Roland Cloud

[IvyBirds]

already removed the Earth Piano. IMHO, it sounds awful.

I can't believe they did a piano. If all you want/need is a basic piano sound that's buried in a mix the pianos in the XV5080, SRX, and Zenology are actually quite good

Especially the ones Eric Persing made for the dedicated SRX cards

I played out so many gigs back in the day with "64 Voice Piano" from the JV1080. I often layered it with the EP patch from my DX7 and/or Fantasia from my D50

But it seems like they are going to have more acoustic instruments come out since "Earth" is now a category in RCM

Makes me wonder if there will be a hardware Roland "Earth" instrument

I wish they would just make the Supernatural Piano engine from Integra7 or the engine from V-Piano that's in the RD line in plugin form

[frag]

It’s not that they can’t fix their code, if Jon with Roland is a reliable source of information. He stated two days ago that these cloud instruments are being updated to address the CPU bug issues, and that it has been a more challenging task than expected.

CPU bug issues

Roland Cloud plugins are made for engineers & programmers, not for musicians.
After almost 5 years I've managed to stumble upon a combination of settings which eliminates audio dropouts with these strange plugins.
Of course, I'm not going to share the solution - Ronald police will be after me!
They obviously want their users to suffer, and I certainly don't want to interfere.

Hey frag, no one at Roland minds if you found a solution that works for you. We have our recommendations and sometimes people in the community discover their own. If it works for you then that's great! That being said, despite its faults, RCM does fix certain problems with each version (even if it sometimes creates others) if issues persist it's worth trying the latest version. But at the end of the day it's all your choice and we are just recommending solutions.

Yeah, well, everybody here knows I'm an honest guy - I say what I think.

First of all, the solution is quite simple: DISABLE CORE PARKING.
There's an "advice" on the net to disable hyperthreading in BIOS Such BS...
Then buy QuadCore from 2008. You don't disable hyperthreading, you disable core parking in Windows (don't know Mac equivalent), which shuts down threads randomly and messes up with your DAW. Then you can use multiprocessing both in DAW and plugins without dropouts. I mean, it's not that hard to find this, people are putting up these solutions here and there.

Second, although Roland Cloud doesn't have a lot of interesting instruments, I have to say I'm impressed with JD-800 and Juno-60 (particularly JD-800). Until now, only D-50 caught my attention, but now that I've heard JD without crackling I have to say it's an incredibly interesting, useful instrument. I know people say it doesn't sound exactly like hardware but it doesn't matter. Never had one, but I had Juno-60 and I can confirm VST version sounds brilliant!

Now, the one thing missing, the last piece of the puzzle is of course JP-8000/8080. All other important synths are available in VST.

So Jon, get on the phone and call Takanari Arakaki! He MUST find those JP-8000 DSP designs. If Roland doesn't want to make VST, guys from DSP56300 say they will do it, and they know how to do it.
But it has to be done.

[adamszabo]

guys from DSP56300 say they will do it, and they know how to do it.

No they never said they will do it, plus its impossible to do unless you have the documentation on how the custom Toshiba chip instruction works, and you can bet Roland is not going to freely hand those out to whoever

[Aloysius]

The old custom Toshiba crap.

[frag]

guys from DSP56300 say they will do it, and they know how to do it.

No they never said they will do it, plus its impossible to do unless you have the documentation on how the custom Toshiba chip instruction works, and you can bet Roland is not going to freely hand those out to whoever

And here's Adam, scholarly expert on JP supersaw
What a hell are you talking about? They said they will do it if they get documentation (read Discord).
And why would Roland even care, they don't sell JPs anymore.

Perhaps all it takes is a kind word from the military.
Cultural goods must be preserved!

Another question is how much DAC on JP contributed to the sound...

[adamszabo]

What a hell are you talking about? They said they will do it if they get documentation (read Discord).

Yes, that is what I meant, I should have worded it differently. You said "they will do it, and they know how to do it." They indeed said they would be looking at it IF they have the documentation, which they 99.999999% will never get, so it means, they will not work on it. Without it they dont know how to do it. I dont mean to argue, I just wanted to temper everybody's expectation and excitement in case anyone thought they are working on it

[IvyBirds]

Another question is how much DAC on JP contributed to the sound...

None. By the time the mid 90s rolled around Roland was using off the shelf DACs they could buy in the cheap

If you look in th service manual you will see the DAC was a upd63200gs-e2

That was a very very common DAC that was used in many DVD and CD players, it had no impact on the sound and was transparent

You can still buy them today for a few dollars

In the 1980s DACs were not used in inexpensive consumer electronics and many of them were low powered bespoke designs that would color the sound

By the mid 1990s with the rise of low cost CD and DVD players that was no longer the case

[frag]

What a hell are you talking about? They said they will do it if they get documentation (read Discord).

Yes, that is what I meant, I should have worded it differently. You said "they will do it, and they know how to do it." They indeed said they would be looking at it IF they have the documentation, which they 99.999999% will never get, so it means, they will not work on it. Without it they dont know how to do it. I dont mean to argue, I just wanted to temper everybody's expectation and excitement in case anyone thought they are working on it

So what do you think - are DSP designs lost, or is Roland holding them back for some reason?
They released JD-800, so why not JP-8000 if they have complete documentation and firmware.

@IvyBirds - that's good news.

[IvyBirds]

What a hell are you talking about? They said they will do it if they get documentation (read Discord).

Yes, that is what I meant, I should have worded it differently. You said "they will do it, and they know how to do it." They indeed said they would be looking at it IF they have the documentation, which they 99.999999% will never get, so it means, they will not work on it. Without it they dont know how to do it. I dont mean to argue, I just wanted to temper everybody's expectation and excitement in case anyone thought they are working on it

So what do you think - are DSP designs lost, or is Roland holding them back for some reason?
They released JD-800, so why not JP-8000 if they have complete documentation and firmware.

@IvyBirds - that's good news.

The challenge is they might have the code but it's useless as it was designed and written to run on bespoke chips that do not exist anymore

The JD-800 has a very similar architecture to the JV and XV they already modeled as part of the Fantom line back in the early 2000w.. It's a four partial sample and synthesis engine that was already recreated for the most part inside of the XV5080 hardware and the XV5080 plugin right down to actual samples themselves and the effects. All of that was inside of Fantom which was then reworked for Integra7 and is now the basis for the XV5080 plugin and the reskinned version of it on the JV1080 plugin. The D50 was also emulated inside of Fantom as an expansion card and that is the basis of the D50 plugin as well

So essentially the D50, JV, JD, XV, and original Fantom line was all easy to turn into plugins

The JP-8000 is an entirely different animal. It has two bespoke mystery chips and an obsolete CPU. For them to remake it using firmware and documentation they would need to create an emulator for the bespoke chips and the obsolete chips

In the mid 1990s fast chips were expensive and lots of times multiple slow chips were cheaper so they have three chips, one is a generic CPU that just moved data around from the Keys, MIDI ports, buttons, switches, patch data, sysex, and sample roma and the two others were probably one for tone generation and the other for effects. I haven't dived into it, but most likely the effects chip was used in other Roland products of the era or Boss pedals

So for them to reuse the firmware they would need to emulate the entire system as the firmware is looking to do that. That emulation would be very difficult to pull off for the bespoke chips as the original engineers are probably long gone and some of them might not have even been Roland employees

They could probably pull it off, but it would take a serious amount of resources including money, of which they would probably not recoup

They would be better off just using their existing VA technology or even Zencore to recreate the waveforms of the oscillators and then model the filter. They could make an instrument that would sound pretty close if not exact. That would be significantly easier to pull off

If Roland were smart they would blatantly rip off what Eric did with Omnisphere. In Omnisphere you have "wavetables" that are essentially folders that contain collections of single cycle waveforms from various things. Some are classic analog instruments others are unique to Omnisphere

If Roland did that they could have the waveforms from every instrument they ever made. Since they have pristine samples of the raw oscillators from a bunch of other companies vintage synths already inside the Vintage Synth expansions Eric Persing made for the SR-JV and SRX Cards they would be super easy to turn into Wavetables for it. They could literally have a college intern do all of them over a few weeks using Audacity

They could also include all the classic PPG waves, Prophet VS waves, the waves from Yamahas FM Synths, and new bespoke Wavetables hundreds of even thousands of samples long

Throw in models of every filter Roland ever made and some of the classic filters from other companies and you would have a real powerhouse of a synth

Then have the ability to have the four partials FM each other in Yamaha four operator TX81Z style algorithms and you would have a deep and powerful synth.

Or we could just go over two years and get a Space Echo no one cares about and a crappy piano

[Examigan]

Or we could just go over two years and get a Space Echo no one cares about and a crappy piano

[frag]

The JP-8000 is an entirely different animal. It has two bespoke mystery chips and an obsolete CPU. For them to remake it using firmware and documentation they would need to create an emulator for the bespoke chips and the obsolete chips

Absolutely, that seems to be the only way. It's exactly what DSP56300 does.
Penalty is CPU usage and lack of optimization (that's why Waldorf didn't want to collaborate), but I think, many people would put up with these issues just to have JP-8000 in VST
Unfortunately, it's quite possible that complete documentation on JP-8000/8080 is not preserved, and if some important details are missing, there is no way to create the emulator
That's too bad, because this way JP would be preserved in digital form (hypothetically) forever...
At least Virus & Nord are "resurrected".

[bmanic]

Another question is how much DAC on JP contributed to the sound...

None. By the time the mid 90s rolled around Roland was using off the shelf DACs they could buy in the cheap

If you look in th service manual you will see the DAC was a upd63200gs-e2

That was a very very common DAC that was used in many DVD and CD players, it had no impact on the sound and was transparent

You can still buy them today for a few dollars

In the 1980s DACs were not used in inexpensive consumer electronics and many of them were low powered bespoke designs that would color the sound

By the mid 1990s with the rise of low cost CD and DVD players that was no longer the case

Depends on how critically you want to listen to things but if you do listen critically, the DAC does matter. Especially anything before the turn of the millennium and if it was cheap, WILL have an impact. Sure, does it make a big enough difference to really matter in the context of music? Probably not. Can you hear the difference? Yes, you can.

Even on rather high end hardware (I've got Prism AD/DA conversion in the Orpheus) you can hear a difference with just a few loop backs. Keep in mind that all processing after the ADC or DAC will further skew the results. Thus if you loop back through a converter set, then process it with a bunch of plugins afterwards, the difference will be even more clear. This is something that people keep missing when it comes to discussing converters. I don't know why this happens or the data points behind it but I've experimented enough and done tons of ABX tests and it's just how it is.

So yeah, my point is this: Don't dismiss AD/DA conversion as some kind of magic that we've already mastered and it's all perfect. It's not. Not even close.

[IvyBirds]

Another question is how much DAC on JP contributed to the sound...

None. By the time the mid 90s rolled around Roland was using off the shelf DACs they could buy in the cheap

If you look in th service manual you will see the DAC was a upd63200gs-e2

That was a very very common DAC that was used in many DVD and CD players, it had no impact on the sound and was transparent

You can still buy them today for a few dollars

In the 1980s DACs were not used in inexpensive consumer electronics and many of them were low powered bespoke designs that would color the sound

By the mid 1990s with the rise of low cost CD and DVD players that was no longer the case

Depends on how critically you want to listen to things but if you do listen critically, the DAC does matter. Especially anything before the turn of the millennium and if it was cheap, WILL have an impact. Sure, does it make a big enough difference to really matter in the context of music? Probably not.

Ever since the mid 1990s you can't hear or perceive a difference in consumer level DACs, even you admit it doesn't matter

I deal in real world music production, if I have to look at things on a scope to tell a difference there is no difference

There certainly is no magic or mojo in consumer level DACs and hasn't even for decades

[bmanic]

Another question is how much DAC on JP contributed to the sound...

None. By the time the mid 90s rolled around Roland was using off the shelf DACs they could buy in the cheap

If you look in th service manual you will see the DAC was a upd63200gs-e2

That was a very very common DAC that was used in many DVD and CD players, it had no impact on the sound and was transparent

You can still buy them today for a few dollars

In the 1980s DACs were not used in inexpensive consumer electronics and many of them were low powered bespoke designs that would color the sound

By the mid 1990s with the rise of low cost CD and DVD players that was no longer the case

Depends on how critically you want to listen to things but if you do listen critically, the DAC does matter. Especially anything before the turn of the millennium and if it was cheap, WILL have an impact. Sure, does it make a big enough difference to really matter in the context of music? Probably not.

Ever since the mid 1990s you can't hear or perceive a difference in consumer level DACs, even you admit it doesn't matter

I deal in real world music production, if I have to look at things on a scope to tell a difference there is no difference

There certainly is no magic or mojo in consumer level DACs and hasn't even for decades

Nobody said there is magic or mojo as far as I can tell, but there _is_ a difference, albeit a relatively subtle one at that depending on your point of view and how critically you want to sit down and listen to it.

Have you actually sat down and compared converters ever?

Try this: Run any piece of music through your soundcard then back into the inputs.. then do this like 3 times and insert a simple non-linear plugin afterwards (could be a compressor, saturation, limiter.. whatever as long as it's non-linear), then listen to the results. Now I assume you have a post-millennium soundcard which is probably 100 times better technically than any 90's consumer DAC. Do this test and tell me the output of the original test signal is identical and impossible to hear compared to the loopback.

The point was this, in case you missed it:

Emulating the DAC in the context of a JP-8000 would make a difference compared to just the straight digital output of the synth algorithm itself. Would it be a big enough difference to matter for most people? Probably not, but it would be a difference, one that can be heard in an ABX test.. aka not placebo. And as mentioned before, the difference only grows larger once you start processing the end result.

[IvyBirds]

The point was this, in case you missed it:

Emulating the DAC in the context of a JP-8000 would make a difference compared to just the straight digital output of the synth algorithm itself. Would it be a big enough difference to matter for most people? Probably not, but it would be a difference, one that can be heard in an ABX test.. aka not placebo. And as mentioned before, the difference only grows larger once you start processing the end result.

I did get it and I 100% disagree, take a 1990s era CD player, and then take a brand new one

Play the same CD in both through the same amp and same speakers

You will not have any perceived difference

Try this: Run any piece of music through your soundcard then back into the inputs.. then do this like 3 times

If you have to run audio multiple times through a DAC as you suggest then in the real world there is no difference and it's a pointless exercise.

And for the record I have a 1990s era CD player and a Windows 98 machine I built in 1999 do you?