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

[AnX]

This is probably the original DSP code with original ROM content.
And Roland didn't figured out yet, how to transmit sysex because the code is 30 years old and no one understands it anymore, they just threw it into some digital circuit simulator

If they knew how sysex worked 30 years ago, they still know...

Whole hardware synth is a bit more than the sound engine, because there are parts and code for handling the hardware switches, knobs, keybed or display. And of course MIDI, including sysex.
Most of it in the plugin is left or changed to different, software conterparts.

But if they ported only the DSP part of the code, the sysex won't work - and it's not working now, right?

Other synths manage it very well. Lazy programming on Rolands part. No surprise there eh...

[Ingonator]

FWIW i you asked about Sysex import for the D-50 plugin at official support besides asking about it at Facebook today (where i did not receive a reply yet...).

I had alraedy contacted support two times concerning the subscription process and the Cloud Manager and got a reply quite fast (and it was helpful too...).

I got a reply from official Roland Cloud support concerning my feature request for Sysex import:

We can't comment on future products, but I'll add it to the feature enhancement list and forward it to the product group.

Does not really answer the question but if they really forward the request it is better than nothing...

There were multiple requests for this at Facebook but no direct reply yet (FWIW theer also were multiple requests for offering single purchases...). Seems to be a topic where they currently are very careful giving answers. Still this does not mean that it would be impossible to add this feature.

To be fair the official support so far was very helpful and also quite fast with actual issues i had with the subscription or the software. Concerning feature requests they seem to be more careful giving answers.
Concerning the subscription model there already was an official answer at Facebook i also posted here yesterday.

[AnX]

If it was a single purchase vst at $30 i'd prob buy it. I'd instantly regret it, but i'd prob still hit buy

[starflakeprj]

Let's not pretend, however, that there's much magic going on in the D50. It's a pretty simple instrument by todays DSP standards.
[...]

AFAIK there is already a synth using emulation of the D-50 architecture. In case someone forgot - it's TubeOhm Vintage
Of course it's not quite the same, because 32b SE and different sample content, but still.
There was also another one IIRC, from different manufacturer, also using SE or similar framework.

Well, inspired by (which Vintage is) isn't the same thing as emulation. Synth1 is inspired by the Nord Lead (I don't know if it is 1 or 2), while Discovery(Pro) from discoDSP is an emulation.

[starflakeprj]

We can't comment on future products, but I'll add it to the feature enhancement list and forward it to the product group.

In my experience "adding it to the future enhancement list.." most often means "let's throw it in the garbage bin". I hope I'm wrong

[fmr]

At $30 it would be a no brainer. Up to $99 I would buy it, no question. More than that, I would probably wait for a sale.

Subscription is out of the question, at least for now. A month pass in a snap, and with all the things we have to do every day, netxt time I would be going to fire it up, I would discover that a month had passes, I had paid $20 (or $30) bucks, and I had not used them.

It's not like we don't have anything else to use, every time we launch our DAW to make music : shrug:

[fmr]

Well, inspired by (which Vintage is) isn't the same thing as emulation though. Synth1 is inspired by the Nord Lead (I don't know if it is 1 or 2), while Discovery(Pro) from discoDSP is an emulation.

Up to the point of reading sysex (another one)

[Ingonator]

FWIW now that i got a D-50 plugin with all original parameters i might also try to replicate certain sounds in other synths.

Recently (before having the D-50 plugin..) i created a patch in my Novation Ultranova using a layer of a Bell sound and PWM sound where i used the dual filter to get a more or less "unfiltered" sound for the Bell and a filtered one for the PWM part, comparable to the D-50.

I did also try to copy that to the Blofeld which has a dual filter too. It does not sound identical in Blofeld but that's OK. Would not make much sense to have both synths if they do sound identical.

None of the two synths seems to sound identical to a D-50 but that's OK too. That patch i tried to do is mor "inspired by" than trying to do a 100% proper replication. In those I did also not use samples of the original D-50 PCM samples but the included digital waveforms and/or wavetables.

If i discover i could not properly replicate D-50 sounds in other synths it would be a raeson to keep the D-50 plugin or maybe even buy a hardware D-50 again (after 13 years now...) if it is available for a reasonable price. Using the plugin is an opportunity to see if i would need a hardware D-50 again or not.

Another option is to check which external FXs i would have to add to certain D-50 Kontakt libraries to make it sound closer to the real thing (yes, there is indeed an audible difference with those sample libraries...).

[AnX]

If i discover i could not properly replicate D-50 sounds in other synths it would be a raeson to keep the D-50 plugin or maybe even buy a hardware D-50 again (after 13 years now...) if it is available for a reasonable price. Using the plugin is an opportunity to see if i would need a hardware D-50 again or not.

I think the fact that you havent used one for 13 years answers your question.

[Kumi_27]

Let's not pretend, however, that there's much magic going on in the D50. It's a pretty simple instrument by todays DSP standards.
[...]

AFAIK there is already a synth using emulation of the D-50 architecture. In case someone forgot - it's TubeOhm Vintage
Of course it's not quite the same, because 32b SE and different sample content, but still.
There was also another one IIRC, from different manufacturer, also using SE or similar framework.

Well, inspired by (which Vintage is) isn't the same thing as emulation.

Is a good way to avoid Roland lawyers.
If one put a certain samples into the Vintage insides, it will sound very similar. Because, like ghettosynth already pointed out, D-50 is nothing special as far as sound engine goes.

[starflakeprj]

Let's not pretend, however, that there's much magic going on in the D50. It's a pretty simple instrument by todays DSP standards.
[...]

AFAIK there is already a synth using emulation of the D-50 architecture. In case someone forgot - it's TubeOhm Vintage
Of course it's not quite the same, because 32b SE and different sample content, but still.
There was also another one IIRC, from different manufacturer, also using SE or similar framework.

Well, inspired by (which Vintage is) isn't the same thing as emulation.

Is a good way to avoid Roland lawyers.
If one put a certain samples into the Vintage insides, it will sound very similar. Because, like ghettosynth already pointed out, D-50 is nothing special as far as sound engine goes.
It's core - NEC µPD78312 is a mere 8 bit, 12MHz chip and today's cheap phones can run circles around it.

The D-50 is combining PCM waveforms/short samples with subtractive synthesis. On their own, it's nothing fancy, but the combination might not be as usual. If the TubeOhm vintage is an emulation, so is Ensoniq SQ80. Or we could call all subtractive synths emulations of the Moog?

[Kumi_27]

Sorry, mixed the chip markings.
The main CPU - NEC µPD78312 was handling the hardware - including MIDI and SysEx
The sound itself was generated by the custom Roland MB87136 LA chip, assisted by two Roland custom reverb and chorus ICs.
So probably this is the cause, that in the VST version the sound is working while the Sysex is not, because of the missing µPD code.

The D-50 is combining PCM waveforms/short samples with subtractive synthesis. On their own, it's nothing fancy, but the combination might not be as usual.

TubeOhm in Vintage just put the same combination inside.
And because of that it's "inspired by D-50" and not "inspired by DX7"...

[fmr]

The D-50 is combining PCM waveforms/short samples with subtractive synthesis. On their own, it's nothing fancy, but the combination might not be as usual. If the TubeOhm vintage is an emulation, so is Ensoniq SQ80. Or we could call all subtractive synths emulations of the Moog?

Completely different things. The combination of subtractive synthesis with samples is what have feeding basically all the ROMplers since the D-50 appeared. Even those that are ALL ROMplers, have samples of single cycle waves to replace the oscillators. That, and the presence of filters, is "combining PCM waveforms/short samples with subtractive synthesis". That's also what basically all samplers have been doing since the Emulator II / Emax onwards (with even some addings, like additive synthesis, etc.).

But there's an whole lot of variants (and variables) beyond that, as there are a lot of variants beyond the subtractive synthesis techniques as implemented in the Moogs.

[beely]

I had a quick look at the .bin file that the patches are stored in - with a little reversing and sysex spec trawling it's probably doable to create a sysex <-> bin file utility to be able to convert D50 sysex banks/patches into bin files the plugin can read, if Roland won't implement sysex support directly...

[Ingonator]

The D-50 is combining PCM waveforms/short samples with subtractive synthesis. On their own, it's nothing fancy, but the combination might not be as usual. If the TubeOhm vintage is an emulation, so is Ensoniq SQ80. Or we could call all subtractive synths emulations of the Moog?

Completely different things. The combination of subtractive synthesis with samples is what have feeding basically all the ROMplers since the D-50 appeared. Even those that are ALL ROMplers, have samples of single cycle waves to replace the oscillators. That, and the presence of filters, is "combining PCM waveforms/short samples with subtractive synthesis". That's also what basically all samplers have been doing since the Emulator II / Emax onwards (with even some addings, like additive synthesis, etc.).

But there's an whole lot of variants (and variables) beyond that, as there are a lot of variants beyond the subtractive synthesis techniques as implemented in the Moogs.

None of the Roland ROMplers that followed D-50, including also the D-70 which was a "pure" ROMpler, seemed to combine PCM samples and synthesis (especially the PWM) in a similar way the D-50 did. As mentioned yesterday also the Chorus and Reverb FXs of the D-50 made a big part of the sound.
Opposing to many other samplers and ROMplers the D-50 did also not include a filter for The PCM samples which makes a difference for the resulting sounds too.

The way the D-50 worked was still unique and is not directly comparable to later Roland synths except maybe the V-Synth with the D-50 expansion card.
It more or less combines a simple VA synth with a ROMpler while that ROMpler is closer to the Roland U-series which did not have a filter (Some also say the D-70 is an U-series ROMpler with the filter of the D-50).
Also the layers/partials concept is difficult to replicate with synths that do not include a layer structure ot at least a dual filter that could be used in parallel mode.

FWIW besides a D-50 (back in 2004) i had also owned a JV-90 and XV-3080 and a few real analogs from Roland (Jupiter 8, MKS-80, MKS-50). Currently i do not own any hardware synth of them.

Later ROMplers like e.g. JV-1080, JD-800 and later the XV series introduced digital multimode filters including also BPF and HPF modes.

The later ROMplers maybe had D-50 patches included as samples of the real thing but as soon as you want to create D-50 patches from scratch with those newer ones it seems to be difficult to do.