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

[ghettosynth]

Wow, I'm surprised at the size of some of those pianos. Now I'm really impressed with the Tera; even this small version sounds quite good compared to some I own and/or you listed.

One thing that I've really noticed with pianos that it's a matter of taste. A larger sampling set isn't going to make a Steinway sound like a Bosendorfer so, without more context, your comment is really nothing more than a personal affirmation reflecting your own tastes.

As far as what Roland is trying to do all I can say is that if it helps me achieve my goals better than what the status quo has to offer, I'm all for it.

There is a huge difference between you believing that's true and it actually being true. Given that it's an offline process, whether you want to admit it or not, there is a cost that isn't present with online processes. So, that almost certainly has a negative weight on your goals. The question is whether or not the increase quality more than offsets that negative weight. Roland, AFAIK, has only compared their own online to their own offline instruments. That's not going to reveal to you whether or not it is a better choice than existing online offerings from more experienced companies.

That said, I think that you are, in fact, their target customer. A consumer that accepts their hype and, frankly, parrots it back to them.

[pdxindy]

There is a huge difference between you believing that's true and it actually being true. Given that it's an offline process, whether you want to admit it or not, there is a cost that isn't present with online processes. So, that almost certainly has a negative weight on your goals. The question is whether or not the increase quality more than offsets that negative weight. Roland, AFAIK, has only compared their own online to their own offline instruments. That's not going to reveal to you whether or not it is a better choice than existing online offerings from more experienced companies.

That said, I think that you are, in fact, their target customer. A consumer that accepts their hype and, frankly, parrots it back to them.

Now Roland has a vested interest in not making their live piano too good

[Ingonator]

Concerning my problem with the subscription purchase here in Germany i had contacted the official Roland Cloud support and they were very helpful. They even added some trial time in case solving the problem takes a bit longer.

The problem seemed to be that here in Germany at the form for the subscription at the field "stae/province" i had to use "none". Previoulsy i had used "Lower Saxony" there which is the federal state where i live in here in Germany.

Now the subscription process seemed to work and i'll install and check the D-50 plugin now (and later also others including those i alraedy used with the free trial subscription...).

[JJ_Jettflow]

Wow, I'm surprised at the size of some of those pianos. Now I'm really impressed with the Tera; even this small version sounds quite good compared to some I own and/or you listed.

One thing that I've really noticed with pianos that it's a matter of taste. A larger sampling set isn't going to make a Steinway sound like a Bosendorfer so, without more context, your comment is really nothing more than a personal affirmation reflecting your own tastes.

The same argument could be said about who you think the intended target group is for the Roland Cloud. Your statement. like mine which is my personal opinion, that it the people targeted to buy this is not professionals but to sucker amateurs in. This comment is nothing more that a personal opinion unlesss you have some data to back it up.

That's not going to reveal to you whether or not it is a better choice than existing online offerings from more experienced companies.

Like? Please name a few of these more experienced companies. I would like to hear your opinion (and that is all it is and nothing more) of a more experienced company than the company that invented MIDI and was responsible for the interconnection in music we enjoy today? Not to mention that they have invented a great deal of classic gear that is still in demand today.

That said, I think that you are, in fact, their target customer. A consumer that accepts their hype and, frankly, parrots it back to them.

So good for your to know so much about me to say that I am an amateur being suckered into the hype. Sorry to disappoint you but no, I am not. I am a retired semi-professional who has owned my own recording studio and made some good money doing ad spots for TV and radio. I have toured, recorded in real studios with real gear. I have done session work on other people's recordings. So I am far from the average know-it-all bedroom genius that comes on here.

[ghettosynth]

There is a huge difference between you believing that's true and it actually being true. Given that it's an offline process, whether you want to admit it or not, there is a cost that isn't present with online processes. So, that almost certainly has a negative weight on your goals. The question is whether or not the increase quality more than offsets that negative weight. Roland, AFAIK, has only compared their own online to their own offline instruments. That's not going to reveal to you whether or not it is a better choice than existing online offerings from more experienced companies.

That said, I think that you are, in fact, their target customer. A consumer that accepts their hype and, frankly, parrots it back to them.

Now Roland has a vested interest in not making their live piano too good

They're trying to sell the cloud as value. If you listen to the one terrible video on youtube it's really hard to tell the difference. Perhaps a demonstration in a more subdued environment will reveal more. But yes, they have a vested interest in convincing as many people as possible that the difference matters. At least those not already convinced by the innate superiority of authentic Roland sounds <insert eyeroll here>.

I'm no pianist, I don't even describe my relationship with keyboards as a player. When asked I say that I bang on the keyboards in key, in some keys, some of the time. However, for me, even given my limited skill, I find that where the difference in better piano libraries really matters is not purely in how it sounds given a particular sequence, rather, it's how it sounds while I play it, how the sound varies with my own playing dynamics. Without that feedback, much of the superiority of a deeper sample set may be lost, for me, as it has zero ability to impact on my performance, such as it is.

I imagine that if you work with more of a composer's mindset in the sense that you hear the instruments in your mind and your compositional process is distinct from any playing or improvisation, that this may not be true for you.

[ghettosynth]

That's not going to reveal to you whether or not it is a better choice than existing online offerings from more experienced companies.

Like? Please name a few of these more experienced companies. I would like to hear your opinion (and that is all it is and nothing more) of a more experienced company than the company that invented MIDI and was responsible for the interconnection in music we enjoy today? Not to mention that they have invented a great deal of classic gear that is still in demand today.

I don't need to, they're named in this thread. Your reference to midi is both fallacy and incorrect. Roland invented DCB, a proprietary protocol that was similar to what midi became. But Roland, by themselves, did not invent midi, Dave Smith was very influential in its development, and really, could be said to be the inventor of MIDI if anyone is.

1982 – MIDI
In 1981, Dave and a small number of forward-looking designers became concerned about the lack of compatibility between synthesizers from different manufacturers. Later that year, Dave formally presented a paper at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in New York proposing the USI (Universal Synthesizer Interface) as a possible solution. He then organized a meeting of all keyboard manufacturers at NAMM in January 1982 to further pursue the possibility of a common interface. After being greeted with disagreement and resistance from many manufacturers, Dave met with four companies: Roland, Korg, Yamaha and Kawai. Together they refined the design specification during 1982. The result was a new standard interface, coined by Dave as MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). The Prophet-600 was the first-ever MIDI product, shipped in December 1982. At the January 1983 NAMM show, a Sequential Circuits Prophet-600 and a Roland Jupiter 6 were successfully connected and performed together. Today, over 30 years later, MIDI is used everywhere, every day, and is still at version 1.0 — no small feat in a world of constantly evolving technology and rapid obsolescence.

https://www.davesmithinstruments.com/about/

However, we're talking about experience creating sample libraries, not general experience building instruments.

That said, I think that you are, in fact, their target customer. A consumer that accepts their hype and, frankly, parrots it back to them.

So good for your to know so much about me to say that I am an amateur being suckered into the hype.

I never said you were an amateur, but your own quote shows that you are influenced by hype. Statements like "if it helps me achieve my goals" are pure marketing drivel. I don't have to guess at what I know about you when you reveal it yourself in your own words.

[JJ_Jettflow]

I never said you were an amateur, but your own quote shows that you are influenced by hype. Statements like "if it helps me achieve my goals" are pure marketing drivel. I don't have to guess at what I know about you when you reveal it yourself in your own words.

You most did call me an amateur by saying "In fact, I'm not convinced that they are targeting professional users really. I get the sense that they are targeting hobbyists as suckers. Are professional users really asking for a D50 emulation, really?" and then stating "That said, I think that you are, in fact, their target customer. A consumer that accepts their hype and, frankly, parrots it back to them."

Statements like "if it helps me achieve my goals" are pure marketing drivel. I don't have to guess at what I know about you when you reveal it yourself in your own words.

You are too funny!

Sorry for having a post-secondary education.

[planetearth]

Like many here, I was hoping for something like this--but not as a subscription, and certainly not for $30 a month. Hell, you can get all of Slate's current and upcoming plug-ins for half of what Roland wants!

I know most DAW users won't be too happy about having to maintain Internet access on the DAW--and to rely on a "cloud service" to render the audio.

Swing and a miss, if you ask me.

Steve

[ghettosynth]

I never said you were an amateur, but your own quote shows that you are influenced by hype. Statements like "if it helps me achieve my goals" are pure marketing drivel. I don't have to guess at what I know about you when you reveal it yourself in your own words.

You most did call me an amateur by saying "In fact, I'm not convinced that they are targeting professional users really. I get the sense that they are targeting hobbyists as suckers. Are professional users really asking for a D50 emulation, really?" and then stating "That said, I think that you are, in fact, their target customer. A consumer that accepts their hype and, frankly, parrots it back to them."

Statements like "if it helps me achieve my goals" are pure marketing drivel. I don't have to guess at what I know about you when you reveal it yourself in your own words.

You're taking an off the cuff general comment too literally, and then trying to refute it in a literal and specific way by assuming that I was talking about you. Any time we're talking about marketing segments it is a statistical statement. So, yes, I think that they are targeting hobbyists as suckers as opposed to professional users. That doesn't mean that professional users won't get caught in that net.

I didn't say that YOU weren't a professional, and even if I did, that wouldn't have any meaning here. Frankly, I don't care. That would be a specific statement of fact of which I have no knowledge prior to your telling us. However, the fact that you "have been" a professional, doesn't mean anything at all with respect to either of my statements. You ARE influenced by hype, and so are many hobbyists. You can clearly see that in the IK thread where you, and many hobbyists, bought into the IK hype.

So again, I did not say that YOU were an amateur. I said that Roland was targeting amateurs. I also said that you seem to be the type of user that they're targeting. You took that to mean that I called you an amateur, that's incorrect, it simply means that your professional status is not the thing that you have in common with their target market.

You could argue that I should revise my perception of their target market, and I'm certainly willing to do that, but I think that what you're most offended about actually is that I called out how influenced you are by hype.

Sorry for having a post-secondary education.

Ah, the red flag of insecurity, bragging about one's education. They apparently didn't teach not to apply an aggregate result to any specific individual in statistical arguments. For example, it's a true statement to say that on average math students have a higher IQ than music students. That doesn't mean that ALL math students have a higher IQ than ALL or even ANY music students and means absolutely nothing with respect to any specific math or music student.

https://qz.com/334926/your-college-majo ... t-you-are/

[Ben H]

You know what will happen right?

People won't subscribe because the price is unreasonable, and also the "have to be online when you start your DAW" restriction... and instead of adjusting their business + CP models to be more reasonable... Roland will see it as a "lack of interest" and end up scrapping all future development.

That's doubtful. There is more to Roland Cloud than the soft synths. Rainlink is going to be a big part of it as well and once it is implemented, viewpoints may change.

How is Rainlink going to change my viewpoint when my primary interest is gigging LIVE? Often in areas and countries WITHOUT any internet access!

[JJ_Jettflow]

I never said you were an amateur, but your own quote shows that you are influenced by hype. Statements like "if it helps me achieve my goals" are pure marketing drivel. I don't have to guess at what I know about you when you reveal it yourself in your own words.

You most did call me an amateur by saying "In fact, I'm not convinced that they are targeting professional users really. I get the sense that they are targeting hobbyists as suckers. Are professional users really asking for a D50 emulation, really?" and then stating "That said, I think that you are, in fact, their target customer. A consumer that accepts their hype and, frankly, parrots it back to them."

Statements like "if it helps me achieve my goals" are pure marketing drivel. I don't have to guess at what I know about you when you reveal it yourself in your own words.

You're taking an off the cuff general comment too literally, and then trying to refute it in a literal and specific way by assuming that I was talking about you. Any time we're talking about marketing segments it is a statistical statement. So, yes, I think that they are targeting hobbyists as suckers as opposed to professional users. That doesn't mean that professional users won't get caught in that net.

I didn't say that YOU weren't a professional, and even if I did, that wouldn't have any meaning here. Frankly, I don't care. That would be a specific statement of fact of which I have no knowledge prior to your telling us. However, the fact that you "have been" a professional, doesn't mean anything at all with respect to either of my statements. You ARE influenced by hype, and so are many hobbyists. You can clearly see that in the IK thread where you, and many hobbyists, bought into the IK hype.

So again, I did not say that YOU were an amateur. I said that Roland was targeting amateurs. I also said that you seem to be the type of user that they're targeting. You took that to mean that I called you an amateur, that's incorrect, it simply means that your professional status is not the thing that you have in common with their target market.

You could argue that I should revise my perception of their target market, and I'm certainly willing to do that, but I think that what you're most offended about actually is that I called out how influenced you are by hype.

Sorry for having a post-secondary education.

Ah, the red flag of insecurity, bragging about one's education. They apparently didn't teach not to apply an aggregate result to any specific individual in statistical arguments. For example, it's a true statement to say that on average math students have a higher IQ than music students. That doesn't mean that ALL math students have a higher IQ than ALL or even ANY music students and means absolutely nothing with respect to any specific math or music student.

https://qz.com/334926/your-college-majo ... t-you-are/

Then you should be more careful making off the cuff statements.

like I said..you are too funny. First I am quoting marketing drivel then insecure because I reply to your nonsense by telling that is the way I always talk because I was educated in a way to express myself in such a manner. Got another angle???

I may be under the influence of hype..not sure what you are under the influence of though.

[ghettosynth]

Then you should be more careful making off the cuff statements.

Why, so you won't make fallacious arguments? That's on you, it isn't my day to babysit your feelings. This is a conversation, not a research paper. It will have turns of humor and lightweight comments. Deal with it. The elephant in the room is that you're offended and, like a teenager, are grasping for a loophole where you can be correct.

You made a claim that people's perceptions would change and people are disagreeing with you. That's what we're talking about, not your professional status or your education or anything else that you seem to need to lean on to try to convince us that you aren't just suckered by hype.

I think that, like the IK product, if you start talking about it you might see it somewhat differently. I can't believe, for example, that you are claiming that this is great and then in the same breath asserting that you aren't aware of the state of the art in piano libraries?

[ghettosynth]

...

[JJ_Jettflow]

Then you should be more careful making off the cuff statements.

Why, so you won't make fallacious arguments? That's on you, it isn't my day to babysit your feelings. This is a conversation, not a research paper. It will have turns of humor and lightweight comments. Deal with it. The elephant in the room is that you're offended and, like a teenager, are grasping for a loophole where you can be correct.

You made a claim that people's perceptions would change and people are disagreeing with you. That's what we're talking about, not your professional status or your education or anything else that you seem to need to lean on to try to convince us that you aren't just suckered by hype.

I think that, like the IK product, if you start talking about it you might see it somewhat differently. I can't believe, for example, that you are claiming that this is great and then in the same breath asserting that you aren't aware of the state of the art in piano libraries?

I am well aware of all the many piano libraries because I own about 7 or so of them already. I was not aware of the VSL or the QLEW as I do not use pianos in a classical or solo setting. Owning K11U gives me quite a few of them mentioned along with VI labs, Galaxy.


I'm not interested in a long pointless conversation about nothing with you. Not on this. Not on Syntronik. Not on anything really. From what I 've read from your posts, I get most of that you write is just to hear yourself talk.

[ghettosynth]

Just explaining a comment that was made about having to use low resolution versions of the Roland gear. The sample sets and soft synths Roland offer are egual to what most other companies offer sound-wise. While there are lots of complaints about the Roland plugs, their sound quality does not seem to be one of them so it is safe to say, as they are offered, the quality is equal to the current market offerings.
Rainlink will take it further.

I'm sorry, but what do You mean by "low resolution versions of the Roland gear"?
And where exactly this Rainlink will take it?
Because DAWs don't use MIDI for most VST parameters anyway, and I doubt that increasing resolution for velocity and aftertouch (and some few other parameters still working in 0-127 range) will bring that big change in music.

So this is getting to the crux of where this discussion could be interesting. Roland's making a lot of claims here but without any demonstrable evidence that this will have any significant impact on the quality of the result.

To some extent, it seems like something of a brute force approach and until there is more detail, if there's ever more detail, I'm not sure that we will be able to say otherwise?

They talk quite a bit about "articulations" in their piano video, what are they meaning in that context? It's piano. you only have so many input parameters and they are all controlled in their natural context. By that, I mean that it isn't like a guitar sample library where you will have different articulations controlled by keyswitches.

Is this nothing more than many more velocity layers? If so, how is this being sampled? I mean, eight terabytes is a lot of samples. You can talk, for example, about many velocity layers, but how are those samples being created? Are they using electro-mechanical devices to play the instrument in order to get a wide range of velocities? I have no idea, I'm trying to generate conversation here.

Like I said earlier before it got lost in a bunch of silliness, Roland comparing this piano to themselves isn't interesting. The question still remains over whether or not this pushes the state of sampling art in a meaningful direction and to do that comparisons should be made with the best libraries available today.

My sense on this is that the cloud is central to this initiative regardless of whether it actually improves the result. Roland is interested in this BECAUSE of the subscription revenue and that the products are shaped in order to sell that regardless of the actual musical value. In other words, the question isn't "how can we make the ultimate sampled piano", it's, "what technology can we leverage to make our cloud product impractical to run on the desktop and thus creating motivation for consumers to buy into a subscription model."