Roland Cloud

[Introspective]

Hey Introspective! I hear you, I would love to mess around with a new instrument as well. I am not allowed to specify dates or give information about up and coming releases when I do hear about them. Just know that we have tons of stuff planned for this year that we are looking forward to share with you.

Can I get "meta" with you?

I would LOVE to know WHY all the music companies are so hush-hush about what they're developing. ...Except, apparently, Behringer.

I'm sure that your personal answer is "my boss requires it," but I wonder if you can shed any insight on the actual REASONS for the silence.

The game industry used to be the same way, and now it's evolved to where everyone is doing "early access" stuff right out of the gate, and I think we're ending up with far better games because of it. It just seems to me that the same would be true of synth manufacture, and I'm confounded as to why so few companies dare to attempt it. ...There must be a good reason for it. ...it's not as stupid as "we don't want Korg to rip off our stuff," can it? I mean... if that's the only reason ... how much does it cost a company to do a little corporate espionage? [shrug] It seems more cost-effective to just be open about anything in the alpha stage or later.

I suppose someone could say "yeah, look at what happens to Behringer!" ...and... sure: there's plenty of hate for them, but I think they end up with better synths because of customer feedback. For example, they switched from mini-USB to USB-C on their new mini- synths. That would have been a disaster if they came out saying "well our research shows mini-USB is JUST FINE!" ...And I expect the UB-Xa is also a better synth because of all the attention and "notes" they got from announcing it. It's so popular right now it can't be kept in stock. I fail to see the argument against being open, as it applies to Behringer.

Perhaps you can shed some light on the reasoning?

[Jon at Roland]

Hey Introspective! I hear you, I would love to mess around with a new instrument as well. I am not allowed to specify dates or give information about up and coming releases when I do hear about them. Just know that we have tons of stuff planned for this year that we are looking forward to share with you.

Can I get "meta" with you?

I would LOVE to know WHY all the music companies are so hush-hush about what they're developing. ...Except, apparently, Behringer.

I'm sure that your personal answer is "my boss requires it," but I wonder if you can shed any insight on the actual REASONS for the silence.

Perhaps you can shed some light on the reasoning?

I totally understand your feelings about this. From my personal experience, the last thing Roland wants is to appear to the community as a company that promises something and doesn't ever follow through. A lot can happen when something is in development and things can be delayed for reason out of anyones control, some projects take years to come to fruition and Roland doesn't want to make those promises, generate hype and never deliver on them. It's just always kind of been there style.

This is of course my opinion but I actually appreciate less is more in all art forms and Rolands style works well with me. I completely understand wanting to know more and get hyped as well. But that's just my personal feelings about it

[Jon at Roland]

Just so y'all know, we are still looking for participants in our first ever GALAXIAS roundtable. The purpose of this roundtable is for the GALAXIAS team to hear user feedback direct from the Roland community (what works, what doesn’t, what you would like to see) and get to know community members as we look to expand GALAXIAS’s feature set.

We have changed the date and the Roundtable will now be held on January 31st at 4PM PST. If you’re interested feel free to send me a private message with your e-mail. Let me know if you have any questions.

[zvenx]

If i was a Galaxias user I would.
Alas I am not.
Hopefully you will get people who do sign up and get some valuable info.
rsp

[Introspective]

Yeah, apologies, but as a user of a DAW, Galaxias did not offer any features I had been lacking. It was a pass for me.

[JamminFool]

looks like this is where all the effort is going these days. yet another way to recycle what they already have. *sigh*.

[Septic Underground]

I am wondering if they have laid off their ACB/Legendary coders. Or they quit themselves perhaps.

[sacer]

Just so y'all know, we are still looking for participants in our first ever GALAXIAS roundtable. The purpose of this roundtable is for the GALAXIAS team to hear user feedback direct from the Roland community (what works, what doesn’t, what you would like to see) and get to know community members as we look to expand GALAXIAS’s feature set.

We have changed the date and the Roundtable will now be held on January 31st at 4PM PST. If you’re interested feel free to send me a private message with your e-mail. Let me know if you have any questions.

I have paused my Roland cloud because I have everything right now, but you can invite me.
My proposal is to make Galaxy free, and only working with cloud or your lifetime licenses. So you you make it like vengeance Avenger, Refx Nexus, Parawave Rapid, Rob Papen Prisma, Dune3, or Arturia Analog Lab.
So you make multilayer expansions, like refx nexus or Avenger and people who are in cloud or have lifetime keys do profit from multilayer expansions, that could be one key tracks, because you have bass synths, drums and everything else in cloud. So you could use 8 instruments for advanced sequences that build a track or play a well layers hook, riff, pad etc.
You can also check D16 Lush2 for inspiration, what they get out of 8 101 !
This could motivate people to stay on cloud or to add more lifetime keys. I think there is a high market for production ready ensembles, that fits to their music style. They can build it into their tracks, use elements or modify it to their needs. Also it could be possible that when some lifetime keys are missing, it could play it, but you can’t modify it.
Check out Vengenace and Refx, their business model with expansions is running well, so you could adapt it to sell cloud or lifetime keys.

[PAK]

I am wondering if they have laid off their ACB/Legendary coders. Or they quit themselves perhaps.

ACB is done by their Japan based team. The Roland Cloud Manager, and Galaxias, appear to be done by the American (Seattle based?? ) side, which seems more responsive to customer input..

Unfortunately, the fact that the American side can’t even seem to get the Japanese side to fix a simple name length bug (on the JD / JX / XV /SRX plugins) kinda tells its own story. Not a good look Roland Japan..

I wouldn’t put too much on the fact that the ACB side has been quiet for now. Since ACB has recently been added, to the Fantom, it’s unlikely they’re going to drop that approach, and the current quiet period is more likely related to future hardware considerations..

[JamminFool]

I wouldn’t put too much on the fact that the ACB side has been quiet for now. Since ACB has recently been added, to the Fantom, it’s unlikely they’re going to drop that approach, and the current quiet period is more likely related to future hardware considerations..

i sincerely hope you are right.

[Jon at Roland]

I am wondering if they have laid off their ACB/Legendary coders. Or they quit themselves perhaps.

Hey Septic! The team spent all last year updating the Legendary Instruments to expand compatibility and adding v2 features among other projects. They are currently working on many more projects for this year as well! I assure you they have not quit lol.

I have paused my Roland cloud because I have everything right now, but you can invite me.
My proposal is to make Galaxy free, and only working with cloud or your lifetime licenses. So you you make it like vengeance Avenger, Refx Nexus, Parawave Rapid, Rob Papen Prisma, Dune3, or Arturia Analog Lab.
So you make multilayer expansions, like refx nexus or Avenger and people who are in cloud or have lifetime keys do profit from multilayer expansions, that could be one key tracks, because you have bass synths, drums and everything else in cloud. So you could use 8 instruments for advanced sequences that build a track or play a well layers hook, riff, pad etc.
You can also check D16 Lush2 for inspiration, what they get out of 8 101 !
This could motivate people to stay on cloud or to add more lifetime keys. I think there is a high market for production ready ensembles, that fits to their music style. They can build it into their tracks, use elements or modify it to their needs. Also it could be possible that when some lifetime keys are missing, it could play it, but you can’t modify it.
Check out Vengenace and Refx, their business model with expansions is running well, so you could adapt it to sell cloud or lifetime keys.

These are all great suggestions sacer! And this is the kind of feedback we would like to hear at the Roundtable. I'll send you a PM.

There are reasons why we haven't yet made GALAXIAS available to all memberships and the biggest reason is because without instruments to use with GALAXIAS, it's doesn't serve the same purpose. By using it with an Ultimate Membership, you get the advantage of the whole library at your disposal to create any number of scenes. But thank you for this feedback even if you can't make the Roundtable.

looks like this is where all the effort is going these days. yet another way to recycle what they already have. *sigh*.

Hey JamminFool, GALAXIAS has its own dev team that is independent from other Roland Cloud projects.

[sacer]

I am wondering if they have laid off their ACB/Legendary coders. Or they quit themselves perhaps.

Hey Septic! The team spent all last year updating the Legendary Instruments to expand compatibility and adding v2 features among other projects. They are currently working on many more projects for this year as well! I assure you they have not quit lol.

I have paused my Roland cloud because I have everything right now, but you can invite me.
My proposal is to make Galaxy free, and only working with cloud or your lifetime licenses. So you you make it like vengeance Avenger, Refx Nexus, Parawave Rapid, Rob Papen Prisma, Dune3, or Arturia Analog Lab.
So you make multilayer expansions, like refx nexus or Avenger and people who are in cloud or have lifetime keys do profit from multilayer expansions, that could be one key tracks, because you have bass synths, drums and everything else in cloud. So you could use 8 instruments for advanced sequences that build a track or play a well layers hook, riff, pad etc.
You can also check D16 Lush2 for inspiration, what they get out of 8 101 !
This could motivate people to stay on cloud or to add more lifetime keys. I think there is a high market for production ready ensembles, that fits to their music style. They can build it into their tracks, use elements or modify it to their needs. Also it could be possible that when some lifetime keys are missing, it could play it, but you can’t modify it.
Check out Vengenace and Refx, their business model with expansions is running well, so you could adapt it to sell cloud or lifetime keys.

These are all great suggestions sacer! And this is the kind of feedback we would like to hear at the Roundtable. I'll send you a PM.

There are reasons why we haven't yet made GALAXIAS available to all memberships and the biggest reason is because without instruments to use with GALAXIAS, it's doesn't serve the same purpose. By using it with an Ultimate Membership, you get the advantage of the whole library at your disposal to create any number of scenes. But thank you for this feedback even if you can't make the Roundtable.

looks like this is where all the effort is going these days. yet another way to recycle what they already have. *sigh*.

Hey JamminFool, GALAXIAS has its own dev team that is independent from other Roland Cloud projects.

Would like to join.

I also think Galaxias could offer something new…
A big problem for Roland is that on hardware the other competitors are offering analog synths like sequential, Moog, Artiria, Korg and there are also cheap behringers that raise the bar for analog recreation.
In the software world Roland has a much bigger competition. There are lot of softsynths.
If you check out Togu Audio Line / TAL software they offer more authentic Roland Modeling for a quarter price compared to lifetime keys. They have released The Uno 60 and 101 years before Roland and a lot of people think that they sound more authentic and need much less resources. You have to check out TAL MOD that can recreate most of Roland ACB Modeled synths 1:1 - without effects. Than there is also Arturia who have refreshed their Jupiter and added a Juno 60. A lot of people think that Arturia has also nailed the authentic recreation better than Roland.
You also should try their latest minimoog, to get a preview what could happen next years….
And there is Softube, where everyone is sure that they have done the most realistic 101 and 106. Also their drum heartbeat is very good alternative for 808 / 909. There is also D16 that creates best 909/ 808 / 303 and a very advanced 101 with 8 layers poly on steroids. There is Xils-Lab hat offer Roland emulations that aren’t available in cloud and compete n same level.
There are lot of other competition that don’t recreate Roland, but to name U-he, Synapse Audio, Spectrasonics, UVI - the competition is much harder than in Hardware world.

So what are the strengths from Roland ?
The combination !
To melt software with hardware like Native Instruments, Elektron, Moog, Arturia.

If you think about Native Instruments Komplete and even the old Kore, they have been able to record a midi. You can also do it with Moog Sub 37 editor.

I have a System 1m but I can only record my Roland cloud in Audio, because no DAW can handle MIDI CC right now.
If you record MIDI CC there are no start parameters.
So if I record my tweakings from System1m with any Roland cloud synth than I have to reselect the preset after recording. And also in this case, it often doesn’t sound like an audio recording or a DAW MIDI Mapped recording. So there is no benefit from Roland hardware in software integration. I can map my other software synths to a hardware synth like sub37 with same results.
Galaxia could work like Kore or Komolete Kontrol, so that your Hardware synths are script connected to your software, and if I tweak your software synths than the daw recording records all parameter changes like if I have done them with mouse or MIDI mapping. That you could be a real advantage with less competition.
Software is able to nail the old Analog Sound up to 95 Percent - but people want to touch a instrument. They want to plug and play and don’t want to waste time for midi mapping or something else.
If you compare a midi recording to an Audi recording you have the main advantage that you can edit it afterwards and you don’t need much disc space.
So that could be an advantage for Roland if you have melted hardware with software more superior than the others. For example Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol is a universal Controller with the big disadvantage of only 8 macros at once and as a host with all vst it is unstable and slow to integrate third party vsts. So Roland Galaxia could be a premium Plattform to access all Roland cloud synths and other stuff and to record all Roland MIDI Controllers and Synths in DAW full editable!

[vulpes777]

>Togu Audio Line / TAL software

I'm glad you brought them up, because in my opinion they are a great example of "doing things right", or more precisely, "you don't have to nail everything from the start, as long as you get closer with each update", and with TAL we're talking lots and lots of free updates.

I seem to remember a somewhat long discussion in the TAL thread on how to correctly simulate the quirks of the Jupiter 8 arpeggiator; soon enough there was an update out where you could choose either the "correct" or the "wrong-but-the-hardware-does-this" play order.

...Meanwhile the arpeggiator speed in the Legendary Jupiter 8 has been broken for a while, and outright removed in version 2, which is much worse than the display bug.

Regards,

--
Marco

[Jon at Roland]

Hello again everyone! Last to chance to sign up for the GALAXIAS Roundtable.

The Roundtable will be taking place this Wednesday, January 31st at 4pm PST. We will be sending out a survey today to all active participants to submit any technical questions in advance. The meeting will take place on Zoom and will feature members of the GALAXIAS Engineering team and Roland Product team. We will be demoing new VST functionality for GALAXIAS. We'd love to know what features you want added and how we can best improve the experience.

If you'd like to attend, DM with your E-mail, name, and what time zone you are located.

Excited to hear from everyone! Let me know if you have any questions.

[cptgone]

sign up for the GALAXIAS Roundtable.