3 ms·

An innovative instrument is one that's trying to sound like 2022 and not 1982. I love the hardware Roland sound. Especially the Juno 60 which is one of the swe

An innovative instrument is one that's trying to sound like 2022 and not 1982. I love the hardware Roland sound. Especially the Juno 60 which is one of the sweetest sounding synths ever made. The Jupiters and Junos are musical in a way that other synths never quite matched. But the Roland Cloud and Zencore versions are close, but... eh. And Roland Cloud Manager is an absolute clusterfuck of a product. It seems like Roland are all about the money now, and they don't even like their customers all that much. Meanwhile... I bought ModWave Native yesterday and it's the most fun I've had with a synth for a long time. It sounds nothing like a 1982 throwback. The wonderfully bonkers gravity-well based KAOSS modulation makes the sounds organic and unpredictable, far away from any traditional ADSR/LFO combination. I don't think it's gratuitous or over engineered at all. It's in a nice spot where there's some interesting added complexity on top of a recognisable wavetable engine. It also works much better as a VST than as hardware because there's more polyphony, it's easier to edit, and it doesn't take up any space.

blub 4y ago
There’s nothing inherent to the Juno 60 (to take something with the simplest architecture) that makes it sound like the 80s vs 2022. For electronic music it’s the drum beats, melodies, arrangement, the modulation, filter use and effects that have changed with the times. Wavetable’s popular right now, so credit due to Korg for putting that out in HW format. On the other hand there’s also Waldorf which built their company over decades around this type of synthesis both in HW and plug-in format. ;-) The thing with wavetable is that it works much better as a VST. One look at the front panel of the modwave lets me know that fiddling with the dozens of buttons and knobs would not be fun for me. Anyway, there’s hardly anything revolutionary happening in synths. My theory’s that Roland recognized that and are focusing on workflow, availability, interoperability, etc. Personally I don’t get it why there’s so many new synths being built…

blub 4y ago

There’s nothing inherent to the Juno 60 (to take something with the simplest architecture) that makes it sound like the 80s vs 2022. For electronic music it’s the drum beats, melodies, arrangement, the modulation, filter use and effects that have changed with the times. Wavetable’s popular right now, so credit due to Korg for putting that out in HW format. On the other hand there’s also Waldorf which built their company over decades around this type of synthesis both in HW and plug-in format. ;-) The thing with wavetable is that it works much better as a VST. One look at the front panel of the modwave lets me know that fiddling with the dozens of buttons and knobs would not be fun for me. Anyway, there’s hardly anything revolutionary happening in synths. My theory’s that Roland recognized that and are focusing on workflow, availability, interoperability, etc. Personally I don’t get it why there’s so many new synths being built…