Roland Cloud

[PAK]

I asked Brian to spill some beans on ACB JX-8P and he posted a meme of a guy spilling a pot of beans at the office. Now, unless Roland started some major trolling courses for the employees, or Brian is just a douche

Jeez. Tough crowd. I thought it was funny anyway

Up until now Roland have operated a dual approach with their plugins. IE They serve their hardware too. Unless that changes the best bet, of seeing more ACB plugins, is likely with the release of some sort of successor product(s) to the System 8..

In terms of the JX8P they're in a slightly awkward spot. If they do an ACB version it might be seen as indirectly admitting it's superior to Zenology. Not good for their marketing even if ACB's more intensive / has less polyphony etc. If they release a standalone Zenology plugin they could introduce comparisons to the freeware PG-8x plugin (which would be better than Zenology). Not wise either when the Legendary plugins have a fairly good reputation. There's easy ways around that though.. EG They could maybe do an ACB MKS-70 (basically two JX-8Ps), which would make a better plugin than a plain JX8P anyway..

[PAK]

it's strange that a lot of it is duplicated functionality. all of the traditional buttons of the old GUI are still there for things like Option, Setup, Help, and About.

also the duplicated functionality for the Patch Browser and Patch Management.

I'm not a fan of the extra space used up at the top either. I guess they're going for consistency across their plugins, and integrating the browser had to be done to stop the plugin locking up the DAW with a second window dialog. But, on plugins which already had a way to do that (from the fake LCD display etc) it duplicates the functionality.

At least if you go into browse mode you can turn off the "Tweak Panel" and have a fairly compact window which just browses all presets..

[Luka_Kostii]

If they do an ACB version it might be seen as indirectly admitting it's superior to Zenology.

didn't they put out JD-800 as Zenology expansion first and released the plugin (aka wrapped Zenology version in a JD-800 looking GUI) after? wouldn't be new.

ACB MKS-70 (basically two JX-8Ps), which would make a better plugin than a plain JX8P anyway..

MKS-70 and JX-10 sounded inferior to JX-8P in every comparison I've heard so far and it wasn't subtle. Even though Roland intended them to be JX-8P successors, "two JX in one" thing, it didn't work out like that. They couldn't succeed over and replace JX-8P.

[davidka]

The difference in filters, I guess.

Had a JX-10, did not feel thin, possibly due to the cleverly layered patches. A JX-10 with the JX-8P filter would do justice for both.

[PAK]

didn't they put out JD-800 as Zenology expansion first and released the plugin (aka wrapped Zenology version in a JD-800 looking GUI) after?

Yes. It's passable for the sample based JD-800 (a dedicated approach, ala D-50, would've been better). But analogue models are different. Zenology sounds good. But compared to ACB / Legendary plugins some deficits are apparent.. EG high frequency resonance etc.

MKS-70 and JX-10 sounded inferior to JX-8P in every comparison

Dunno, they're pretty similar. Roland were known to use different op-amp components across production runs, and some people reckon certain ones sounded better. When it comes to virtual "component models" we're not really at the point where such differences would likely translate much. The output stage tends to be a bit ignored anyway, so..

[zerocrossing]

[EnochLight]

I just want a JX-8P to load into my System 8.

THIS X1000!!!! Been asking Brian M for years. All I get is “we hear you”. Roland has no intention of doing an ACB JX-8P. I’d wager our System 8’s are officially deprecated (despite the fact you can still buy them new).

Steady, steady there, fella. I asked Brian to spill some beans on ACB JX-8P and he posted a meme of a guy spilling a pot of beans at the office. Now, unless Roland started some major trolling courses for the employees, or Brian is just a douche for a living, he might as well be giving us, JX-8P waiting room occupants, a clever hint. Like saying it without actually saying it

Hahah! Well, Brian's a cool guy but I wouldn't put it beyond anyone to have some good old fashioned fun on the Internet when it comes to being vague. The fact that they haven't out-right said "no" or "it can't be done" does give me some hope, but - seriously - they've been taking that stance for the better part of 6 years, ever since the System-8 came out in 2017. But here's hoping.

[EnochLight]

In terms of the JX8P they're in a slightly awkward spot. If they do an ACB version it might be seen as indirectly admitting it's superior to Zenology. Not good for their marketing even if ACB's more intensive / has less polyphony etc.

I completely disagree with this, since we have both ACB and Zenology versions of the Juno-106, the Juno-60, and the Jupiter-8 - among some others. They literally risk nothing by doing an ACB of JX-8P for System-8 at this point (and in fact, will very likely sell more Roland Cloud Lifetime licenses).

Zenology's strengths is that it's a jack of all trades - far more polyphony/multitimbral, far more fully featured sequencers - far more everything for the hardware they're meant to run on (Jupiter-X and Juno-X). One could say the market for ACB/System-8 is a far more accurate (sounding) but "stripped down" feature take.

[PAK]

I completely disagree with this, since we have both ACB and Zenology versions of the Juno-106, the Juno-60, and the Jupiter-8 - among some others. They literally risk nothing by doing an ACB of JX-8P for System-8 at this point

I don't disagree with you here. It's more that the JX-8P was deliberately kept as Zenology only to be a unique selling point, and Roland made much of the fact that Zenology could "cover" such things. But, since the others already exist in both forms, it's not like anyone inclined couldn't have figured out the differences in approach by now..

The real question is whether it was intended to remain an exclusive or if Roland planned to wrap the Zenology version as a plugin, like they did for the JD-800, and whether any negative coverage changed their plans (EG Youtuber Espen Kraft was pretty savage and compared it - the Zenology based JX-8P - to his stuffed dead grandmother )

The reality is also that most of the ACB development was done many years ago (5 or 6 years) at this point and, whilst they did release the Jupiter-4 more recently, much/most of that work was likely done when they did the ProMars. SInce it's otherwise been quiet on the ACB front I'm not sure we'll see much more forthcoming this side of a System-8 replacement, if there is to be one..

[rod_zero]

For a moment I thought I will regret selling my system 8, then I read Roland is still an amateur company when doing software: still not optimized, still buggy, still bad GUIs.

It is a shame because the DSP in the acb plug outs is excellent, I just wish I could have the sh02, system 100 and 101 without the cloud.

[EnochLight]

The reality is also that most of the ACB development was done many years ago (5 or 6 years) at this point and, whilst they did release the Jupiter-4 more recently, much/most of that work was likely done when they did the ProMars. SInce it's otherwise been quiet on the ACB front I'm not sure we'll see much more forthcoming this side of a System-8 replacement, if there is to be one..

Counterpoint: the ACB Juno-60 was fairly recent, and while much of the work was likely done in the Juno-106 ACB as you say, there was absolutely more work that happened for the 60. Add to that the ACB work that needed to happen for the new circuit modelling features for all 3 new 2.0 updates of the 106/60/J8 that came out this week, and we can see the devs are very much alive with ACB (I'd wager it's the exact same devs that did Zenology). But I'm sure it boils down to balancing their dev resources, and Zenology is the new/shiny thing - that is supposed to help push new Juno-X/Jupiter-X hardware sales. So.. there's that.

I dunno - while I'm normally a glass-half-full sort of bloke, I just don't see an ACB of the JX-8P for System-8 coming out. Truly hope I'm wrong, and I truly hope it's in 2023.

[PAK]

Counterpoint: the ACB Juno-60 was fairly recent

The plugin. The actual ACB work on it was done at least 4 years back (for the JU-06A), and even that's based on the assumption it was done near the release time. It could've been done much earlier and then released as an extra 106 mode when they figured they weren't going to do a dedicated Juno 60 Boutique..

The people who did the code are most likely still at Roland. The point is more, when Roland put resources into this sort of thing, it tends to be with hardware aims on the other side. And, when they did this for the JX-8P, their Boutique (JX-08) version was Zenology based. I'm sure more stuff would be appreciated by System 8 owners, but it'd be more likely they'd put the resources in if a new product was planned..

I just don't see an ACB of the JX-8P for System-8 coming out. Truly hope I'm wrong, and I truly hope it's in 2023.

For the reasons just stated I think that's probably the case.. If we're wrong they get big bonus points for their System 8 support

[EnochLight]

Counterpoint: the ACB Juno-60 was fairly recent

The plugin. The actual ACB work on it was done at least 4 years back (for the JU-06A),

As I said:

Counterpoint: the ACB Juno-60 was fairly recent, and while much of the work was likely done in the Juno-106 ACB as you say, there was absolutely more work that happened for the 60.

Doesn't the ACB Juno-106 predate the JU-06A (the Juno-106 ACB was shipping as a Plug-Out on the System-8 in 2017, as far as I can remember). But honestly, it's all a blur to me. I'll blame it on the pandemic. My point is, the devs are obviously still active with ACB. The 2.0 updates that literally came out today is evidence of that - regardless of whether it needed a minor update or something deeper. Taking into consideration the new 2.0 circuit modelling tweaking allows you deeper access to what technicians used in "service mode", I'll wager the ACB work was bit more involved than we think.

For the reasons just stated I think that's probably the case.. If we're wrong they get big bonus points for their System 8 support

You got that right!

[Aloysius]

Will Roland Cloud Sound Canvas VA be going VST3 on Windows at some point?

[Iva]

VTS3 in Cubase 12 apple silicon native absolutly unusable, damn... Crazy realtime spikes