Roland Zenology 2

[Nestor]

I thought you could program it yourself. It means you need some extra samples or something inside this vsti to use those strings you want?

[valis]

The expansion cards add additional PCM samples to what is already available internally. My JD-800 patches use the string ensemble PCM's about 75% of the time...with 4 parts per voice they add a sheen or sparkle that tickles my ear & brain in a way no other synth can.

[Nestor]

Wow, you really like it man to say that! You could probably ask them to build it for you, then it could be an addition, obviously, to the rest of this VSTi for hundreds of musicians out there. Why not, they are always trying to please costumers, you might have this good luck.

[valis]

Thanks for the positivity, I did contact support a while ago and as I was typing the above response signed up for their new portal and asked there as well (meaning I already did as you suggest). If I hear back I'll let you know.

[Nestor]

Wow, you DO like those sounds brother hope you can get them.

Quite in a different ligule I love this one VERY very much, I'm a total fan of the timber, possible textures, etc., the FXs too, everything is of my taste including the "price", which, honestly, it is cheap for what it gives you:

https://www.gforcesoftware.com/products/oddity3/

[Bud Weiser]

https://www.gforcesoftware.com/products/oddity3/

All the Gforce synths are excellent IMO.
But I don´t understand why most presets are drenched in FX, especially reverb and most obvious w/ the OB-E presets.



Bud

[Nestor]

Well, sometimes the CEO of any of these companies is not really into it, and does his work the best he can, or is not exigent enough. That happens with so many good instruments coming with really crappy presets. The point is that, as you say, the instrument itself is great. If you get into creating presets with this particular monster, I mean Oddity, it is easy and very effective to reach what you want. Oddity it is one of my proffered VSTi synths ever created.

[valis]

Support responded (it being monday) and said that the expansion cards 'may be included in a future update'. It's up to the person reading whether they want to see a subtle wink in that response or not. I'll remain hopeful, as the hardware version would fetch a pretty penny now.

[Nestor]

Hehe, that's great Valis, very happy to hear that, why not, it is in their own interest so they will

[Sounddesigner]

The expansion cards add additional PCM samples to what is already available internally. My JD-800 patches use the string ensemble PCM's about 75% of the time...with 4 parts per voice they add a sheen or sparkle that tickles my ear & brain in a way no other synth can.

After reading your post i ended up checking out the JD-800 Synth and ended up falling in love with it. I generally prefer Digital synths and the JD-800 has a gleeming high-end classic digital synth sound. I know it's a 90's Synth but i remember many 80's songs having that metalic synth with a sparkle sound in them. It really is a beautiful Digital sound wich Roland has always been masters at, even some of their analog synths sound like clean digital such as Sh-101 hardware and some of their Modulars had a very clean bright sound.

Roland just had a Play-4-Life end of year sale, were if you buy a Subscription you also get to own perpetual-licenses for plugins of greater value. I decided to jump on board at the end of December and got with the Subscription plugins 2 owned plugins worth more than the Subscription price. I chose the JD-800 and the System-8 plugins. The System-8 has a clean bright sound similar to SCOPE Modular 3 but a little harsher than SCOPE Modular 3 wich tends to be smooth sounding. Both the JD-800 and the System-8 have really good Digital sound. The JD-800 really has a nice old school sound that goes great in Mix's, shines in a metalic way that i like.

[valis]

Congrats!

[Nestor]

We discover things thanks to each other and that's great!

[Sounddesigner]

We discover things thanks to each other and that's great!

Yea, i certainly learned A LOT more about Roland and their catalog of both software and hardware these last few months. I did not think much of them at first when it comes to software VSTs, but now i must say they certainly have a lot more gems then i was aware of.

Roland's Hardware legacy has always been revered and amongs the best, and in some cases THE BEST! Their 808 Drum Machine did more to grow and shape early Rap / Hip Hop than any other tool i know of, despite all the negative criticism and negative magazine reviews complaining about it not sounding like real drums. The Rap community did not care about realism and only saw gold, and both rode each other to glory! Altho i now hate Rap Music to this day i still love the 808 Drum Machine wich managed to become legendary despite poor sales when it was released in the early 1980s.

Thank you for starting this thread Nestor, it certainly sparked an investigation with me that grew more helpfull as it and this thread evolved!

[Bud Weiser]

Roland's Hardware legacy has always been revered and amongs the best, and in some cases THE BEST!

I owned MKS20, MKS70, MKS80rev4 and the entire rack FX series (Dimension D etc.) and it was great gear.
Sold all one day, but still own a w/ Musitronics speed kit, multimode and memory expansion upgraded D550.

I can imagine it wil be replaced by a JD-08 in future,-

mini-jd-08_top_gal.jpg (78.61 KiB) Viewed 13158 times

With a polyphony of 128 voices, it´s a steal and no brainer,- and it sounds really good in all the vids I´ve watched.



Bud

[Sounddesigner]

Roland's Hardware legacy has always been revered and amongs the best, and in some cases THE BEST!

I owned MKS20, MKS70, MKS80rev4 and the entire rack FX series (Dimension D etc.) and it was great gear.
Sold all one day, but still own a w/ Musitronics speed kit, multimode and memory expansion upgraded D550.

I can imagine it wil be replaced by a JD-08 in future,-


mini-jd-08_top_gal.jpg


With a polyphony of 128 voices, it´s a steal and no brainer,- and it sounds really good in all the vids I´ve watched.

All those old gems should be locked away somewhere in a Vault .. The D50 /D550 is nice, i think i read it's sort of the predecessor to the JD-800 and that they use same style of waveforms/sounds and are sonicly similar.

I was unaware of the modern boutique JD-08 module until you mentioned it. 4 parts, 128 Voices, dual-timbral, with the same presets and great sound of the JD-800 from the 1990's. I'm glad they did this boutique recreation of the JD-800 and now that i'm aware of the JD-08 it is a seriouse future consideration for me as well. Seems pretty powerfull/flexible and great sounding for only $399.

[Bud Weiser]

The D50 /D550 is nice, i think i read it's sort of the predecessor to the JD-800 and that they use same style of waveforms/sounds and are sonicly similar.

Yes, JD-800 was the successor of D50 (D550).
AFAIK, (almost ?) all the D50 waveforms made it into the JD-800, but the presets didn´t,- maybe some did.
I´m also not sure if these sound identical and I´d expect some editing and/or programming from scratch to re-create what was used for recordings in the past.

I also wonder if a JD-800 / JD-08 would be able to load D50 patches,- which would be very welcome.

I was unaware of the modern boutique JD-08 module until you mentioned it. 4 parts, 128 Voices, dual-timbral, with the same presets and great sound of the JD-800 from the 1990's. I'm glad they did this boutique recreation of the JD-800 and now that i'm aware of the JD-08 it is a seriouse future consideration for me as well. Seems pretty powerfull/flexible and great sounding for only $399.

I´m not a fan of the Roland boutique series, but the 128 voice JD-08 and 20 voice JX-08 (JX8P) seem to be the exceptions.
In general I dislike the tiny 1/8" TS audio output,- and users also complain about the low level on that output.
I guess that´s by reason of battery operation option.
I hope it accepts a "USB-C connector PSU" https://www.thomann.de/gb/thomann_usb_c ... 9&reload=1 when not been connected to a computer.



Bud

[valis]

This is why I want the expansion cards added to the software emulation. The boutique recreation cannot be used in stead of my original unit.

[Bud Weiser]

This is why I want the expansion cards added to the software emulation. The boutique recreation cannot be used in stead of my original unit.

I´d be happy to get all the optional PCM samples and related presets in the desktop module too.
Maybe Eric Persing, who formerly did a s##tload of sampling and patch design for Roland, holds the copyright and all the stuff is now "hidden" in Spectrasonics Omnisphere, Keyscape and Trillian.

There must be a reason they don´t deliver.

KORG was able adding all the formerly by KORG released PCM cards and presets to their "KORG Collection" M1 and Wavestation.



Bud

[valis]

I have a version of the PCM samples created for Scope Mod somewhere. Also, have tons of presets in sounddiver, which is why I want the waveform cards. If I can load my sysex archive of presets I’ve made since owning it….

[Nestor]

I love Roland instruments in general, but also their amazing FXs racks, since forever. I remember all those single and multi effect pedals from years and years ago, they still sound very cool to me.