NEW FANTOM-G, PLEASE TALK HERE

[The Audacity Works]

"No streaming audio? my sp-404 streams without any problem from compact flash, so why not that technic in the G6?"
Because the SP-404 is a completely different sampling engine. The SPs also compress their samples quite a bit, and the SP-404's polyphony is only like 6 stereo voices total. The SP-606 sounds better, but its polyphony is only 4 stereo voices. RAM is MUCH faster, at least from a sampling standpoint.

[Still Learning]

Hi Clan, here are the details on my Roland Booth videos that I'm uploading to Artemio as I type this. I started out with 16 raw videos totalling 285 MB. At the tested upload speed of 17KB/sec it would have taken around 4.7 hours to upload them. I decided to use Windows Movie Maker to combine/compress them into 7 files totalling 46.5 MB. Nothing has been edited out and the bit rate averages 340KB/sec in a 320x240 pixel frame at 30 frames/sec.

This 46.5 MB upload should take around 46 minutes which will take us to about 1:00AM Pacific Standard Time which makes for a very long day for me.

We should give Artemio a few days to do his magic and get these videos posted for all of us to see.

Some of these videos are pretty cool. There is one of Warren Harris saying hi to Artemio and the Fantomized community and giving us an exclusive tour of the Fantom G6's song making capability.

There are several videos of the Roland House band going nuts on a G8 playing cover songs (Police, Hendrix, The Who) and the great keyboard player (whom I can't remember his name) is doing all these palm smears on that beautiful new G8!

There are some close-up videos of the Fantom G and a little of the overall layout of the Roland booth, I wanted you guys to get a feel of what it is like to walk around in the Roland booth.

Here are the file names and file sizes of the original 16 files grouped into 7 sub-groups:

Fantom G closeup.MOV 4,293KB
Perfect Patch switching.MOV 24,670KB

Rocky Mountain Way 1.AVI 15,864KB
Teenage wasteland on the G8.AVI 72,619KB

MV8800 and SonicCell.AVI 3,515KB
Perfect Effects rolloff.AVI 15,415KB
Roland Booth overview.AVI 9,920KB
SH201 and VsynthGT.AVI 4,254KB

Hendrix on the G8.AVI 39,401KB

Cool G8 Features and Bass.AVI 13,961KB
Fantom G closeup 1.AVI 1,910KB
New EPs on the G8.AVI 16,535KB

The Police on the G8.AVI 20,775KB
More Police on the G8.AVI 6,690KB
Still more Police on the G8.AVI 6,521KB

Warren Harris says Hi to Artemio.AVI36,223KB


And here are the 7 combined/compressed files that I'm uploading:

NAMM Concert Rocky Mountain.wmv 3,066KB
Teenage Wasteland.wmv 13,849KB
G8 Effects and Other Roland products.wmv 5,878KB
Hendrix.wmv 6,996KB
Fantom G Stuff.wmv 5,869KB
Police on the G8.wmv 5,987KB
Warren Harris.wmv 5,977KB

Life is short, Take care.
Dan

[Still Learning]

Here is another G6 Photo from today

[Still Learning]

Well it's 12:58AM here in the Los Angeles area and SmartFTP reports that all 46.5MB's have been uploaded. I'm going to bed.

[Still Learning]

O.K. here is one last G8 photo before I go to bed.

[shakil]

The Audacity Works
"No streaming audio? my sp-404 streams without any problem from compact flash, so why not that technic in the G6?"
Because the SP-404 is a completely different sampling engine. The SPs also compress their samples quite a bit, and the SP-404's polyphony is only like 6 stereo voices total. The SP-606 sounds better, but its polyphony is only 4 stereo voices. RAM is MUCH faster, at least from a sampling standpoint. "

In my opinion, 4 stereo audio tracks streaming from flash drive are better than very limited length 24 tracks. The time spent loading the audio tracks will be unbelievable, unless Roland has improved the load speed. Can you ask them how long does it take to load 512MB audio into memory?

Roland is making all these excuses about being complicated, and expensive...etc. Alesis Fusion does 16 audio tracks from hard drive, Triton 2 did 4 tracks from hard drive, SP-606 does 4 stereo tracks from hard drive.

I think they should have kept the audio tracks separate engine. You don't run the audio tracks from all the synth structure as a regular patch. There are no lfos, envelopes etc...

I mean, it doesn't record audio directly to hard drive or Flash memory. You must reload the audio tracks to memory, which is a big NO NO for MIDI and Audio. Imagine loading 24 tracks of audio.... it will take forever.
You can't timestretch audio tracks/samples when they stream in realtime from disk (at least at the workstation DSP-level). Each project can store 50 songs, which is like the Fantom-X and MV-8x00—all samples are loaded at once. This lets you switch quickly from song to song. HOWEVER, if you don't have to switch songs live, simply create a new project for every song. 544MB of samples/audio tracks per song. Best of both worlds. And I was told that loading projects from USB 2.0 keys is almost as fast as a slow hard drive (they'd never put a 7200 or 10k RPM drive in a workstation). "Way faster than on the X" they said. "

What they missed is that there is no load time if the audio tracks are streamed from hard drive or flash, and the time stretched audio doesn't sound good anyway on Fantom.

If you use 100 MB of samples in 10 different songs, then you need to make 10 copies of the same samples. There goes 1 GB on the flash drive.

My conclusion is that Fantom G is not an audio recorder, but a sampler, and Roland should stop advertising it as a 24 tracks audio recorder.

[madAhorn]

This is too many threads to read....

Oh well, my coment anyway.

When I first read the specs I said, "there is no way I need one of these". (I have and X7).

When I watched the promo video, I changed my mind.

very nice!

For sampling/recording, however...it should have a hard drive. Whatever...I do not find myself using sampling hardly at all. I would rather use my Yamaha AW16G for quick audio recording and my computer with Samplitude.

[Mauro Rosati]

Smurf the memory in the Motif XS it's only for loading new samples, it doesn't have audio recording, just sampling or loading new patches with new waveforms.

[Arjan]

Hi,

The seamless switching alone might be enought for me to consider trading in my X7. Even though I don't believe there's a chance in hell that anything I write here will have the slightest impact on the final G os, here's two feature requests

IN CASE ROLAND IS LISTENING

• Please make sure that there is an easy and quick way to define the key range that a part will respond to when played from an external keyboard. With the Fantom X I actually have to edit the frickin PATCH to accomplish that as the key range only applies to what the 'keyboard' sends, not what the part receives.
  
  * Please fix the annoying bug that if you change the part/midi channel arrangement of 1=1, 2=2, 3=3 that some of the controls on the display actually start behaving erratic. For example if you set part 1 to midi channel 2 and part 2 to midi channel 1, you can no longer control volume/pan etc for those parts because of some weird internal loopback going on.

So basically the above points are about smooth interaction with external controller keyboards in a live/rehearsal environment.

In addition:

• * Please make a JP-8000 ARX board (but with better polyphony than the original and make sure the vocoder from the 8080 is there)
  * How about a killer Hammond ARX board?
  * Maybe a really good harmonizer

[Septimo]

I can't sleep with these Fantom G dreams in my head.....

[rezfactor]

A small aside . . .

By the way, I think the new Fantom-G looks AMAZING! They've squared-off the odd oval contours of the X, and realigned the case design in the style of the also-updated V-Synth GT. That triangular end-piece, with its faux-structural architectural feature is HOT! Any Fantom-G lucky enough to be paired-up with a V-Synth GT is going to be one HOT-looking couple! The new control panel detailing is good-looking too. The new pads—sweet and serious-looking. And far less "pachinko-machine-geek" than the X' jumbo glowing orange pads. More streamlined, more modern, and more subtle. Classy stuff, Roland! Great job!

[rezfactor]

NOW . . . BACK TO THAT SAMPLE RAM MEMORY ISSUE . . .

Uh . . . 544MB is simply NOT ENOUGH!!! ESPECIALLY, not with 24 digital audio tracks! Will someone please ask at the booth tomorrow, if, like the Fantom-X, I'll be able to install an "unsupported" DIMM module capacity? I have a 1GB DIMM in my Fantom-X8, and it works fine. For a workstation this capable, especially with the increased audio tracks capability, I may be willing to pop for the ultra-expensive 4GB DIMM. Would it support it (unofficially)? What will the G (unofficially) support? 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB DIMMs? I'm MOST curious if it would support a 2GB DIMM, since 4GB PC-133 DIMMs are OBSCENELY expensive.

[Solitary man]

I maybe dumb here but why do you have to insert a DIMM memory chip into the Fantom G?
Is it not possible to just insert a memory stick into the back before you turn the unit on and then load from that.
Surely it must to be as quick if not quicker to do it this way round than having to buy expensive and pretty much now redundant memory chips that we use in the Fantom X.

[Septimo]

I asked>>
What I don't understand is why in this day in age we only have a maximum 544 MB, when my ipod has 30 gig? What would be the logic behind this thinking in workstations?

TheAudacityworks replies>>>
Because when using an iPod, there's no need to trigger 128 songs simultaneously with 22 effects processors and realtime timestretch?

I'm not asking about the processor....That would be the processors job...I'm asking about storage space..Running the 22 effects and triggering however many samps don't have didly to do with the amount of storage space..they can fit gigs into handheld devices but these boats will get filled to the gills quick internaly with phisical space to spare. For over $2000, and it being 2008, they could do alot alot better than 544 max MB...this aint 1998 no more...And I'm not comparing to Software DAWs, But to their own line of VS DAWs...And like I said, 8 tracks are more than enough for Workstation use if it's not trying to pretend to be a DAW. but basically Roland did make it as a DAW with it's storage limitations so you still have a need for a VS. But if you only have one project in ther at any given time you should be okay, but still man, 544? And there would go the need for having more than one storage place for songs, so the machine will either be a dedicated workstation or a dedicated DAW depending on what you doin, they really don't give you the option/space to use as both, but they still market as both...

What's good about the machine is great but what's bad with the machine is awful. Like I said, lots of Pros and plenty of cons....

[rezfactor]

Solitary Man:

Sample RAM is constrained by the amount of installed internal PC-133 DIMM memory modules. Meaning, you can't record very many samples in the audio tracks' 24-track digital audio recorder with only 544MB of available sample RAM.

USB storage is OFFLINE storage, and CANNOT be used for sample RAM (i.e., you can't "record" to USB storage; you can only "write" or "load" previously sampled data).