Roland SonicCell Compared To Fantom X

[MeteoXavier]

Has anyone here ever used a Roland SonicCell and compared it to a Fantom/Fantom X? I'm strictly a computer musician and I've always wanted the Fantom X, but I only need the sounds as they come right out of the box, and a SonicCell is 1/4th to 1/5th the price of a Fantom X. I want to know if the sound quality of the SonicCell unit's samples/filters/whatever is comparable to the Fantom X keyboard or rack, or if the sound quality is inferior.

"Just save up and get a Fantom X."
"Just save up and get a new Fantom. Roland has like 2 other ones that came out after that one."
"Why? Just get some modern VSTs and samples."

I have modern VSTs and samples and I might save up for a Fantom X keyboard or the FA-06 (the modern Fantom is way too expensive and not what I'm interested in), but, again, the SonicCell is a small fraction of the price of the Fantom X rack and keyboard and I don't need anything else of the Fantom line except those samples themselves for a personal niche project I've always wanted to do. The Fantom X rack is like $600-$700, the Fantom X keyboard is still around $1,000, but the SonicCell is only like $250-$300. I'd get the rack or keyboard if the added money meant those same samples/instruments sounded better out of the box, but that's what I'm looking to find out here.

Thank you!

[Uncle E]

Roland's Axial site has lots of extra sounds for Fantom that you won't get with Sonic Cell. If you're going to save up, consider getting the Integra-7 instead since it comes with all the SRX Expansions.

[zerocrossing]

I had a SonicCell for a while. It was OK, but frankly years of having Roland ROMplers… I just got bored with them. Also, the editor was very shaky. If you’re strictly a computer musician, I’d subscribe to Roland Cloud. They have a lot of the ROMpler stuff up there, as well as good emulations of their classic analogs.

[MeteoXavier]

Roland Cloud does not have the Fantom X sounds as of writing and their VSTs are supposedly heavy in resource usage. For the $250-$300+ they would charge for the Fantom X library, I could already get a SonicCell that doesn't use nearly as much resources on my computer.

But again, my question is about the sound quality of the SonicCell. Does it still sound good or as good as the Fantom X keyboard/rack? Youtube videos playing the SonicCell are not useful to me given the widely inconsistent sound qualities of the people that record them.

[Uncle E]

Check out this link. It won’t directly answer your question but it’ll give you some insight into how much difference there can be between models from the Sonic Cell era:

http://www.donsolaris.com/?p=404

FWIW, I got my XV-2020 for around $100 and it’s a pretty good synth for the money.

[zerocrossing]

Roland Cloud does not have the Fantom X sounds as of writing and their VSTs are supposedly heavy in resource usage.

That’s the Aria emulations. The ROMpler stuff is pretty light.

You seem to be obsessed with the Fantom X, just get one. It’s doubtful anyone’s put them side by side. The last Roland ROMpler I owned was the XV-5050. I loved it at the time, but when I started using plugins, I found it easily replaceable.

[MeteoXavier]

You seem to be obsessed with the Fantom X, just get one.

With a respectful tone, that doesn't answer any questions or solve anything. "Just buy [x]" as a response doesn't answer anything. If I was just going to do that without any consideration to anything, I would've just bought a Fantom X to start with. The entire point is that a SonicCell unit is a hell of a lot more affordable than any of the other Fantom units out. It's cheaper because it has a lot less of the other features the other units have, but that's fine by me as I only want the sounds to begin with. The only reason I haven't already purchased it is I want to know if the instruments it shares also sound as good from it as the keyboard and rack.

As an example of why I'm stressing that audio quality point: I went to a Guitar Center 600 miles from home last week and finally got to try a Korg Nautilus, which is supposed to be a version of the Kronos line. Despite being a multi-thousand dollar keyboard, I thought the sound quality was very disappointing. It might have been the amp they hooked it up to, but I wasn't going to go to the trouble to make them change it around when that first impression was probably the right one to begin with.

Furthermore, I do have the Norctrack Fantom X library for Kontakt and it's not terrible, but its audio quality leaves some to be desired as well. From all that, you can see how I arrived here: the SonicCell may be the answer at a better price, but the audio quality might be inferior, I don't know, that's why I'm asking.

The ROMpler stuff is pretty light.

This IS actually useful to me, thank you. If I couldn't get the Fantom X sounds before they came out with it on Roland Cloud, that is useful for me to decide to do the Cloud instead.

[MeteoXavier]

http://www.donsolaris.com/?p=404

FWIW, I got my XV-2020 for around $100 and it’s a pretty good synth for the money.

I have an XV-5050 and XV-5080 as well as the SRX-06 and 07. I wasn't planning on getting a 5080, but I happened upon one for an unusually good price and I was deep in COVID depression at the time, so I just went ahead and got it. I love'em and I'm already using them for my niche projects. I planned to just call it good there, but knowing the Fantom X library both improves upon and can relatively seamlessly blend into the XV library makes me think my last synth purchase that I plan on making in life should be one. The SonicCell has the library at a lower cost without the other features that I personally didn't need to begin with. That is how I got here.

[Uncle E]

I have an XV-5050 and XV-5080 as well as the SRX-06 and 07. I wasn't planning on getting a 5080, but I happened upon one for an unusually good price and I was deep in COVID depression at the time, so I just went ahead and got it. I love'em and I'm already using them for my niche projects. I planned to just call it good there, but knowing the Fantom X library both improves upon and can relatively seamlessly blend into the XV library makes me think my last synth purchase that I plan on making in life should be one. The SonicCell has the library at a lower cost without the other features that I personally didn't need to begin with. That is how I got here.

Oh, that's interesting. The XV-5080 is a wonderful module, I personally wouldn't say the Fantom library is an upgrade from it but your point about it seamlessly blending with your other modules is spot-on. The SonicCell will probably be perfect for you. It's the exact same sound as the Fantom X.

[zerocrossing]

You seem to be obsessed with the Fantom X, just get one.

With a respectful tone, that doesn't answer any questions or solve anything. "Just buy [x]" as a response doesn't answer anything.

It’s because you are asking the wrong question. If it had the same engine of the Fantom X, that information would be available on the internet somewhere and answered by a simple search. Even so, it’s irrelevant. Just listen to the demos and make up your mind. I’m sure there’s at least a couple of decent ones out there. If it means anything, I thought the SonicCell sounded pretty much like my XV-5050, though I didn’t own them at the same time.

[anotherscott]

SonicCell is the cheapest way to get the Fantom X sounds. I'm not sure it has absolutely all of them, but it at least has most of them.

Fantom X sounds are NOT available in the Fantom-06, Roland Cloud, or Integra-7 options that have been mentioned.

[MeteoXavier]

Well the question was whether or not the Sonic Cell SOUNDED as good as the Fantom X for what sounds it had, but it doesn't matter since no one seems to know how to read past the first sentence before answering (90% of my KVR questions end up like this) and because I've stopped considering Fantom X anything as further investigation into the subject shows that the Fantom series is actually apparently XV-50XX sounds I already have under different names.

I feel dumb not getting that clue with the fact that the XV-5050 has 128 Fantom sounds in it already, but now that I did, I'm searching elsewhere.

[anotherscott]

I've stopped considering Fantom X anything as further investigation into the subject shows that the Fantom series is actually apparently XV-50XX sounds I already have under different names.

No, only the original Fantom has the XV soundset. The Fantom S, Fantom X, and SonicCell are based on a different sound set. Roland made the older sound set available as a download, but the sounds don't necessarily all sound the same, because as the docs for that download tell you, in some cases they are substituting different "similar" waveforms, because the actual waveforms for those XV-5080 sounds do not exist in the Fantom S/X.

I was disappointed that the Fantom S/X sounds did not make it into the Integra or new Fantoms, which do have the XV-5080 sounds, as there are some really nice sounds there that are hard to find today. (Though some of them are in the VR-09/730, like the really nice Blues Harp harmonica.)

[anotherscott]

accidental dupe

[DevonB]

I reviewed the Sonic Cell back in 2008, so I'm relying on what I wrote back then in comparison to my Fantom XR. It's been too many years for me to remember this level of detail today.

A few quotes from my own article in Recording Magazine -

Sonic Cell synthesis structure is pretty much identical with the Roland JD, JV, XV and Fantom series. With Sonic Cell’s price point at a retail $899, I was worried it was going to be more cut back like the Roland XV-2020 was compared to the XV-5080. Feature for feature in the synthesis and effects categories, it’s pretty much all there. Features that I found were missing from the Fantom, as I expected at this price-point, were the performance features like the arpeggiator, Rhythm Patterns, Rhythm Groups, Chord Memory as well as the full-blown sampler.

Roland has created a new set of 128 megabytes of samples for SC. What I did find interesting though is the tremendous amount of overlap of presets between the Fantom and the Sonic Cell. Out of the 896 included presets, a full 587 presets, or roughly 65%, are in the Fantom synthesizer, or at least sharing the same name. I tried comparing as best I could back-to-back with a Fantom XR with the Sonic Cell. For the most part, the handful of sounds I tried were identical. Subtle nuances I chalked up to free running effects, LFO’s and oscillators, along with MIDI velocity differences. Sonic Cell truly is the ‘poor man’s Fantom.’

While the preset overlap is quite high, I still felt some of the best presets were in the Fantom. Some of the ‘quality’ differences are to be expected; half the memory of the Fantom is a grand piano, whereas in the Sonic Cell, it is not. Naturally, the piano on the Fantom does sound better to my ears. Some other sounds are just favorite patches, such as Survivoz and Ring Worldz as a few examples that are only in the Fantom and not in the Sonic Cell. This is just a point to state that while the Sonic Cell shares many similarities with the Fantom, it’s not a Fantom 100%. If you have no desire to use a piece of hardware as a sampler, and the performance features of the Fantom are not important to you, Sonic Cell is still an awesome alternative to get that killer Roland sound into your studio.