Roland Cloud

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Turns out I had some available instruments slots in my Roland Cloud, so I did manage to pick up the Jupiter-4 and some others. I don't know what the current state of the loyalty plugins is, but that's the only thing that kind of makes Roland Cloud worth subscribing to at all IMO. It should just be "2 free lifetime keys per year" at the highest sub level all the time.

As others have stated, I don't think these ACB emulations are better than the best-of-the-best in terms of VA's (U-he, Synapse, TAL), but they're good overall. It's cool having so many different Roland instruments even if they're not the absolute best out there - you still get a ton of flavor. Feels like a virtual Roland synth museum. I'd love a Jupiter-6 or MKS70 next and I'd be down with a JP8000, or MKS50/MKS80/JX-10. There's still quite a few classics they can go back and build for if ACB isn't dead!

I really think they're about to release a System-16 or System-8 MKII, which is why I believe we're seeing the return of ACB. As a System-8 owner, I'd love to see: 5-octaves, a better keybed (the velocity response on black keys is different than white keys - which sucks), [assignable] aftertouch, a second LFO, and wouldn't cry if they doubled the voice count. I don't use it as a synth at all these days, but I do use my System-8 as a VA controller - which it's great at because of the thorough MIDI implementation for knobs and buttons.

[fmr]

Turns out I had some available instruments slots in my Roland Cloud, so I did manage to pick up the Jupiter-4 and some others. I don't know what the current state of the loyalty plugins is, but that's the only thing that kind of makes Roland Cloud worth subscribing to at all IMO. It should just be "2 free lifetime keys per year" at the highest sub level all the time.

Yeah. I maxed my free lifetime licenses though (10), so I cancelled my subscription, since there's little left to take advantage of.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Turns out I had some available instruments slots in my Roland Cloud, so I did manage to pick up the Jupiter-4 and some others. I don't know what the current state of the loyalty plugins is, but that's the only thing that kind of makes Roland Cloud worth subscribing to at all IMO. It should just be "2 free lifetime keys per year" at the highest sub level all the time.

Yeah. I maxed my free lifetime licenses though (10), so I cancelled my subscription, since there's little left to take advantage of.

Yeah, they really shouldn't disincentivize people like that.

[ChamomileShark]

since Roland took over the Cloud.

So it's no longer a joint venture between Roland and (forgotten the software company's name)?

[fmr]

since Roland took over the Cloud.

So it's no longer a joint venture between Roland and (forgotten the software company's name)?

It was a company ran by Jeremy Soule called Roland Vs LLC (which still exists, AFAIK). They even applied to register the trademark Roland Cloud (registration pending). However, I think I read somewhere that Roland took over Roland Cloud, and the information on the Roland Cloud site now states that it's from Roland Corporation: https://www.roland.com/us/company/overview/

If someone knows more, feel free to correct me.

[ChamomileShark]

It was a joint venture, they may have bought out the partner. In some ways I'd prefer that it is purely Roland.

[fmr]

It was a joint venture, they may have bought out the partner. In some ways I'd prefer that it is purely Roland.

Yeah, me too, but the fact is, besides Zenology, very little happened in the last two years. I don't know who's to blame for that, but Roland has an history that doesn't speak in their favor.

[PAK]

I doubt they will ever release a V-Synth. They have not shown enough guts to accomplish such a task since Roland took over the Cloud. Unfortunately

I don't think it's about "guts". Rather it's the apparent business / philosophical decision not to undercut their current hardware by implementing anything, in plugin format, that those can't have. (The same not being true in the opposite direction, of course.)

Thus it'd be significantly more likely to see a Vsynth plugin if they could find a way to include that work in some (presumably new) hardware synth. Likewise, unless they do a Boutique version of the JP-8000, it likely doesn't make sense (to them) when the System 8 already has its own VA engine.

The VSynth could provide an opportunity to extend the sample / preset content they have on Roland Cloud. It went somewhat unrecognized, versus its capabilities, and I reckon a lot of that was the reluctance of many to edit it, and the lack of subsequent preset content taking advantage.

They might also decide they'd rather extend Zenology's capabilities with VSynth type features. So such decisions likely depend on where they see themselves going next with their hardware..

[sergiofrias]

as requested here is the video comparison to mercury 4 from cherry audio.

[beely]

as requested here is the video comparison to mercury 4 from cherry audio.

Thanks, but I found that almost impossible to follow what you were doing and what I was listening to.

As you lost me, could you TL;DR; your opinions/takeaways from doing this test here?

[sergiofrias]

...your opinions/takeaways from doing this test here?

Sure ,the sound of roland cloud is very close to mercury 4, mercury actually is more 1 to 1 that roland cloud, in the oposite side ,cloud have some nifty features not present in the original.the envelopes are slightly diferent in curvature, cloud is slightly more brighter, the factory presets from mercury is a tad different,depending on the patch but with carefull programming i could bring them to almost indistinguishable.if i had to choose from the two i would go to cherry audio, no subscrition ,cheap price,and very nice emulation.

[Examigan]

Do you have the hardware J4 to compare them to?

[realtrance]

If it’s true that Virtualsonics has been dropped — whether they made off like bandits or went back to their caves empty-handed — hooray! RCM has looked much more professional recently.

Beyond the editorial, though: can anyone point me to a legitimate earlier version of RCM that will work on El Capitan? There seems to be no way to find that on the internet except at some cracked sites I won’t touch, and the one presently listed at the Roland Cloud Manager page for OSX 9-13 (El Capitan is OSX 10.11.6) fails when trying to install on my system.

I’m sure if Roland owns the software now, they’ll sort this out sooner or later, but I’m stuck in the interim on one platform that was formerly working.

Thanks in advance!

[Brian.McClelland]

since Roland took over the Cloud.

So it's no longer a joint venture between Roland and (forgotten the software company's name)?

It was a company ran by Jeremy Soule called Roland Vs LLC (which still exists, AFAIK). They even applied to register the trademark Roland Cloud (registration pending). However, I think I read somewhere that Roland took over Roland Cloud, and the information on the Roland Cloud site now states that it's from Roland Corporation: https://www.roland.com/us/company/overview/

If someone knows more, feel free to correct me.

Hi, fmr. Jeremy Soule has not worked for Roland Cloud since 2018. Roland Cloud is now part of Roland US. Thanks!

[fmr]

since Roland took over the Cloud.

So it's no longer a joint venture between Roland and (forgotten the software company's name)?

It was a company ran by Jeremy Soule called Roland Vs LLC (which still exists, AFAIK). They even applied to register the trademark Roland Cloud (registration pending). However, I think I read somewhere that Roland took over Roland Cloud, and the information on the Roland Cloud site now states that it's from Roland Corporation: https://www.roland.com/us/company/overview/

If someone knows more, feel free to correct me.

Hi, fmr. Jeremy Soule has not worked for Roland Cloud since 2018. Roland Cloud is now part of Roland US. Thanks!

So, Roland took over Roland Cloud, just like I said. Thanks for clarifying, Brian.