and Chorus-Variations
- plus ??? common MFX for all parts (like reverb and chorus)???
Could anyone clarify or do we not yet know for sure?

V-Cee-Oh:
Yes
We get 1 MFX (Now called PFX) PER PART, then we have 2 Global MFX, then Global Chorus and Reverb, then finaly, the Mastering effect section.
The only dobt so far is IF it's possible or not to route more then 1 PFX to the same part (living other parts without any)

Me:
V-Cee-Oh, are you talking about Live or Studio mode? Please see Audacity's info above: it seems it differs from yours. I'm really worried we won't get per-part reverb sends in live mode. Live mode will be great, but only if it will include reverb sends; otherwise, it will be almost useless (IMO).

[V-CeeOh]

Geee!!!... I could not imagine this would be so hard to understand;-)

Let me see... The Live and Sudio are different on the number of parts. 8 for Live Mode, 16 for Studio Mode. In Live mode you just have 8 parts so this alouds you to SWITCH between Performance without cutting the sound, meaning:
- Start playing PERFORMANCE #1 with 8 parts, each part with its own PFX effect
- you press HOLD
- switch to PERFORMANCE #2 wich ALSO HAS ITS OWN SET of 8 parts/ 8 PFX
- the previous PERFORMANCE #1 keeps playing, still with with its effects and WITHOUT CUTTING
- You start playing with the new PERFORMANCE #2
- you take out the HOLD
- PERFORMANCE #1 fades naturally

So instead of also having 16 PARTS/PFX in Live Mode (wich would make the Studio mode redundant) driving us to the inevitable cuts in sound and effects, we have "only" 8 parts but alowing us to switch performances without cutting.
The Studio Mode is supposed to work in a "static" situation (no need to switch perfomances) so you can use the 16 parts simultaneously (again, each part with its own PFX).

The issue that The Audacity Works talks about is related to the MFX, not PFX, and the eventual enability to acess the MFX processors in Live Mode. This is still to be knowed. Also it would make no sense not to have individual sends to the Global Chorus and Reverb and I have to believe Roland would not make sucj a big drawback but, still, nothing of this can be confirmed by now - at least I can't

[shakil]

Well, felexibility wise, Roland's effects routing is the best.

Even though you only get 3 MFX in FantomX, you can have send to the MFX, Chorus and Reverb at the same time. In adition to that, you can have other parts routed to the same MFX, with different amount to sends to Chorus and Reverb for that part. In addition to that you can arrange the three MFXs in differnt layouts, series, parallel, mixed..etc,

On Yamaha you can't do this. They are purely insert effects, and only one part can be routed to an insert effect. And you can't apply reverb and chorus to the dry part, you can only send to reverb and chorus after the insert effect. So, if you want to apply same effect on let's say 3 parts, you need 3 insert effects.

On Korg, even though you can route multiple parts to the same IFX, you can't have sends to reverb and chorus individually from each part.

I hope that Roland has kept the same structure and flexibility of the PFX in Fantom-G, as in MFX in Fantom-X. I hope they just increased the number of MFX and called them PFX. On the other hand, chaning the names from MFX to PFX, means they will be more like YAMAHA or KORG implementation, hence less flexible. Let's see if someone from Roland can verify this.

[shakil]

Audacity Works: "For the 34,000th time, the Fantom-G can have EQs for each of its parts. "

For the 34,001st time, no the Fantom-G can not have a dedicated EQ for each part in addition to PFX, like some other workstations do. But then the other workstations do not have Effects for each part.

Yes, it has PFX for each part, which you can set to EQ, or other effects that might have some high low control in the signal path, but it's different than have 3 band, middle sweep EQ for each track in addition to PFX. Because if you did that, there will be no PFX left, as all PFX will be set to EQs only.

You can probably have some tone control of the part by using the filter, as someone has mentioned. Hopefully there are new types of filters in Fantom-G that function more like an EQ. I know Motif has few filters that are actually EQs. So in addition to the part EQ, you can have wave level EQ in Motif.

This is the complete picture; I hope this settles the EQ debate.

[geppastro]

V-CeeOh:
Geee!!!... I could not imagine this would be so hard to understand;-)

Actually I did understand already what you are saying in the first part of your reply. But in your previous answer to Jimknopf you didn't specify if you were talking about Studio or Live mode, so what you were saying was unclear. Now it is (clear that is): it's clear that we don't know for sure if Fantom G will have per-part reverb sends in Live mode but, according to Audacity, at the moment that doesn't seem to be the case.
Again, I agree with you: that would be a big drawback.
Thanks anyway.