My is here

The Nord Lead can't load samples if I remember correctly. The Nord Wave can. The Lead series is a Sequential Circuits Prophet emulation if i'm not wrong.
The rest are all what they call Virtual Analog or digital representation of Analog, including the V.
A ROMpler doesn't allow you to synthesize sounds from scratch.
Fantoms and Motifs usually fall into the Workstation category I assume.

Ok- the Nord Wave. I mantioned it because I happened to read about it when some one wanted to sell me Nord Lead 3- had it for few months at my house- did not impress me. Compared to NL3, V-Synth GT is a God’s Flute. (meaning it’s good). So- I remember reading- they made it able to load samples, and it truly needs it because NL3 sounded poorly. Ok- the workstation. Still- Rom-based with sampler inside. Does not take that much brain to figure out. About the true analog… My band partner still owns few of those. He wants to build his own one day. I personally don’t care much about what it made of. Digital? Ok. I realize that there is a difference between old Moogs and modern analog synth. My point is- when ever there are samples- it is different from those that have just one sound “eeeeeeee” and filters that change it in to something else. So if you like to call it Virtual analog, I have no problem with it.

Artemiy, you don’t know how I use V-Synth, so your statement does not make much sense. There is no right and wrong way to use synth. I change the sounds as I go. I use knobs, time trip, Cutoffs and resonance, D-Beam and what ever else I happen to touch when I work with it. You call it “making new sound”. I do not. I call it “working with a preset”. I don’t save them- I record them in to song and move on, and never have same sound twice, because it’s gone soon as I change the patch. It is recreatable because there only few knobs/switches you can use, so if you come back, you do same thing and get same result. So if that’s what you call- making “your own” sounds- then ok- I do make sounds- I just don’t see it that way. I do not sample anything. I would load 3rd party samples if available, but I don’t make my own samples. Why would I? There plenty sounds available with out me, and what would I sample? The birds? The waves? Radio? Who cares? You like making samples- it is great- we do need people like you. I just like to use those samples. Somebody gotta make them, and some one gotta use’em. There is no question here- just fun to talk with colleagues that share same knowledge and experience and exchange information. I don’t believe in coming to forums just for tech support- it’s boring. Having conversation is a way to make it fun to interact. So- I am greatful for an opportunity.

I did not say that you are "using it in a wrong way", it's just that, according to what you said, you do not understand what the V-Synth is. And still it seems that you are not familiar with terminology. You may say that you're a musician and should not care, but it's like saying "I just like to eat fruits, even if I do not know the difference between an apple and an orange". I hope you understand my point. I want people to know more about what they have. If you knew more about each piece of gear you have, you wouldn't need at least half of it.

The V-synth is all about modulation. Again, it is NOT a preset machine.

Amen! Say, is there a simple way to remove all of the contents stored on the V-Synth? I feel the need of a clean-all-and-start-doing-your-own-thing button.

mickeyl, use a Compact Flash card (V-Synth and XT) or USB flash drive (GT) to make new projects. To make a new empty project, simply power the V-Synth on while holding the EXIT button.

AstralV,

I can understand your frustration, even with your experience. I think what it all means is that you have certain habits you've developed over the years that lead to certain expectations as to how you're spending your time in front of the V-Synth, and you're not getting the results you expect.

That may be the problem right there: you should consider taking a "complete paradigm-shift" approach to using your V-synth, and instead of looking for a cool patch, focus on digging in, in detail, with one patch, and especially playing around with the sample/resample capability, seeing where it leads you. At first, yes, this may seem time-consuming with little-seeming result, but once you start to understand V-synth.... you'll be absolutely blown away with what you can do.

I can also understand your frustration with "only" having 300 patches or so, or seemingly so, especially when Roland has been famous since early on for releasing synths with so many astoundingly beautiful and trend-setting patch sounds with their instruments. In terms of that, I would say that Roland has grown more conservative over the years in what they consider top-quality soundsets with their synths. They probably have a lot more market research and experience that tells them that a collection of more conventional sounds is more likely to sell a new synth than a bunch of really ground-breaking patches (which I think the original V-Synth released with, as well as the samples).

The way I think of V-Synth is really as a culmination of synth architecture Roland has been developing ever since the D-50; in some ways, conceptually, the V-Synth shares a lot with the D-50, but with vastly greater flexibility.

Ok so much for the macro scale; on the immediate level: take your kid, get a microphone, plug it into the V-Synth, and sample the child saying or singing anything, for about a second or two. Then spend a couple of evenings working with that to see what you can get out of it.

What blew me away originally with V-Synth, and does to this day, is how amazingly musical I can make my sampling results, using almost anything. You can bang your table top, record it and turn it into something cool! You can sample anything almost any way into the inputs (including copying any single one of gigabytes of waveforms you might have with any sample-based softsynths on your computer) and then turn it into something unrecognizable, and radically different from its origins. It really takes sampling, which even for expert samplists is a very time-consuming effort, and makes it performative. That's the fundamental concept right there, and the one you should spend time working with before you finalize your opinions on V-Synth.

I'll then go out on a limb -- since no-one else in the universe seems to share this opinion -- and suggest that the AP synthesis option on the V-Synth GT opens yet another radically giant door on what you can do with a synthesizer. It takes even more careful attention to what's going on to "get" what is possible here, and it's not just expressive flutes and violins, which is the default couple of examples offered with the instrument. AP brings the ability for you to "sing" your synth performatively -- in other words, to make performance expressive -- like nothing else out there. It may look and feel upon first glance like just "pitch-bend on the attack" or something like that, but no, it's much more.

At the theory level (simplified) the fundamental concept is that one of the major things synths (or keyboards, for that matter) lack in relationship to more "expressive" monophonic instruments (flute, violin, voice are the default examples) is the ability to control the microtonalities at the attack of a note with great variation. This is what gives a solo violin or guitar performance its liveliness, what denotates expressiveness in singing, to oversimplify.

AP brings this to the keyboard. It's not completely intuitive at first to handle in terms of setting it up in a patch, but once you get it -- like the sampling capabilities in V-Synth -- whoah. Very simply.

And ditto the vocoder. I could go on but I'm not sure the message buffer for this bbs would sustain me.

Note: I don't work for Roland, just love the work they do!

Hope this helps, and is encouraging; stick with V-Synth, or if it seems like too much effort, don't consider it a failing to go with a more pre-programmed solution such as any workstation. It all depends on what makes you happy, ultimately.

Realtrance,
I do agree with your opinion almost fully, with one exception...
"I'll then go out on a limb -- **since no-one else in the universe seems to share this opinion -- and suggest that the AP synthesis option on the V-Synth GT opens yet another radically giant door on what you can do with a synthesizer**. It takes even more careful attention to what's going on to "get" what is possible here, and it's not just expressive flutes and violins, which is the default couple of examples offered with the instrument. AP brings the ability for you to "sing" your synth performatively -- in other words, to make performance expressive -- like nothing else out there. It may look and feel upon first glance like just "pitch-bend on the attack" or something like that, but no, it's much more."

AP Synthesis DOES open new frontiers, and my only regret is... I can't afford to have one GT (yet)

Take care
PauloF

PauloF,

I had a brief period of financial luck that allowed me to get the V-Synth GT at the time, as with many others, that's at an end now. Now I just have to hang on to it (fully paid for, no financing, fortunately!) and not waste any time/energy yearning over stuff I can't afford.

I was trying to think of a good simple AP example for AstralV this morning. So for a quick starter, use the harmonica wave, apply the Erhu modeling to it, pitch it down two octaves, blend it subtly so that it mixes well with the other waves, and use, say, the default patch, "Boiler Bass," in the first bank as the foundation. THEN fiddle with all the AP options up and down the whole left side of the panel, not worrying for now about what you're doing. With some ear, you can do this to add a nice, expressive growl to Boiler Bass that makes it something cool, use the mod/pitch stick pushing forward to control the amount of growl you mix in while playing a bass-line. Simplest, quickest example I could think of.

The problem with AP -- as with many advanced synthesis techniques -- is that the results end up at the extremes, of either too subtle to notice, or too obvious and idiosyncratic to feel "useful." It takes some practice, both with getting a feel for what all the AP settings do, applied across a range of different waveforms for modeling (with 38 waveforms to use in AP alone, there's quite a bit of variety there!), and then for figuring out what kind of modulation/control options you're using and what they're doing, before you get any sense of mastery over this aspect of the V-Synth GT's design. Best bet if you don't want to engage in deep study is just to push all the settings to extremes to see what happens, and then start to scale them down until you get something you like. As with much of digital synthesis, you often hit a sweet spot within a very narrow range of settings and have to just learn by practice and experience what those are for you -- the single most difficult thing for people working in digital synthesis to "get right."

Ok enough babble; in a parallel universe where there was more time and money it'd be wonderful if someone basically had a "school for synth use" that focused on such things, for people who purchased a complex synthesizer, but obviously even for a big company like Roland that's always been a serious luxury they could never consider. Sigh.

I appreciate the support and encouragement. My GT is not going anywhere. I am giving it time as much as I can- played with it few hours, already used vocoder and few sounds in a song. I remember posting same idea on Yamaha forum, asking them to set up some online course to learn the workstation. They doing good job with educational videos, but I believe they could do more- it’s in their best interests. What frustrates me is why Roland would release a synth with all the flexibility and design options, but would not take time to program it. If they are the once created it, who other than Roland themselves knows how to use it better? Why not program commercial libraries? If I had distribution and willingness, I would do it just like Artemiy. But Roland has resources. They CAN hire programmers to do “work for hire” and sell the banks. There are never too-many sounds- more they program, more we would buy. They have experience, facilities and gear to sample, team of programmers- why not produce sounds and make money? It is so simple. Why is it that it took them a year to release 1 extra ARX expansion for Fantom G? And if they can’t do expansions- why in a world would they not program live sets? If Roland released good genre-specific live sets for Fantom- everybody would buy them. Same about V-Synth. It has great programming potential. Ok. But if Roland themselves don’t know how to use it, what do they expect from me? If programming it is so easy and so fun, why Roland would not do it with their own synth? We all would pay for it and buy it. Wouldn’t we?

It’s late I have to go sleep. I have a cold too. Thank you for your support. Will be back in a morning.

Astralv, if all that you say was as simple as you think... Even for big companies that hire serious professionals.

AstralV,

I will take your core question the way I'd take it: I remember when Roland had a pretty regular release cycle of the SR-JV/SRX cards for the XP-->XV series; they ended up with a good collection, well organized, very playable and inspiring soundsets for a variety of genres.

Then came the last few in that series, things like the Supreme Dance card on the one hand, and the card with their best piano sampleset on a card, the two extremes.

Again, I think a big factor is the change in the market. It's possible now to get a very wide selection of samples with software on a PC or Mac; whatever Roland might argue about the superiority of their programming or sound design crew for their cards, I suspect at a certain point that fell on deaf ears, when people could get (and I'm talking the mass-market audience) "good enough" for a quarter of the price ($50 for a sampleset or CD or online vs. $250 for a Roland card). Alternately, the competition for high-quality samples has also heated up, since the days of Gigasampler's debut onwards. You can argue, reasonably, about the validity of that approach to sampling, whether it really accomplishes anything, but bottom line, the market bought the concept, for a long time.

Now, it's clear Roland is concentrating on fewer/better. They are releasing the ARX cards much more slowly, with a lot more focus. I don't think we'll get a "Vintage" ARX card any time soon. It's questionable whether such a thing would even be sellable. ARX seems to be much more focused on high-end emulation of very specific things through sampling -- covering an area of the market Roland hasn't gone after before. At least, in this way, they're breaking new ground, for them.

Another perspective: most companies end up having a suite of sound designers around the world who work with them to develop a soundset. In Roland's most successful period, Eric Persing was really at the core of what made many of the SR-JV cards great; then, he split off to form his own, very successful, business. That generation of sound designers, too, was much more, in my opinion, tuned in both to the sound of vintage analogue synths, and had much greater literacy both in the areas of music theory and practice, and in the area of electronic synthesis, than the current generation of sound designers. For whatever reason, and it's much like what has happened in all the arts in the west at least, there has been a dramatic falling-off in creativity, originality, inspiration and just sheer educational foundation over the past decade or so, it's quite appalling. Personally, I attribute this to the 30 years of benighted Republicanism and conservatism that has essentially destroyed the west's ability to influence or guide the future. But, that's just my grumpy perspective. So, I blame Ronald Reagan for Roland's failure to release inspiring soundsets any more, basically. Him and Margaret Thatcher.

And a third perspective: sheer market forces. These probably factor in more than anything else. Keep in mind Japan has been experiencing basically a prolonged economic downturn ever since the early '90's, it must be souring the mood over there quite substantially at this point. We're likely to follow suit in the US and Europe for the next 15 years.

And then a micro perspective: Roland's recently acquired Cakewalk, with its fantastic collection of expertise in a variety of areas, from DAW interface and software design to incredible synths and samplers like Rapture and Dimension. I don't discount a period of integration between what Roland has done and what Cakewalk has done over the past decade that will only bear fruit down the line in more substantial ways.

Does that help you?

I just had to log in to say that RealTrance, you write with some great thoughts and insight. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post(s) and agree with you 100%. Well, politics aside...

As far as AstralV's frustration goes, I feel like he jumped into it "too early", expecting something else. In fact, I don't quite understand it - did he (AstralV) buy the instrument on a whim, not looking at any of the specs or anything? How can the number of presets on an instrument you're willing to pay $3000 for come as a "surprise"???

And although I do AGREE with him (AstralV) in saying that having lots of quality well-programmed presets out-of-the-box is always a good thing - I also have to support Art's view in that if you purchase the V-Synth purely as a preset machine, you're on the wrong track to begin with.

It makes no difference- just a note: I am "she"- female, so guess it may make some difference.

I bought the V-Synth because I am tired of all of my sounds, and it was supposed to be great tool, and it is some what ok, but I keep using it and I still believe- it is not that great. Not 3000$ great. The presets # is a surprise, because they not focusing on it. You can read 25 reviews and nowhere it says it has 300 presets. If you can show it where it says so, then ok, but genberally- I have not see it on Roland site.

I can not agree with the idea that there is no more professional sound designers in a world. I just don't buy in to it. I have to work a day job for my living, but if Roland bothered to pay, I would love to do sound design for them. So how about offering a demo submission or something of that nature. I will asure you- there will be hundreds of entries. And I don't think it would coast so much for Roland. These are all excuses.

My computer (PC), even trough I spent $4000 on it in 2004, would not do soft synth. The letancy is too great. I using Sonar, and if I switch to "Fast" from "Safe", it clicking, and even in that case- it still not responding on time. I do have Raptures and Demention- I can not use it. I do not use ASIO because of more than 1 soundcard, and in ASIO you can have only one at a time. Was wondering how people use V-Synth ande Fantom G with USB in ASIO with another soundcard- it should not work, if I calculate it right- and no I have not try it because I don't want to touch it- any time I touch drivers, it gets some surproses- so tired of being "Beta tester". I guess it's just me, and I am waiting for some one to do the work for me, but for $3000 I should be able to have more than 300 sounds, of wich 25% are another lame flute/rode junk. Not that I don't like Flutes on GT. But I have Triton and Fantom for that. The JV 2080 with all the expansions- I do not need any more conventional sounds. If some one needs it- the JV 2080 is still on e-bay. I don't believe in "fewer- better". The sounds should be of good quality and a lot of them. It is not that hard to program them.

I bought the V-Synth because I am tired of all of my sounds, and it was supposed to be great tool, and it is some what ok, but I keep using it and I still believe- it is not that great. Not 3000$ great. The presets # is a surprise, because they not focusing on it.

I have to repeat myself, but have you downloaded all the sounds that are available from Roland and from our website? I think there are at least 700 of them, maybe more. There's even the complete V-Synth 2.0 sound set available. See here:
http://www.rolandclan.com/library/v-synth_gt/

My computer (PC), even trough I spent $4000 on it in 2004, would not do soft synth. The letancy is too great. I using Sonar, and if I switch to "Fast" from "Safe", it clicking, and even in that case- it still not responding on time.

No matter how I dislike Windows, can't be true on a powerful machine, you probably need to adjust some settings on your PC to make it work faster with audio - just post your configuration in our Computers and Software forums, some of us may be able to help you out.

Just for your information, these days a $1500 Mac can play even heavyweight instruments with no serious latency, and with almost no latency at all if you use a dedicated audio interface. Macs are tuned for audio performance out of the box, this is why so many musicians use them.

The sounds should be of good quality and a lot of them. It is not that hard to program them.

Oh yes, sure... If it's not that hard, why don't you try yourself then?

Once again, download and listen to what Roland and us have posted. You're the first one I remember who complains about the lack of sounds for the GT.

"I bought the V-Synth because I am tired of all of my sounds, and it was supposed to be great tool, and it is some what ok, but I keep using it and I still believe- it is not that great. Not 3000$ great. The presets # is a surprise, because they not focusing on it. You can read 25 reviews and nowhere it says it has 300 presets. If you can show it where it says so, then ok, but genberally- I have not see it on Roland site."

I read through this entire thread and I find your point of view regarding the V-Synth GT rather trivial. Honestly, this detached feeling you are feeling towards a box filled with electronics and the company that made it has everything to do with your psyche and absolutely nothing to do with Roland and the helpful people at this forum trying to cautiously persuade you that you're incorrect.

Let me just be frank here and tell you what your problem is.
1. You never bothered to research the specs on this keyboard at all, whether it be reading the Roland website or online reviews of any kind. Plus you never downloaded the manual and scanned through it as well.

2. You never bothered to check out the thousands of YouTube videos dedicated to the V-Synth GT before you bought it either.

3. You never bothered to go to a music store and spend an hour playing the board and running through the preset patches and the other features of the board. This took me about 40 minutes.

4. Once you got the keyboard home its "really" obvious that you didn't take any time to fully read the manual or again check out any of the online tutorials online either. Nor did you bother to start digging around the internet looking for patches.

On the other hand, I did all those things and I came to the conclusion that while I liked the keyboard a lot it just didn't do enough of the things I wanted to do with a keyboard. Bottom line is you have whats called "Buyers Remorse". Do some research on the keyboard you actually want and trade this machine in because its going to make someone really happy.