Roland 50 Studio
roland50.studio
roland50.studio
However, I really wonder why they don't have any URL auto-sharing mechanism. Given that there are no patterns, no sequences whatsoever, it's just one single 16 position loop per "device", an entire song could easily fit on the URL. Eg the TypeScript playground live-updates the url as you type: https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/FAYw9gdgzmA2CmA6WY...
That "record" feature is neat, but it'd be way neater if I can just share an URL with my composition with a friend and they can remix it.
It's a 808/303/101 in your browser.
I think the joy of the roland 50 is how approachable the sequencing is though, with the sounds everyone is familiar with
I’ve got a Roland cloud subscription and I definitely think it’s useful and way more convenient than vintage gear approaching 50 years of age. I also have the arturia v-collection and think this last update made the Roland synths (Jupiter and Juno’s) sound way more alive and better imho than the Roland versions. They are both pretty good though. You can get the same dsp emulation in the Roland boutiques/Aira as well if you want hardware knobs to twiddle.
Iirc the 808 and 909 in rebirth were sample based. The 303 was nice and squelchy but not quite a perfect emulation. Lots of fun to play with though. I remember spending hours in college playing with rebirth.
The Vocoder is so fun to play with! A lot of great sounds in there, I gotta spend some more time with it!
SP404 2022-04-04T12:00:00.000Z
TR606 2022-06-06T12:00:00.000Z
TR707 2022-07-07T12:00:00.000Z
TR909 2022-09-09T12:00:00.000Z
Damn, I really wish they would have given these away as VSTs instead. I'd love to bring an official Roland 303 software synth into my setup without paying their ridiculous subscription fees.
But! FLStudio has Transistor Bass. I don't know if it's available as a VST but IL has posted comparison videos online and I can't really hear any difference through my studio monitors.
If musicians study their software like they study their instruments, they would realize that the two are closer than they think
I use analog synths to get away from screens. Fun thing I've discovered that is specifically useful for the 303 is that loops and melodies with a prime number length against composite number beats are a source of free constant movement in otherwise repetitive loops. A 4 on the floor beat vs a 7, 11, or 13 step melody only cycles every 4 x n bars. I've been mulling one of the an 808 re-issues, or even investing in a collectors item, and playing this in my browser is removing my excuses for putting it off. Thank you!
I wanna say I first played with ReBirth in 2002/3(?) - I was 12/13 - and that was my introduction to - at least - the 303/808/909.
What's great about these pieces of software, is that just by playing around of them, they are great tools to learn about the fundamentals of synthesis.
The Roland JD-XI is a more recent multi-layered synth that features a whole drum machine, an analog monophonic bass synth, and two polyphonic synths, all attached to a fantastic sequencer. I highly recommend checking that out if anyone is interested in a nice modern hardware equivalent to something like this.
Looks like they partnered with the Counterpoint team on this (https://ctpt.co/)
function qt(n) {
return n !== n
}https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=P0DG6
Show me where are Roland's analogue TR808,TR909 or TB303 in retail? That's right, there are none.
The patents on all these circuit designs have expired long ago. Behringer is just offering a cheap analogue alternative to unaffordable used gear.
The boutique devices you listed are not analogue so they aren't more authentic to the original than Behringer devices. If anything, it's no less of dubious marketing.
I'll try them later at home. Do you think they'll sound as good as the analog counterparts? Hahahaa
It has been a while since I last did music production, but I'm currently so bored of the web development process and it's the year of the tiger so might as well pick up my teen and early 20s love again. My soul demands it
The Flash app in the browser had better performances and stability though. This app panics as soon as one pressed the random button.
The Flash app had effects and more powerful synthesizers and it was 15+ years ago.
Anyone have recommendations? P515? CA59? Other? Clp 745?
What you can do however, is try hooking up Roland FP-30 to a computer and using the computer to generate sounds (so called VST).
I'm visiting relatives for a few weeks, and they happen to have FP-30X (same action), the built in sounds are absolutely god horrid (they are so bad I consider them useless, outside of maybe the rhodes sound), but I'm hooking it to my laptop which has Garritan CFX Concert Grand (full version), Ivory II grand pianos and Pianoteq.
Garritan CFX being the overall most realistic. But you can't go wrong with Ivory II either as it will be a massive upgrade compared to any built in digital piano sounds.
So the full stack would be:
1. The best action you can get (the built in DP sounds don't matter since they are all going to be some gradient of suck anyway)
2. PC with audio interface with very low latency drivers
3. Garritan CFX
I have a YDP-184 [1] that includes the CFX you mentioned. I actually think the weak point in its sound is the acoustics of my room, coupled with the inboard speaker placement.
Then of course there are the Hybrids [2], which I haven't tried myself (and are considerably more than I'm looking to spend as a hobbyist.)
1: https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/pianos/a...
2: https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/pianos/d...
The Garritan CFX full version (with near and far mics) is 132gigs in size, and even if you take only one set of near/far microphones, it would still be ~40-41gigs in size.
Obviously bigger isn't always better, and there's a diminshing returns point... however, digitial piano sample sizes don't come even remotely near it.
I would be surprised... VERY surprised if the sample size in YDP-184 would reach even a single gigabyte.
More realistically, the piano sounds in YDP-184 is in megabytes. It has been like this with digital pianos - with very few exception models - for decades, with little to no progress.
If a digital piano manifacturer doesn't specify sample size in megabytes/gigabytes, it is most likely because the samples are embarrassingly small, short, looped and stretched.
Disklavier you linked is not a hybrid or a digital piano. It's a real acoustic piano with playback system.
The hybrids - Yamaha N-1X Avant Grand, 7k euros, Kawai Novus NV-10S 9k euros - have great piano action, but the sound is still pretty embarrassing for the price you pay for it.
If I had Kawai Novus-10, I would still hook it up to Garritan CFX, because built in sounds in it are pathetic (for the price)
I understand and really will think about your suggestion, but I think I will want to choose something that's easy to just sit down and play at.
I've never been WOW-ed by a built in DP sound, they always sound like DPs.
And I have listened to a lot of acoustic grand piano records, thus I'm very well aware of how they should sound like. And that's the sound I'm aiming for.
The only way to get WOW-ed and to approach the realism / sound quality of recording of a real accoustic grand is by using large sampled VSTs (like Garritan CFX).
Pianoteq (which is a synthesized piano VST) has it's pro's too - more life-like string/soundboard resonance, and just overall playability.
But in terms of pure, record-like sound quality, nothing comes close to a large sampled VST.
Unfortunately there are very few - if any DPs - with built in sample size big enough to capture the sheer beauty of those high end concert grands.
The next best thing - of course - is a real instrument.
My recent trip to a big piano store probably resonates with you. They had all the DPs I wanted to try out, fantastic.
Before I went there: convinced the most expensive are the best but trying to find my compromise point.
When I was there, it was hard to differentiate between all the DPs. I'll need more time. At the end, the store people encouraged me to look at their multiple storeys of acoustics before I'd leave. I'm not used to acoustics and the ones I encounter are sometimes sluggish or hard to play for me, but now I found a Kawai K300 Aures which was amazing, a whole other beast.
My conclusion was that no DP is close to the acoustics, and this is probably going to lower the price point I'm willing to pay. Why pay for a CA99 when it's digital, going obsolete at some point, and still not even halfway there? :)
I'll find a compromise DP for convenience I think. The plan is to get access to acoustics maybe through a music school or friends, and look forward to an acoustic if/when I move to a house.
Yes, most of the time.
There are some rare exceptions to this, like Korg Kronos 1/2 (more like a music workstation), which has a built in Intel Atom x86 processor and an 30 GB/62 GB internal SSD. It has full length grand piano samples (with 8/12 velocity layers) without looping, and the piano samples themselves in this rare occasion is in gigabytes :) (~3-4 gigs per piano sample if I recall, which is very rare in DPs)
So it should sound pretty good for a sample based piano. However the piano action on it is... somewhat basic. Then there's Korg Grandstage (has ~19gig total sample size, I believe it uses the same piano samples as Korg Kronos (Kronos just has a whole lot of other instruments too)).
That taken into account I just focus on getting great action, and then hook it up to PC with low latency audio drivers.
Honestly that Kawai K-300 Aures sounds like a good deal, an actual acoustic piano, as well as optical sensors to read velocity of hammers and get MIDI output. I'd probably try to get the Kawai K-500 Aures, the slightly taller model if possible.
Yamaha u3/u5 uprights, properly tuned and well looked after, with front and top panels wooden panels removed can sound fantastic.
>I'm not used to acoustics and the ones I encounter are sometimes sluggish or hard to play for me
Usually long-time DP players struggle with pedaling once they hop on a real acoustic.
This is because DPs are generally speaking very forgiving in terms of sustain pedal use - you can kind of be pretty sloppy with it and just kind of hold it down for extended periods of time with it rarely if ever getting muddy.
That's enabled by most DPs having a very short decay sound, plus each note is kind of thin/narrowband and isolated, with minimal string resonance (compared to a real instrument).
On a real instrument you kind of get audibly punished for being sloppy with pedalling. :)
And it takes takes a bit of time to re-learn proper sustain pedal use on a real acoustic.
Either way, good luck!
My current fav is Image-Line's Transistor Bass
I've tried getting it to run on Windows 10, but even after all the hacks I could find online, it just doesn't run quite right. It was made in the era of 800x600 resolutions. And even though there's a pixel-doubling patch available, it looks like hot garbage.
Even still, this was a huge part of my music experimentation phase of life. (My youth)
I'm not an authority on the 303, though. I just like to play around with analog gear sometimes.
So for anyone who dabbles in these instruments, it's a fun toy for about 5 minutes and that's it. I suspect you can't expect anything more out of a promotional piece.
Would love a way to ctrl-z to save myself from myself.
Webaudio has pretty poor performances in general on mobile.