If Roland made a D50 vst emulation, would you purchase it?

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If Roland made a D50 vst emulation, would you purchase it?

Yes, as long as it was reasonably priced.
164
45%
Maybe, I would consider purchasing it.
65
18%
No, I don't have any interest in such a product.
98
27%
Fish
39
11%
 
Total votes: 366

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Electronicaz wrote:Awesome typing!
:lol:
Beauty is only skin deep,
Ugliness, however, goes right the way through

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I think the amount of sales of this would be over-estimated.

Sure, there are some of us who'd like this - 70 sales from the poll results here - but many people would be underwhelmed when whacking up the demo for the first time, and the rest don't really care. It's hardly a big estimated sales-winner for Roland, really...

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If Roland released the original bit-for-bit accurate sample content data files as well as conversion of those to 16-bit RIFF WAVE format, I would pay $5 for them.

I suspect that they can not do so due to licensing though.

I've got the 909 pure original data as well as conversions. That was done by someone with a 909, not by Roland.

I haven't ever seen a d-50 rom dump. I'm not sure whether the configuration of the circuit makes it very difficult to dump or if the data is in an oddly compressed format which is difficult to reverse engineer...
Free plug-ins for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Xhip Synthesizer v8.0 and Xhip Effects Bundle v6.7.
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beely wrote:I think the amount of sales of this would be over-estimated.
I'd love to see a correlation between age and yes responses. I'd be willing to bet that most people answering yes are at least 50 years old. :hihi:

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dmbaer wrote:I'd love to see a correlation between age and yes responses. I'd be willing to bet that most people answering yes are at least 50 years old. :hihi:
Hmm... well, maybe 40... :oops: :hihi:

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Or 39+ ;-)
The more I hang around at KVR the less music I make.

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For me it would have to be more than a direct clone or emulation. From the related products I have downloaded and purchased I did not find it all that inspiring. Now if they included a lot of the commercial and user patch banks developed for it like you get with the Korg vsts for the M1 and Wavestation, might be attractive at comparable pricing.

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zag4139@comcast.net wrote:For me it would have to be more than a direct clone or emulation. From the related products I have downloaded and purchased I did not find it all that inspiring. Now if they included a lot of the commercial and user patch banks developed for it like you get with the Korg vsts for the M1 and Wavestation, might be attractive at comparable pricing.
Korg M1 VST and Korg Wavestation VST only include the Korg factory banks that were released for those devices.

Both plugins do let you load sysex banks from 3rd parties, but Korg does not supply anything other than what they produced and marketed.

If Roland would produce a D50 VST that came with all the Roland D50 cards 1-6 I think AND let you load or import 3rd party D50 banks or patches, like Vahala banks, that would be cool.

Roland has a model they can work from like Korg did with M1 and Wavestation.

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I have a Roland V-Synth XT, which has a Roland D50 built in. So, no, I have no need for a D50 plugin.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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PS: D50 isn't a ROMpler. It uses samples for attacks and a type of analog-style synthesis for sustains.
- dysamoria.com
my music @ SoundCloud

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Not really.

The idea the samples are only for attacks is totally ridiculous and makes me ask "has this person ever actually used a d-50 before?"

The d-50 contains some functionality, but you would find if you used one that there are many quirks involved. You can't use everything at once. The filter has many issues which are a little bit surprising. The waveshapes are "okay" but also have their own issues and major aliasing.

"A type of analog-style ... " (subtractive, you mean?) " ... synthesis for sustains."

This just sounds totally clueless, as if repeated over and over without knowing what it actually means.

The M1 uses the same system, as does every "ROMpler" ever. The samples have a looped part and some include a release. The samples are for the most part compressed and dynamics are applied with an amplitude envelope. Timbre is adjusted with a filter.

This is the definition of "ROMpler".
Free plug-ins for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Xhip Synthesizer v8.0 and Xhip Effects Bundle v6.7.
The coder's credo: We believe our work is neither clever nor difficult; it is done because we thought it would be easy.
Work less; get more done.

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dmbaer wrote:
beely wrote:I think the amount of sales of this would be over-estimated.
I'd love to see a correlation between age and yes responses. I'd be willing to bet that most people answering yes are at least 50 years old. :hihi:

I think that you might be surprised. People old enough to remember the D50 are old enough to understand the limitations. You'd need a few controls for such a study, older people tend to have more money.

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Has anyone ever actually tried asking Roland about this? We've had endless guessing games and speculations on KVR for years now. Sometimes the threads has ended up in arguments since some members tend to bite off your head when suggesting a Roland d50 Emulation.
I know the waveformes are owned by Roland and as such are illegal to utilize in any other ways, but occasionally, it has considered as being sacrilege even mentioning a software d50. That really is beyond me. It's hardly the end of the world.

That said, I'd definitely be applauding a d50 vst. it just goes well with my cheesy 80s music. How can you not love "Clock Tower" and "Digital Native Dance" :) Judging by the sheer amount of threads about this on KVR, i'd say a VST og just a sample set of this instrument would gather many followers. Roland selling the rights to the waveforms wouldn't do them much harm. It's not like they earn money from all the 2nd hand d50s being sold on various sites anyway. :wink:

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I agree the samples would be great to have a play with. Especially given modern interpolation techniques which can almost entirely eliminate the issue of aliasing that really made the d-50 and similar era sample based instruments difficult to use in a lot of ways.

(Although there are examples of instruments which did not do resampling but rather adjusted the playback rate without the possibility of introducing mirrored aliasing.)

You say "I know the waveforms are owned by Roland ...", but what makes you believe this?

My suspicion is actually that Roland does not have full control of this content. There may be licensing issues. There may be format issues.

It may also be simply an issue of what is worth the effort and what is not worth the effort.

The fact that I've never seen a sample dump from the d-50 says something to me. I'm not sure why that is. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there with the knowledge and tools required to dump ROMs and even decode/translate sample data into formats we can use.

Having used various d-50s and d-550s I'm comfortable to say it should be trivial to produce a plugin to mimic the function of the d-50; In fact I don't see many reasons to think it would be difficult to accomplish the same with any of the existing samplers out there.

I really agreed with the comments about "memory is always better than the real thing"... In using d-50s myself I've always found myself wishing I weren't using them. The sample content and factory patches on the unit itself are classics, many of which were used in a wide range of tracks over the years. Apart from that though from a technical perspective there isn't a whole lot that makes the d-50 a very desirable instrument at all.
Free plug-ins for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Xhip Synthesizer v8.0 and Xhip Effects Bundle v6.7.
The coder's credo: We believe our work is neither clever nor difficult; it is done because we thought it would be easy.
Work less; get more done.

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dmbaer wrote:I'd love to see a correlation between age and yes responses. I'd be willing to bet that most people answering yes are at least 50 years old.
I think the over 50 set mostly voted Fish.

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