Same SN SUPER SAW as in Integra and FA?

My opinion, having owned an FA, and now having a Fantom:

Not the same ... the Fantom is better, seems both smoother and richer harmonically.

zombietactics wrote:

My opinion, having owned an FA, and now having a Fantom:

Not the same ... the Fantom is better, seems both smoother and richer harmonically.

Thanks.

The fantom does not have the SN synth engine of the integra.
It only has the SN acoustic engine..
In which you can find Virtual versions of real instruments..
Only a first batch, mostly Strings and brass has been converted
With a promise of ROland that more will be commng.

The fantom does not have the SN synth engine of the integra.
It only has the SN acoustic engine..

I don't believe that is correct. I have the FA (the Integra engine) and the Fantom beside me. On the FA is "JP8 Strings1", an SN-S patch. On the Fantom is "JP8 Strings1" in Z-Core PR-D. They sound the same. Same expression, etc. You edit the tone and you see a SuperSAW for partial 1 and 2 for both keyboards.

I believe the Fantom has had a lot of the SuperNatural Synth sounds from the beginning. It added some of the SN-Acoustic ones with 1.5 (like the Finger Bass, and Strings, etc.)

EDIT: Clarification: I'm saying it has equivalent sounds (including expression) not that you can import SN-S sounds directly or that these sounds are labeled SN-S on the Fantom. Just letting you know it can produce the same class of tones.

You're confusing the presence of presets with the term "engine".

There is no SuperNatural Synth engine in the Fantom. They have ported all of the factory SNS presets on the FA to the PCM/VA Zen-Core engine on the Fantom. That's a good thing, as the Zen-Core architecture is quite a bit superior to the SNS capabilities.

You're confusing the presence of presets with the term "engine".

There is no SuperNatural Synth engine in the Fantom. They have ported all of the factory SNS presets on the FA to the PCM/VA Zen-Core engine on the Fantom. That's a good thing, as the Zen-Core architecture is quite a bit superior to the SNS capabilities.

No I'm not, really. What I'm implying is that the Zen-Core is capable of a superset of the SuperNatural Synth engine. Sure, it's been ported to the new chip/architecture. But if it can sound the same as it did on the Integra engine, then regardless of what it is called, it can do the equivalent SN-S. Just like it can do SN-A. The only difference is that in one case Roland labeled it the same as the legacy term (SN-A), but in the other it did not (SN-S vs. a Zen-Core Tone that implements the same algorithms on a different chip).

I believe that you are placing too much emphasis on names and not enough on behavior.

Again, to be clear I'm not saying that VA Zen-Core is the same as SN-S... it can do things that are outside of SN-S. Functionally it is a superset (perhaps implied by your use of "superior" above).

But what are people (users) asking when they ask if it has SN-S tones? They are asking if it can do SN-S tones, which it can (regardless of the label on the screen).

Cheers,
Mark

(Let me be 100% clear here ...no attitude, no snark, no superiority complex at work ... just want to get the facts straight)

MacTyros stated that it does not have the SNS engine.

You stated that he is incorrect.

You are factually incorrect in your assertion, regardless of whether or not one has access to the factory preset SNS tones.

I understand that your personal concern is access to those presets. If all anyone ever wanted was those SNS factory tones, there'd be a point to be made that the distinction is as unimportant as you suggest.

However, the presence of the engine is a different matter than if the same factory tones are available.

For instance, there are quite a few people (me included) who programmed their own SNS Tones. Since the SNS engine is not present on the Fantom, there is no way to share those Tones (created on the FA) with the Fantom, other than to manually recreate them parameter-by-parameter.

The FA, Integra-7 & Jupiter-50/80 have all sorts of third-party sound libraries available (as well as Roland's own Axial libraries) which are incompatible with the Fantom ... because it does not have the SNS engine.

It's not just a matter of labeling. The Zen-Core architecture is different (superior, actually) in many respects. I'm pretty happy about the changes.

I'd be really pleased to find out that I am incorrect, but it does not appears to be so. None of the above is a complaint, BTW. It's just observable, demonstrable fact.

We're disagreeing on semantics ("engine" vs. "preset"), but otherwise I think we are violently agreeing. Let me try to explain where I'm coming from:

In my view, if a synth can produce a certain class of sound, then that is within the context of the engine. The very fact that you can recreate the same sounds (annoyingly by hand) shows that the Zen-Core has a engine that is capable of the same SN-S sounds. It's all the parameters that feed a given implementation of an engine that are stored in presets. So, I actually view it the opposite way of you: It has an equivalently capable engine, but the presets (stored settings) are not yet compatible.

Now, you're point about not loading directly from (another product's) SN-S tone is a good one. A pain. But the take away is "bummer, can't share SN-S Tones (presets) with this product"... Not "you can still produce the same quality of tone". The engine is capable of doing the same thing. You just can't share the presets.

It would be a much larger bummer if the Fantom was not capable of producing the same class of smoothly varying, expressive tones as on the FA. I think we have to be careful when saying "it doesn't have SN-S" that we don't imply it can't do that quality of tones. (I'm not saying you said that... other comments that don't qualify or make the distinction can imply this, though.)

Restating the other important point: Roland has already done the effort of porting many (certainly not all) of the SN-S tones from the Integra/FA into the Zen-Core architecture. So those particular tones (not all) are indeed available on the Fantom, even if they aren't called SN-S tones. And I hope that they will add a preset/settings translator in the future to allow direct import of SN-S tones.

I see your point about importing SN-S tones. I hope you can see my point about Fantom's capability of producing some existing SN-S tones already.

Hope that clarifies,
Mark

Added a disclaimer to my first post to be more clear so I wouldn't mislead anybody. Hopefully.

maphill wrote:

... I see your point about importing SN-S tones. I hope you can see my point about Fantom's capability of producing some existing SN-S tones already.

Hope that clarifies,
Mark

Absolutely. So much of these kinds of discussions depend upon "what's important to me?", and that forms the perspective from which one views the issue.

Hi!
I have Fantom 8 and Integra 7; all SN Synth sounds from Integra 7are inside Fantom, exactly same patch numbers. All Roland Axial Synth Legend too, on another bank.
But VA engine is better on Fantom than Integra 7 (and FA), sounds have more power, are bigger....
About parameters, for example; Cutoff and Resonance filters on Integra 7 value are from 0 to 127, but on Fantom it's 0 to 1053.