My ability to claim 2 products per year from Roland Cloud was revoked (and given back)

[PAK]

This is pure speculation but with the planned migration to Roland's own servers, I wonder if the deal they have with Virtual Sonics is on the way out - so the staff there are just treading water until that takes place and Roland fully takes over and decides what it's going to do.

It might be speculation, but what you're saying would (IMO) be the simplest way to explain events. So there's a reasonable chance of it being right.. down to perhaps providing the minimum required of them (User emails etc.. ) rather than more fully cooperate with the transfer.

Knowing Roland, that could be anything from pulling the plug on the whole shebang through letting it wither in much the same way as the Plug-Outs (and various other software wheezes they've tried over the years) to maybe finally pulling their finger out and doing it properly. I don't hold out much hope for that last one.

Since RC is heavily dependent on Roland for the content people actually wanted anyway (IE actual emulations, rather than samples of them) the reality is things have always been reliant on Roland. If they're moving away from the whole plugout / System 8 thing, towards Zen-Core (not the full emulation approach, only elements) then it was always going to cause difficulty at some point.

The fact they're trying to get people to create Roland Backstage accounts suggests, at least, they're not pulling the plug (YET!). But, either way, it'd be nice to have some clarity about the whole thing..

[gminorcoles]

If Roland abandons their vst development and plugouts, it would be a huge loss in my opinion. Any company that has all this technology working well, with existing hardware product lines, and has this cloud subscription infrastructure, has a huge leg up.

You can always tweak the commercial details of Cloud - like making it a purchase per synth plus maintenance charge going forward, without abandoning the entire enterprise, which is really good.

The plugouts are a real accomplishment - Roland has done a really good job, technically and product design-wise. They are a super weird company, at least from my limited perspective. They and their users seem to be perpetually on different pages.

I am sad that I actually use my cloud stuff a lot, and I will be bummed to stop using it.

[electro]

System-8 was Roland's final plugout synth? What is Zen-Core?

[D-Fusion]

This is pure speculation but with the planned migration to Roland's own servers, I wonder if the deal they have with Virtual Sonics is on the way out - so the staff there are just treading water until that takes place and Roland fully takes over and decides what it's going to do. Knowing Roland, that could be anything from pulling the plug on the whole shebang through letting it wither in much the same way as the Plug-Outs (and various other software wheezes they've tried over the years) to maybe finally pulling their finger out and doing it properly. I don't hold out much hope for that last one.

This is my guess too since they have been responsive before they announced the migrating to Roland.
So i have to wait and see what happens there before i contact them again.
But they could atleast give a short response like we are busy with the migration process so please contact us again once everything is set up.

[Gamma-UT]

System-8 was Roland's final plugout synth? What is Zen-Core?

Zen-Core is a less CPU-intensive emulation technique (uses more samples and behaviour modelling rather than circuit modelling) used in the latest crop of hardware - Jupiter X and that beatbox thing. They are supposed to be releasing additional emulations for those machines, though I expect it will be just like the Plug-outs where they release a few, stop supporting it and move onto the next business wheeze.

[PAK]

System-8 was Roland's final plugout synth? What is Zen-Core?

Zen-Core is what their latest synths, like the Jupiter X/XM and Fantom 6/7/8 are using. From their marketing speak "ZEN-Core is an expandable and customizable synthesizer engine running on BMC". BMC being Roland's own custom "Behaviour Modeling Chip", which "contains a large array of DSP and CPU core blocks plus hardware logic". They then add "expansions" to the base engine, such as what they're calling "ABM" (Analog Behavior Modeling) with the Jupiter-X. Though I'm not sure how much that tells you beyond Roland's love for three letter acronyms. Otherwise what Gamma-UT said

[electro]

So the new Fantom 6/7/8 and MC-707 are post AIRA. Which is the better emulation system? Or is ACB contained within ZEN-Core? I know the MC-707 is just PCM.

[e-crooner]

After reading all the above: wow. I'd often been a bit tempted by the Roland subscription, but never actually pulled the trigger. Now I'm glad I avoided this mess altogether, and any residual interest is well and truly dead. Thank you to everyone for sharing your experiences!

Sad to see what has become of Roland. Their chaos and dubious business practices are untypical of a Japanese company.

[PAK]

BTW Roland Cloud apparently have a place on the Roland stand at CES 2020 in Las Vegas. If anyone knows anyone attending maybe you can get them to ask if they will still be involved with Virtual Sonics moving forward?

It'd also be nice if they had significantly less vague rules about what actually qualifies for free instrument rewards, as they appear not to have applied the present rules (whatever they are, as nobody seems 100% sure) in a consistent way.

The email (telling you to sign up on Roland Backstage) does say this though.. "In the future, your new account will have additional benefits which we look forward to sharing with you. " But I'd expect there will be a lot of very unhappy customers if present rewards don't carry forward to the new accounts.

[punkfest2000]

Suspect Roland Cloud will cease to exist soon enough

[Ben H]

They're gonna drop the cloud and go dongle based instead.

Except instead of requiring 1 dongle, they're going to require 2

[xenofungus]

After reading all the above: wow. I'd often been a bit tempted by the Roland subscription, but never actually pulled the trigger. Now I'm glad I avoided this mess altogether, and any residual interest is well and truly dead. Thank you to everyone for sharing your experiences!

Sad to see what has become of Roland. Their chaos and dubious business practices are untypical of a Japanese company.

I guess you never heard of Japanese "black company"? Or even worse, work with one?

[e-crooner]

After reading all the above: wow. I'd often been a bit tempted by the Roland subscription, but never actually pulled the trigger. Now I'm glad I avoided this mess altogether, and any residual interest is well and truly dead. Thank you to everyone for sharing your experiences!

Sad to see what has become of Roland. Their chaos and dubious business practices are untypical of a Japanese company.

I guess you never heard of Japanese "black company"? Or even worse, work with one?

Nope, never heard of that.
But Japanese companies tend to have a good reputation. Maybe unjustified, I don't know. Yamaha and Korg have a good reputation.

Just did a quick search on those black companies, sounds horrible. Seems to be the trait of the Japanese mentality, they were also infamous for the horrible way they treated the Koreans and Chinese during the war.

[Atlatnesiti]

Looks like my Roland Cloud account has migrated to new Backstage already.
Had to reauthorise my instruments with new login details.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Looks like my Roland Cloud account has migrated to new Backstage already.
Had to reauthorise my instruments with new login details.

How? I'm supposed to own two products from Roland cloud and I have no idea where they are supposed to be. My backstage account shows nothing.

Also, it's ridiculous that this is separate from the Roland Content store where I own a plugout as well.