KVR Audio

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 10:07 am

I just found the location of the preset banks of the D-50 plugin (and also the location for new user banks created with the bank/patch browser).

At Windows 10 those are *.BIN files located at:
C:\ProgramData\Roland Cloud\D-50

With a backup of those files it should be possible to do a backup of your own banks/patches and also share your banks with others. I'll check that in detail ASAP.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 10:47 am

Ingonator wrote: pure PCM patches also do not use a filter, like in the real D-50.

Yes, I had realized that from reading the manual. Another old limitation that Roland could very well have lifted in the soft version, but not a showstopper (after all, the D-50 always had that limitation).

It only seems that they were "VERY" faithful (too much, IMO) to the original in the emulation.

Chris-S · Post by **Chris-S** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 10:58 am

Is there a demo version of the cloudy D50?
If yes, whats the limitation?

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 11:11 am

Chris-S wrote:Is there a demo version of the cloudy D50?
If yes, whats the limitation?

AFAIK, the only way to demo it is by subscribing the Roland Cloud. You can do it for free for 30 days. After that, you have to pay. I thought that was still eclusive for US, but apparently it's not the case anymore, since Ingo managed to subscribe.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 11:26 am

fmr wrote:
Chris-S wrote:Is there a demo version of the cloudy D50?
If yes, whats the limitation?
AFAIK, the only way to demo it is by subscribing the Roland Cloud. You can do it for free for 30 days. After that, you have to pay. I thought that was still eclusive for US, but apparently it's not the case anynore, since Ingo managed to subscribe.

Some "older" plugins are also available at the Roland Content Store:
https://contentstore.roland.com/aira/
https://contentstore.roland.com/software/

For a demo of the new plugins like e.g. D-50 but also several others you indeed need to get the 30 days trial subscription (which then enables you to check all products at Roland Cloud) and if that was finished you have to buy a subscription (currently still 19.95 $ per month). They could add more trial time if the paid subscription does not work for a certain reason (they added around a week of trial before my issue was solved yesterday...).

The problem i had with the subscription yesterday (as i mentioned earlier here) was solved by using "none" at the "State/province" field at the form for the subscription.
I got that hint from official Roland Cloud support after submitting a ticket.

FWIW after adding asupport ticket at teh Rolanc Cloud page you receive a link for their support website which then is a sepaerate login not directly related to the Rolnd Cloud website.
Once you gotb a login for their "help desk" you could send new support tickets directly from there.
Replies from support (for existing tickets) are sent via e-mail and also shown at the "help desk" after the login there.

beely · Post by **beely** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:04 pm

fmr wrote:It only seems that they were "VERY" faithful (too much, IMO) to the original in the emulation.

Including the polyphony limitations, which should be higher imo, particularly as the D50 is a very CPU light plugin.

jsp1979 · Post by **jsp1979** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:24 pm

The Roland site is very vague on the ability at some point to keep/own the plugins after subscribing for a certain length of time.

Does anyone have any more info or confirmation of this?

sinemotor · Post by **sinemotor** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 5:04 pm

jsp1979 wrote:The Roland site is very vague on the ability at some point to keep/own the plugins after subscribing for a certain length of time.

Does anyone have any more info or confirmation of this?

Yes. They talk about the loyalty program (or something like that) a couple of time on their Facebook page in the comments. So basically, after 12 months you get a VST of your choice for free forever.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 5:47 pm

After having started to use the D-50 plugin i just again installed the Jupiter-8 plugin that i alraedy used with the free trial.

The installer like that of the D-50 now also asks for the plugin paths/locations.

The GUI still gets blurred at bigger sizes and CPU use is still high. Both problems do not seem to exist with the D-50 emulation so there is hope that they could at least improve the blurry GUI of the Jupiter-8 (and other plugins).

There is a white "Patch" button which opens a browser like in the D-50 and like there in the D-50 you could create your own banks there.

If you open the browser it is also possible to save the currently loaded patch to a specific location in a new bank. For that you load the desired patch, open the browser, open the new bank (or first create a new one), do a single click at the location where it should be saved and then click on "Write" at the lower right of the browser.

With the D-50 it should work in a comparable way.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 7:45 pm

I just started to compare certain factory presets of the D-50 plugin like e.g. "Staccato Heaven" to similar patches in the "LA-50" Kontakt library i got here (taht library was discontinued shortly after release).

While in the past i thought that LA-50 sounded very good in comparion to the new D-50 plugin there seem to be a bigger difference and i am quite sure the new D-50 plugin sounds close to a real D-50.

Now that i played with both i would choose the D-50 plugin or a real D-50 any day...

While the basic sound of LA-50 is very good it just does not sound as "big" as the D-50 plugin.
This might also be due to the fact that the FXs used in LA-50 are from Kontakt 5 and not the "real deal" like in the D-50 plugin (mostly Chorus and Reverb). When using good external FXs the difference might get smaller but still it might be difficult to find FXs that sound similar. Soon I might try to seach for comparable FXs with those i got available here.
I already tried to use the ERS DimD Chorus with LA-50 that is based on the Roland Dimension D Chorus and besides making the sound "bigger" increases the stereo width (while that Chorus is less "destructive" to the original sound than many other Chorus FXs).

The D-50 emulation also seems to include some of the "dirt" of the original synth which seems to be more difficult to capture with samples.

Not to forget that the D-50 plugin currently includes 6 full banks of patches correspomding to 384 patches overall.

dark water · Post by **dark water** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:06 pm

I wouldn't purchase the emulation, as I already have a Roland D50 synth here as well as the excellent Kontakt bank Deep Flight by Pink Noise (I'm also hoping that Bitley will release his D50 bank soon).

However, my point for posting here is that many of you D50 fans may have missed three wonderful banks made for the D50 in the past 2 years, which certainly was a happy surprise compared to the outdated (arguably stale) presets from 20-25 years ago etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0LDX10ne2U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQtxFpxkY7M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Zd7zQ8wxk

(Carl Johnson's ''Voltage Drift'' and ''Descent into Madness'' soundbanks are also worth chasing up...)

Point being that there are suddenly some very talented sound designers making new soundbanks for the Roland D50 hardware synth, after a hiatus of about 15 years.

kbaccki · Post by **kbaccki** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:18 pm

sinemotor wrote:
jsp1979 wrote:The Roland site is very vague on the ability at some point to keep/own the plugins after subscribing for a certain length of time.

Does anyone have any more info or confirmation of this?
Yes. They talk about the loyalty program (or something like that) a couple of time on their Facebook page in the comments. So basically, after 12 months you get a VST of your choice for free forever.

For FREE!?!? 360USD is a lot of money for a D-50 plugin. If I want scratchy old digital flavor I'll just fire up the M1 and layer it with any of several dozen other synths...

I'd pay up to $150 for one-time perpetual D-50 license. Preferably $100. I dont care.. ilok, C/R, whatever. What I don't want is to get suckered into paying for a bunch of stuff I don't need and/or want... oh, such as a 8TB piano library... this is my overall criticism of kitchen sink subscriptions. If Roland reslly wants to do me a "loyalty" solid and discount the overall price of using ALL plugins and content via subscription, then they could just as easily give me a % loyalty discount based on total perpetual licenses purchased to date... u know like how a lot of plugin vendors operate. The fact is the subscription is much more lucrative for them them handing out loyalty coupons.

Klinke1 · Post by **Klinke1** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:36 pm

This thing sounds great.
Also nice GUI ..with the deep editing. Impressive.
CPU usage is very low here.
(Yes.. i want to buy it)

---------
I had SH101/SH2/System-100 installed. (Roland shop licences)

After installing the Cloud-Manager, it did update all 3 vst and after that all was deactivated..

Had to activate with the cloud-trial-account. Bummer.. and no info.

InLight-Tone · Post by **InLight-Tone** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 10:52 pm

I would buy it just for the nostalgia. I paid some $2000 back when it debuted. The only thing stopping me would be the lack of being able to import D-50 syx banks to stock up on patches...

electro · Post by **electro** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 11:52 pm

So it is impossible to buy Roland's Jupiter 8 and D50 VSTInstruments?

KVR Audio

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

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