Roland ZENOLOGY Pro on sale on Roland's website!

[Jermusic]

Roland ZENOLOGY Pro on sale on Roland's website!

Finally a sale, for $99!

https://rolandcloud.com/

[aMUSEd]

So this is like a compendium of elements of a lot of their synths in one? Including D50? VSynth?

[gentleclockdivider]

So this is like a compendium of elements of a lot of their synths in one? Including D50? VSynth?

no

[Jermusic]

So this is like a compendium of elements of a lot of their synths in one? Including D50? VSynth?

There are lots of classic 80s and 90s type sounds in ZENOLOGY Pro from Roland's back catalog of synths.

ZENOLOGY Pro is a workstation type plugin like the Korg M1/TRITON etc... and if you like the Roland sound it's one of the very best VSTs on the market. It sounds incredibly pretty, vintage, evocative and classy.

[Gam456]

So this is like a compendium of elements of a lot of their synths in one? Including D50? VSynth?

ZENOLOGY Pro is a 4 partial synth.
Yes and No, everything is there, you can try to reproduce some of their classic tone such Jp8, Juno, D50

[PAK]

It's a reasonably good deal, but only if you know you'll never want any of the model expansions. If unsure demo first.

Roland offer a bundle, which includes the 5 model expansions, for $600. If you buy Zenology Pro separately, and later decide you want these, they'll normally cost $150 each. IE All 5 Model Expansions, even with this discounted Zenology Pro, would total $850.

[IvyBirds]

So this is like a compendium of elements of a lot of their synths in one? Including D50? VSynth?

It's essentially a Rompler that also does VA. You get a pretty decent factory sample library. Many of the samples were made back in the 1990s and Roland had been recycling them for 30+ years

You also get a pretty basic VA synth

You get "four partials" which are essentially layers where you can choose to layer any mixture of VA or Rompler Sounds

The engine itself is capable of some pretty cool things like very good emulations of classic Roland Hardware Synths, but you won't get any of those features with this deal, there is also a ton of additional sample content you don't get with this deal

For someone looking for a basic Rompler that can also do basic VA and has $100 to burn this would be a good deal

One more note is that even though you would own this outright, Roland insists on treating you their customer like you stole it. So every time you load it, expect it to take an eternity as it makes sure you actually own it. You will also need to make sure you have an Internet connection on all the time as the software will need to phone home from time to time. The system it uses for this is called Roland Cloud Manager and it's incredibly buggy and causes all sorts of issues for many users

[Caine123]

It's a reasonably good deal, but only if you know you'll never want any of the model expansions. If unsure demo first.

Roland offer a bundle, which includes the 5 model expansions, for $600. If you buy Zenology Pro separately, and later decide you want these, they'll normally cost $150 each. IE All 5 Model Expansions, even with this discounted Zenology Pro, would total $850.

exactly, a waste. i even wrote them directly if an upgrade would be possible or a possible bundle sale, they dont plan it.

[IvyBirds]

It's a reasonably good deal, but only if you know you'll never want any of the model expansions. If unsure demo first.

Roland offer a bundle, which includes the 5 model expansions, for $600. If you buy Zenology Pro separately, and later decide you want these, they'll normally cost $150 each. IE All 5 Model Expansions, even with this discounted Zenology Pro, would total $850.

exactly, a waste. i even wrote them directly if an upgrade would be possible or a possible bundle sale, they dont plan it.

They want you to buy it for $99 and then buy a subscription to get to the expansions, of course doing that gets you Zenology anyway so they just make an extra $100

[beely]

You don't *have* to get the expansions or be a completionist, the preset content that comes with it is pretty comprehensive, and fully editable...

[shatteredmindofbob]

Hmm... does Pro come with additional sounds that aren't included with Core?

This seems like a good deal, but I already own XV-5080, so I already have about half the Core sounds.

[PAK]

Hmm... does Pro come with additional sounds that aren't included with Core?

I don’t remember what Core comes with. The Pro version includes Preset Banks A through L.

This seems like a good deal, but I already own XV-5080, so I already have about half the Core sounds.

No, Zenology comes with a lot more presets. The entire XV bank is only Bank E.

[Examigan]

I wonder if Zenology v3 is on the way?

[beely]

I think they've just started to experiment with plugin sales - they did it first a few weeks back with the JC-120, which seemed to be popular (they extended the sale), and so now this. It might lead to more general plugin sales from them across the board for perpetual licenses.

After all, the Zenology engine is used across their hardware too, and that's not updatable in the same way, so I wouldn't expect big changes for Zenology for some time... Hopefully we'll have more modelled plugins coming, I don't know why they waste their time on that Galaxias monstrosity (which has just been updated to 1.6). Anybody use/like that one? I think it's a horrendous, resource-guzzling UI mess, personally, but...

[N 4 LIFE]

sadly, zenology itself just sounds like poop. i have done hours of comparisons between the different roland vsts out there and the XV 5080 sounds fantastic, so does the JV 1080. but Zenology has all those same sounds in it. Zenology SHOULD sound fantastic, but it is awful. Why? Well, the first thing is that they released Zenology and for years it didn't even have reverb. Dry as a bone. When they finally did add reverb, did they put it in the patches and MFX like on the modules. Nope. If you want a patch from Zenology to come anywhere close to your XV 5080 you have to build the entire FX buss yourself. Times a few thousand patches. Awful. The next problem is just the overall sound of Zenology. Whoever built it did not study Roland's fantastic stereo out busses from the past because while the D50 plug out, Juno 106, Juno 60, stand-alones all sound amazing out the master outs, Zenology has a very small stereo width. Horrible TONE in general. Roland had decades of the smoothest most usable and professional keyboards and modules with the highest sonic quality. Just test it for yourself. Listen to any of the 1080 or 5080 patches on their own and then listen to the Zen versions. There is no comparison. Zenology will suck until someone measures the EQ curve of its master buss and turns into something Roland could be proud of.

I can't imagine any programming team being so lazy as to release five decades of incredible Roland trademark sounds, and then not go back and at least put reverb on there. Unbelievable.