Roland Cloud

[ChamomileShark]

Seeing as people are throwing around the dates of their first Roland purchases, mine was in 1980. Not sure how that moves the Roland Cloud discussion though.

There seems to be much business analysis in this thread but again, even if it is accurate, how is that supposed to change things?

Roland will either listen to their customers or not. It's their choice, just as it's our choice to buy or not. And if we've bought and it's not right then we can complain. Sometimes a company will fix things, sometimes not. Funny thing is that most other companies work the same way.

The thread is becoming just people shouting at clouds (literally)

I come from an age where if you bought something, that was what you got (more or less). I didn't expect my car to add more seats or grow wings. Not the same in software where we tend to have an expectation for more features, more stuff. Perhaps it's not the best expectation?

But what would I know?

Anyway, if Jon is reading this, I'd like to see the cloud plugins to load quicker. I can tell which of my Bitwig or Cubase projects have one of the legendary plugins (doesn't matter which) in them because they take alot longer than my other projects to open.

While my comments above probably won't be agreed with, one thing I suspect would be agreed with is that it would be good to see 2 or 3 new plugins of modelled synth stuff a year. I suspect that for alot of us, we don't see the various soundpacks as "instruments". If you tend to use presets/ samples as they are then everything is fine and dandy, but if you you don't count them as instruments then we've not had any new stuff for a while, the last one was the JP4 or Juno 60, I think?

[samlletas]

Anyway, if Jon is reading this, I'd like to see the cloud plugins to load quicker. I can tell which of my Bitwig or Cubase projects have one of the legendary plugins (doesn't matter which) in them because they take alot longer than my other projects to open.

I agree 100% on this, Zenology being the worst offender, I'm pretty sure the cause for slow load times is cloud authentication during plugin startup. The thing is, most plugins eventually get cracked no matter what authentication method they use (even iLok plugins), so I wonder if using those intrusive validation practices is even worth it, they only cause problems to legitimate paying customers.

A more user-friendly approach would be to use offline validation for lifetime keys, and fallback to cloud authentication for subscription-based users.

[SLiC]

The thread is becoming just people shouting at clouds (literally)

That's because there has been nothing else to talk about for a few years

[IvyBirds]

I agree 100% on this, Zenology being the worst offender, I'm pretty sure the cause for slow load times is cloud authentication during plugin startup.

Yes it has to authenticate every expansion and sound pack every time you launch it, if you have an instance open and then open another it loads almost instantly as it piggybacks on the instance that is open and doesn't do that

[IvyBirds]

The thread is becoming just people shouting at clouds (literally)

That's because there has been nothing else to talk about for a few years

Well we did get a Space Echo and a crappy piano no one asked for or cares about

Next we will get "Earth Strings" or something despite all the string sounds in the XV/JV/SRX sample content that is doubled up in Zenology that were made by Eric Persing and sound awesome

I am pretty sure the content in Earth Piano is based from the Zenology/SRX expansions and then a series of convolutions made from unlike responses to get the various rooms and lid positions

[Jon at Roland]

Anyway, if Jon is reading this, I'd like to see the cloud plugins to load quicker. I can tell which of my Bitwig or Cubase projects have one of the legendary plugins (doesn't matter which) in them because they take alot longer than my other projects to open.

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you. When it comes to updating our instruments our aim is always to improve on these things, but I'll make sure to advocate for a serious focus on long load times and lighter CPU usage when we look into updating plug-ins. Thanks for the feedback.

[N 4 LIFE]

All: does anyone have the D50 user banks from back in the day? I believe they came on a card or cartridge. any help would be appreciated. i'm looking for a specific bell type patch that had chase play on it. used it on sessions for years and even on my D550 after my D50 bit the dust from years of use. Also, does anyone know if Roland ever put any of the Combi/Performance patches anywhere to download. I sure could use those for my JV.

[IvyBirds]

All: does anyone have the D50 user banks from back in the day?

Have you tried here

https://www.thekyotoconnection.com/cultofd50/

That site has pretty much every D50 patch I think. If what you are talking about was from Roland it's there for sure. I think I remember what you are talking about

I wish Roland would release a hardware synth that was like the System 8 but digital based and had the D50, JD800/990, and XV engines in it along with all the SRX content and use the JD800 as the inspiration for the hardware with all the sliders, and buttons

[Septic Underground]

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you.

Yeah, we know Roland is aware, coz it is a "feature' of the DRM check of the myriad of presetpacks/expansions that get checked when loading the Z in. It has been reported, by me and others for quite a few years now...

Better check the list, it must be somewhere on it

[ChamomileShark]

Anyway, if Jon is reading this, I'd like to see the cloud plugins to load quicker. I can tell which of my Bitwig or Cubase projects have one of the legendary plugins (doesn't matter which) in them because they take alot longer than my other projects to open.

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you. When it comes to updating our instruments our aim is always to improve on these things, but I'll make sure to advocate for a serious focus on long load times and lighter CPU usage when we look into updating plug-ins. Thanks for the feedback.

I think I'm having the same issue with JP4. Generally I don't use Zenology much.

[N 4 LIFE]

thanks IB i'll take a look over there for the D50 stuff

[vulpes777]

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you.

Yeah, we know Roland is aware, coz it is a "feature' of the DRM check of the myriad of presetpacks/expansions that get checked when loading the Z in.

You know, I used to think that was the reason as well...except now I have canceled my subscription and all I can run is Zenology 'Lite' with, like, one or two factory banks and no expansions.

And it still takes far too long to load.

Oh, and of course now I'm once again in demo mode

Regards,

--
Marco

[Septic Underground]

well, you can buy expansions/presets regardless of your sub status, so my guess is that RCM will check every available pack, whether it is installed or not.

[D-Fusion]

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you.

Yeah, we know Roland is aware, coz it is a "feature' of the DRM check of the myriad of presetpacks/expansions that get checked when loading the Z in.

You know, I used to think that was the reason as well...except now I have canceled my subscription and all I can run is Zenology 'Lite' with, like, one or two factory banks and no expansions.

And it still takes far too long to load.

Oh, and of course now I'm once again in demo mode

Regards,

--
Marco

I have mentioned it Earlier in this Thread and it doesn't matter how many Soundpacks Expansion you have installed.

I have tried both scenarios and the loading time is the same when I have it fully loaded with all my Synth Models and sound Expansions vs Barebone Zenology Pro installed with No synth Models or sound expansion added to it.

It is The Zenology/Copy protection itself that is behind the Loading time but i do believe that they have Lowered the load time of it.

In the beginning it used to take around 45 seconds to load and after a update it was around 22-25 seconds and now it only take Max 7 Seconds to start up the first instance.

I have also changed my HW a few times over the years so it might be System dependant and I have other plugins from various companies that takes longer time to Load than Zenology Pro these days on my PC.

[IvyBirds]

I have mentioned it Earlier in this Thread and it doesn't matter how many Soundpacks Expansion you have installed.

I have tried both scenarios and the loading time is the same when I have it fully loaded with all my Synth Models and sound Expansions vs Barebone Zenology Pro installed with No synth Models or sound expansion added to it.

It is The Zenology/Copy protection itself that is behind the Loading time

I am almost 100% certain that every time you launch Zenology in a new session it has to scan you system for any and all soundpacks and expansions you may have on your Hard Drive, make an inventory of that, make a temporary database file of what you have installed, reference that file with what you are allowed to have, create a new temporary Database file that lists everything you have, where it's at and is authorized for you to have and then loads that into Zenology. It does this for copy protection and to build the preset list

If you then load another instance of Zenology in that same session the new instance can then just reference that database file and it loads almost instantly

Once you exit out of that session the whole data file gets deleted and you have to start over

The speed of your hard drive and system determines how fast that process happens, and it doesn't matter if you have expansions or samples installed or not, it still looks for them and either finds them or not

Again I am about 99% certain this is what is happening. I actually think it happens with all of the Roland Cloud instruments, the rest of them however don't have the giant library of potential assets that Zenology has

My guess is this is why all the SRX content is separate from the XV5080, as that avoids the issue and of course let's Roland Cloud's marketing people pretend they have about a dozen more different instruments then they really do

They could fix this tomorrow quite easily if they wanted. If you have an active subscription for Zenology Pro and everything in it, just create a single datafile that expires when your sub does and then let everything through, there would be no need to do a scan

If you don't and own Zenology outright and/or have a few expansions it creates a permanent file for all of that content

And if you just have the core plan it makes a file just for that

The main issue is that, Roland thinks all of their paying customers are thieves and treats you like you a criminal who is guilty until proven innocent, all to protect sample content that was make 20-30 years ago