Fair enough Ultra3v - and if a virtual version is never made, it's not a disappointment to me, as I can and will always continue to use my hardware units.

Here's the damn funny thing, though. Roland had 8MB to create a sample set and look at the great work they were able to achieve with it.

Today's soft synths and samplers boast many many gigs of content, deeply sampled instruments and lots of cool features, but I have yet to find one (aside from Omnisphere) that comes close to the quality of work Roland (Eric Persing?) was able to do with relatively severe limitations compred to today's virtual world.

I have purchased a number of multi gigabyte soft synths and sample libraries only to discover bad samples (tuning problems, flawed samples that aren't the "cool" kind of flaws - you guys know what I mean!), poorly mapped presets, uninteresting and lackluster playing dynamics, unuseable presets, and so forth.

Recently, I bought one relatively expensive 15GB library and read in the documentation that the samples had been Melodyned and meticulously edited. I was expecting a damn amazing sample set. The good thing was that all the samples were definitely in tune, and many presets are very good - but quite a number of the presets had notes with significant flaws in the attack or sustain of the notes that neither gave the instrument a desirable character nor made the preset very playable.

Not sure if any others have experienced similar situations, maybe I'm all wrong here!

I dont bother much with sampled synth stuff. As you said, its quite static. Then with realtime synths like Diva, DCAM and Harmor, zeta and so many others around, I dont feel theres anything lacking. Sample libraries are only useful for real instruments and certain FX. Size means nothing.

For the music I'm developing, I need to be able to handle many different styles that blend analog synths, real instruments and the sampled synth stuff. Agreed, the sampled stuff can be static but I need the ability to utilize those textures when it's called upon.

I get you guys but honestly i did not came across any VST which supposedly surpass Roland romplers especially XV series. Yes i know they are all digital romplers and all that stuff which should mean that one could achieve same for example with rapture but that's just story and reality is far away. I think that big factor behind these as someone said very playable sounds lies within clever programming and onboard effects.

Yes some sounds are cheesy, some are outdated but sound is very very good and easy to mix. Here are some examples. Note that these sound are over decade old yet they are perfectly fine and very polished.

http://www.synthmania.com/sr-jv80-11.htm

http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-11%20Techno%20Col lection/Audio/185%20Sleepless.mp3

http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-11%20Techno%20Col lection/Audio/138%20Warmer%20Pad.mp3

http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-11%20Techno%20Col lection/Audio/150%20JP-6%20Stack.mp3

http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-11%20Techno%20Col lection/Audio/001%20TR-909%20SET.mp3

http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-11%20Techno%20Col lection/Audio/002%20TR-808%20SET.mp3

Some orchestral stuff:

http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-16%20Orchestral%2 0II/Audio/225%20Titan.mp3
http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-16%20Orchestral%2 0II/Audio/056%20FilmOrchst%20p.mp3
http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-16%20Orchestral%2 0II/Audio/054%20Strngs&Horns.mp3
http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-16%20Orchestral%2 0II/Audio/005%20Str%20DownBow.mp3
http://www.synthmania.com/Roland%20SR-JV80-16%20Orchestral%2 0II/Audio/163%20Harp%20Gliss.mp3


It does not matter that i have all leading samplers, leading sw synths etc. you know the story but Roland romplers are still VERY good especially when yo take in account that most of these sounds are created with cards which can hold less then 10mb of sounds

I had the JV90 with vintage synth expansion. Had that Roland sound. I found it very ambient/new age - I dont miss it. These discussions happen with DX7 vs FM7 etc - people swear that the hardware sounds better for whatever reason. Not every hardware synth has a plugin equivalent. Some will never be happy.

I think they did mean Dimension Pro, not Rapture. Rapture is good, but not very JV/XP like. I had, and loved a XP-5050. Sold it when I got Dimension Pro... but kind of missed it so I got a SonicCell with the World and Supreme Dance cards installed. Basically I use it as a big amazing preset machine. The sounds are gorgeous and ready to go with nearly no tweaking needed. Sits in a mix perfectly. Also, has a VST editor.

If push came to shove though, I'd probably sell it as for realistic instruments, things like Kontakt blow it away. For synthesis... well there are a lot of better more tweakable options in software. Still, I get a lot of voices out of it for no CPU. There is something about it... I just love that Roland sound and the way I can go from preset to preset without having to wait for a load.

So basically, the answer is no. No one will ever develop it because it's already been surpassed in every way it could be except for instant loading of patches and most people would rather use larger sample libraries for more detailed sounds and wait though the load times than have a box of some sort. The others are probably just going to buy a Roland workstation of some sort. It's not like the SonicCell is very expensive. You can find them used for $500. Just hide it and use the VSTi editor and pretend it's software only.

Hey that's actually very nicely said. New age and ambient yes that's the part of the Roland JV/XV character. Someone don't need it someone do.

One VSTI that I always equated as the "XV-5080 of soft synths" is Wusikstation. While Wusik and Roland have different samples, the Wusikstation architecturally and even sonic character can be very similar.

Fairly common signal path - Up to 4 different multisamples per sound, multimode filters, ADSR envelopes, mod matrix, effects, etc.

There is a massive core library and simply a ton of 3 party expansions covering every type of sound one can think of and then some.

Back In Time Records, Nucleus Soundlab, Westgate Sounds, Artvera, Ametrine Audio, Hardcore Harmonics, Dangerous Bear Underground all have a great selection of Wusik expansions. Theres a bunch of material by Tim Conrardy, Teksonik and many others either in it or available for it.

A well stocked Wusikstation can be an incredibly versatile synth. Plus you get the EVE 3 synth with it which is an entirely separate animal and also great.

Cheers!

Don't kid yourself. The "cost" was included in the price of the synth. It might have came with the synth without an additional upcharge, but it wasn't free. It's certainly useless without the synth.

Devon

The "problem" is I'd say the vast majority of these sample sets are simply not programmed at all; they're just plain samples with a filter and a standard ADSR amp envelope applied. Very very few I've seen have any love, care or attention paid to the sounds outside of sticking them in the sampler.

Devon

The problem is you're comparing the "Roland" sound with the "wet blanket over the speakers" Roland synths. Compare a JD800/JD990 to a JV/XV synth back to back; the "sparkle" is quite apparent for the JD line-up. The JD's had higher samplerate recorded samples in them and it shows up very easily back-to-back. This really holds true for the high frequency presets over the bass presets, for obvious reasons. The JD has a nice, bright, gorgeous character with well programmed sounds, especially the JV80-04 Vintage card with the special 255 JD sounds along with the 255 JV sounds.

FM7 and the DX7 is not a good comparison either. They really don't have the same overall character between them even if they both are "PM" synths.

[edit]Ooops, got the preset count wrong. Corrected.[/edit]

Devon
Last edited by DevonB on Sun Apr 08, 2012 6:52 am; edited 1 time in total

Theres no problem The OP was looking at JV sounds. JD is a different beast again. I had the vintage card. It was good but I dont miss it. I run just vsti now and never look back. I cant get all gooey eyed at stuff I dont have any more, they were just tools to me. I mentioned the DX7/FM7 to show that even when there is a vst - no one agrees its as good as hardware anyway. As you said

Jupiter-80 supernatural sounds as a VST. Now that would be great.

Real instruments that sound as good as massive Kontakt libraries, but only a few MB in size per instrument.

Couldn't agree more.

RandomWave, I'm going to look at the WusikStation. Thanks for the tip.

Thinking about buying a 2nd-hand XV-5080 here as well, as I haven't found a VSTI to please me...