Roland Cloud

[Jon at Roland]

I imagine this Jon from Roland guy have to take a good 4 steady drinks before going on kvr to parrot the script. Poor guy. Please know Jon, we don't blame you. You're just the poor sot who have to do this. I hope you're paid well.
But honestly. You have to see it yourself. It's almost tragic at this point. Especially since all of your stuff can be ((**)) and you still can't even say what you're working on? At this point, who do you think you are? (Roland Corp, not you personally). Your stuff is already out there, other manufacturers are doing stuff you also do, you're not in the 90s no more.

Get up to date and do it quickly.

I'm just telling y'all what I'm able to divulge and the way our system works! I find users on KVR often cover the same topics over and over again so I often times have to repeat the same answers. I don't mind coming on here and don't mind the criticism. I am a human person of course, so I do hope to be treated with respect but I get it y''all, if you signed up for Roland Cloud and you are having issues, it's your money and you have every right to be frustrated if something isn't working correctly. No one at Roland wants that outcome, it serves no purpose to us to have unhappy users.

Roland has always operated in secrecy. I personally love when my favorite musician drops a surprise album and I appreciate the same from Roland. I mean that as a consumer of musical products. A lot of music companies operate this way as well. Ultimately, it's the way Roland conducts itself and I'm happy to tell you what I can, which is that we are working on new stuff and over the next year you will start seeing some releases.

[IvyBirds]

And like I said, we often discuss other ways to operate Roland Cloud Manager so it's possible we could decide to shift the model going forward. That being said, it's not for everyone, and we totally get that. But a cloud service requires a regular connection and that's currently what we are running.

There is literally nothing about the Roland Cloud that is a "cloud service" the plugins exist locally on your hard drive and run locally on your CPU in your DAW of choice, just like every other plugin

The "cloud" in Roland Cloud is just a marketing term

Like pretty much every other company you download the plugins and run some type of install program and have some type of DRM

Nothing about Roland's business model requires a phone home except for the fact Roland treats it's customers as thieves and wants it

Again the excuses are getting more and more insulting

[BBFG#]

And the well crafted team repetitive answers continuously reveal a deafness to customers and reality. That last false equivalency to distract anyone questioning the lack of a direct answer was... well, normal of them.

[mdx4ever]

I imagine this Jon from Roland guy have to take a good 4 steady drinks before going on kvr to parrot the script. Poor guy. Please know Jon, we don't blame you. You're just the poor sot who have to do this. I hope you're paid well.
But honestly. You have to see it yourself. It's almost tragic at this point. Especially since all of your stuff can be ((**)) and you still can't even say what you're working on? At this point, who do you think you are? (Roland Corp, not you personally). Your stuff is already out there, other manufacturers are doing stuff you also do, you're not in the 90s no more.

Get up to date and do it quickly.

I'm just telling y'all what I'm able to divulge and the way our system works! I find users on KVR often cover the same topics over and over again so I often times have to repeat the same answers. I don't mind coming on here and don't mind the criticism. I am a human person of course, so I do hope to be treated with respect but I get it y''all, if you signed up for Roland Cloud and you are having issues, it's your money and you have every right to be frustrated if something isn't working correctly. No one at Roland wants that outcome, it serves no purpose to us to have unhappy users.

Roland has always operated in secrecy. I personally love when my favorite musician drops a surprise album and I appreciate the same from Roland. I mean that as a consumer of musical products. A lot of music companies operate this way as well. Ultimately, it's the way Roland conducts itself and I'm happy to tell you what I can, which is that we are working on new stuff and over the next year you will start seeing some releases.

I’ve been with Roland Cloud from the very beginning and even defended them at times.
The only reason I’m still hanging on is in hope that I’ll see JP8000.
Nothing else in Roland instruments catalog interests me.

[nickamandote]

I don't really have a problem with the Cloud as it is, and I really don't want iLok. Just about to enter my 3rd year of Ultimate Play for Life membership. Not sure what I will do once I own all the synths that I really want from the Cloud pool.

Question for Jon, does the 30 day counter reset each time I log into the cloud? i.e., can I log in right before going on a trip to be sure it does not pop up while I am traveling?

Okay. Maybe I deserve this. I just loaded the 909 into an Ableton Live project and got messages that I would get intermittent noise because my plugin was not verified. I had to load cloud since I have stopped it from auto loading every time I turn the computer on, log in, verify, delete the 909 track and enter it again. (sigh)

Hey Rabid, so sorry to hear this. Is this an issue after updating to v3.1.6?

To answer the previous question, in theory you should be able to connect once, disconnect from the internet entirely for a month and still use the plug-ins until you need to phone home again. There has been lots of talk about the idea of a gig button, or some kind of auth pause feature, as well as a timer for when users need to connect to the internet.

Why not phoning home once on install and that's all? Everyone would agree on that.

Hey nickamandote, I see what you are saying with this. And like I said, we often discuss other ways to operate Roland Cloud Manager so it's possible we could decide to shift the model going forward. That being said, it's not for everyone, and we totally get that. But a cloud service requires a regular connection and that's currently what we are running.

Alright, but at least remove the phoning home for the people purchasing own for life licenses. When paying that much, people want to have a software they can use whenever they want without any strings attached. Or at least allow us to use iLok as an ultimate option.

[Iva]

Could not agree more. Lifetime licenses should not have the need to reauthorise. They are not a subscribtion product. Products that can suddenly become deathorised are not reliable products. And what even worse, they always keep your mind busy thinkng about reauthorising. When you travel even within a town you can loose connection to RC servers especially in locations, where government is blocking different internet services. You start vpn, stop vpn, and RC manager can't connect, pops up connection error messages. It is was so tiring that I decided to stop using Roland products at ell, even through owning 4 lifetime keys. People who made this product definitely didn't have been into such a locations.

By the same reasons I stopped using Adobe and Refx products. They could easily ban your account if you use their products in the country under US sanctions. Vengeance products are next in the list too. But their system is much beter. Simple key file stored on your PC that doesn't need constant internet connection. Download or refresh once in 90 days and you can be sure it won't stop working. I just came to conclusion that even 90 days limitaion is too restrictive.

[IvyBirds]

Alright, but at least remove the phoning home for the people purchasing own for life licenses. When paying that much, people want to have a software they can use whenever they want without any strings attached. Or at least allow us to use iLok as an ultimate option.

You don't even have to use iLok, which to be honest a lot of people despise

Built into the Roland Software is an expiration date currently set for 30 days. If 30 days have passed since the last phone home it prevents you from using it

All Roland needs to do is move that from say 30 days to two years, and the vast overwhelming majority of users would be happy and here is why

If they pushed it forward two years and allowed you in the main menu of the plugins to check for updates manually you are golden. If you have a lifetime key and you check for updates manually today on 20 June 2024 the software would reset it's expiration date to 20 June 2026. Let's say six months from now you are using the D50 and you decide to see if Roland has any software updates for the D50, so you go to the main menu and click on check for updates it checks, maybe there is, and maybe there isn't but that also works as your phone home and now the clock on the expiration date resets for another two years to 20 December 2026

I would think for the vast majority of users they would want to check for updates at least once every two years anyway, and Roland gets to continue it's DRM. Subscriptions either annually or monthly would have the appropriate expiration dates

I would think this would be a good compromise for the vast majority of users

[BBFG#]

Why have any expiration date? Let it simply check during update searches.
Roland has a history of being able to kill anything in two years or less.

[IvyBirds]

Why have any expiration date? Let it simply check during update searches.
Roland has a history of being able to kill anything in two years or less.

There is zero chance Roland goes totally cold turkey from phone home and it's needed for the subs

This would allow a working compromise

[BBFG#]

Any compromise with Roland on this point will be a loss. They need to learn from companies that trust their customers like u-He. Or at least from those that generate key files. Lifetime to Roland simply means "until we decide to kill it".

[Bippo]

I think the roland cloud failed in many areas, the roland cloud manager is its most epic fail because it's clear that they just can't make this goddamn thing work correctly even after gazillion software updates.

Besides that, the whole creation of jv1080+xv5080+srx packages as separate plugins made no f**king sense, other than to make more cash.
But even in that case, they could still make the cash but make it more user intuitive with just releasing the xv5080 vst, and make the additional srx packages function as add-ons for the same vst.

It's so primitive that in 2024 people will need to browse between different dozens of plugins that share the same sound engine but just have different presets.
If Korg released tirton vst with all its packages in the same vst, I'm sure that Roland couldn't do the same.

And then came Zenology which was a good idea, but guess what? If someone purchased the whole srx vsts separately but now wants to have them in one platform, yep that's right, put your credit card again!

Zenology is the one-stop platform that Roland should have released in the first place instead of all those separate srx plugins that can't function together, and they could still make the cash and let us buy each srx expansion separately, but at least we could use them in one place from the beginning.

What happened later was embarrassing.
Roland created over 100 sdz packages which are basically just sample packs for Zenology, and they all sounds very weak and retro.
Zenology still suffers from lack of high quality, authentic acoustic sounds.
After including all the supernatural synth engine sounds of integra 7, it made very sense to also include the supernatural acoustic sounds from the integra, and then Zenology could be a f**king beast.

But it never happened, and I guess will never happen in the future because now there's a new toy called Galaxias which looks like a new bizarre equivalent of Zenology that nobody really needs.

To sum it up, it seems like there's some sort of sales/management department that constantly make the wrong decisions and took roland cloud from being a superior solution to use Roland magnificent synths, to a cash milking cow with constant bugs, change of directions and abandoned or incomplete software.

The most disappointing aspect for me is Zenology, besides pianos, all the acoustic sound categories are just not good enough. Compare it to the fantom keyboard or even integra 7 which is over a decade old, and you'll see that zenology have very inferior sounds.
I'm willing to pay a lot of cash to have better acoustic sounds in Zenology, like those in the new fantom or even in integra 7, just so Zenology will be my one-stop solution for all sounds.
Right now Zenology is very perfect for synths, but extremely inferior in acoustic sounds department.

Unfortunately it seems like Zenology is on the way to be abandonware with the release of galaxias, too bad.

[damoog]

All this talk of ‘phoning home’ there needs to be an ET meme for this surely

As a none Roland cloud user(and proud) i just can’t be arsed with all that silly crap and just look at softube,Arturia and cherry audio for the Roland greats synths to even consider Roland’s knackered subscription service

It’s a shame though ,if it’s one company’s synths that I love ….it’s Roland’s

[nickamandote]

Instead of so many interminable discussions (it's been years now) a reasonable decision for both parties would be a much simpler solution

[IvyBirds]

Besides that, the whole creation of jv1080+xv5080+srx packages as separate plugins made no f**king sense, other than to make more cash.
But even in that case, they could still make the cash but make it more user intuitive with just releasing the xv5080 vst, and make the additional srx packages function as add-ons for the same vst.

They just need to make a "Super JV" plugin which is what they called the JV1080 hardware. It should have all the samples and presets from the original JV1080 and all of the SR-JV80 expansion ROMs in one unified plugin exactly as Korg did with the M1 plugin

Then do the same for the XV5080 and allow user samples as WAV files to be imported just like on the original

I also think either or both of the above could be released as hardware synths and compete in the same space as the Korg Wavestate and OPSix in the $500-$700 range especially if they had a bunch of knobs or sliders that become a great control surface for it and can be double as a MIDI controller for everything not just Roland plugins

They could also make a Boutique version of the Super JV, especially as 2024 is the 30th anniversary of the JV1080

I would think a $400 Super JV boutique with all of the expansion ROMs onboard would sell quite well

[bnz]

My Roland Cloud Manager isn't starting any more recently on Windows. It's just busy spinning the loading wheel. Any suggestions how to fix this?