Why scrap SRX?

Or are you saying that gigging musicians don't endlessly tweak sounds? I'd say tweaking is definitely more of a studio thing.

In most cases they probably do. What I think he meant is for gigging musicians to have an Axe that is great sounding (in all categories) right out of the box, so they would be good to go ASAP, using the Axe i.e., the keyboard, to perform with instead of spending hours and hours tweaking sounds while perhaps missing many gigging opportunities because of it. In other words, buy a keyboard, open it up, set it up, and gig.. Instead of wasting precious time (and losing revenue) tweaking the snot out a keyboard's sounds because the manufacturer put in a mediocre sound set.

When you think about it, the Fantom G has a slight resemblance of that portrayal don't you think?

Hopefully Roland will continue to press hard and fast on getting the G's OS up to snuff in an acceptable time frame. And hopefully they will also provide other solutions for adding sound improvements; perhaps like some of the solutions people have been talking about here on this thread or other methods not yet discussed.

I too thought there would be many more of the best of the SRX patches on the Fantom G but in reality they are few and far between in my opinion. Could Roland be sued for false advertising?? Not that I would do such a thing of course. But there might be someone out there who may take it upon themselves to look into the legalities of such an undertaking if they found enough probable cause to substantiate a lawsuit and were able to make a good case out of it from a legal standpoint, they may in fact consider it. Although, Roland has many high paid attorneys that they would have to deal with and the costs of such an undertaking may well discourage any and all from taking it upon themselves to take on Roland and company.

Bill Gates sure... but Joe Blow?? Not so fast.

Like I said before in another thread, it would be perfectly possible for roland to sell SRX or any other sample material in a different format, even online. With the closed architecture of the Fantom and proper use of encryption (public/private key certificates to be exact) they could sell samples to individuals that would only be accepted by their single Fantom and no others. They could actually do that online. From a technological perspective it is almost silly to sell ROM content in physical form these days which is all SRX is.

That said, I doubt that Roland has planned anything like that, but you never know. They did something similar with the VS8F-3 fx plug-ins for the 2480.

In my opinion they should give us some SRX samples for free as addition to FG !!! With Motif ES series Yamaha added whole CD with fine samples.

keysme:

There's no basis for any kind of action, and it's likely bad form to discuss such matters here. Every commercial product sold comes with without any "warranty of merchantability." Meaning, no manufacturer warranties that you will necessarily like their product, or find their product suitable for any particular or specific purpose or need.

To no one in particular:

I don't mean to start a Roland hate-fest here, and I know that Art frowns on this sort of thing, so I'll try to respect the board, and shut up about this already. But, I'm still plenty pissed over this issue. A year ago, I bought a Fantom-X8, three SRX boards, and a $200 1GB DIMM that doesn't even work in the G. Now, I have three expensive SRX boards and a 1GB DIMM just sitting in a box, doing nothing. That's almost $1,000 worth of stuff. Just sitting there. Doing nothing. Now, add to that, another $800-$1,200 to buy a Sonic Cell or XR. That's quite a load of cash.

Arjan:

I see your point, but that's kinda the whole point of having sound sets in ROM format, such as SRX. It's just always "there," ready to use. It's part of the machine. It doesn't use up any precious user memory or need any unecessary offline USB storage. Roland should have created some kind of solution, whether technical, pricing, or product marketing, for previous Fantom-X owners with large dollar investments in their proprietary SRX technology.

I was actually extremely happy with the quality of the sounds in my Fantom-X8, and ENORMOUSLY happy with the QUANTITY of sounds. In it, I basically had a tremendously capable ROMpler workstation, with a HUGE amount of both on-board X and SRX sounds. Plus, a whopping 1GB of on-board sample RAM. The primary reason I upgraded to the G was simply due to the X' complete lack of any kind of workable sample file management.

So - if you are going to ditch SRX cards - you really only have one viable alternative in a board with only 2 expansion slots: The entire SRX library should have been standard ROM on the FantomG.

It'd be nice eh?

But it'd be unheard too... Perhaps newest workstation from Korg and Yamaha should also retain all patches from previous generations?

And how much you would be willing to spend more on such PCM loaded beast? SRX cards are still being sold and ten of them is over $2K easily. Or perhaps Roland should forsake business and put all those patches for close to nothing?

Who knows it may be possible to make an ARX board with PCM but... don't expect it to be for cheap (assuming should thing would be released anyway).

rez, don't be so down. Who made you give up your Fantom-X? Did someone hypnotize you? Or you made your own decision? You knew what you were doing and what you'll gain or loose.

Yes, everything moves on. When buying a new car, will you complain the shiny new alloy wheels you just bought for your old car don't fit? I think you understand what I mean.

No, no one put a gun to my head and "made" me buy a new G, Art. But I didn't know everything about the G before I bought it. But, even if I had known what I know now about the G, I still would have bought it for the principle reasons mentioned (file management and loading speed). It was simply impractical (let alone, expensive), to own TWO, huge 88-key workstations. I knew a Sonic Cell or XR would eventually be part of the deal. I just didn't know to what extent.

I see your point, but that's kinda the whole point of having sound sets in ROM format, such as SRX. It's just always "there," ready to use.

True, but with the new USB 2.0 support loading individual samples as small as those from the SRX series should be very fast indeed, as in pretty much instant.

I actually wonder how much flash rom the Fantom G has internally? Who knows, they may have put 4GB of flash in there which would be plenty to hold the OS proper (which apparently is only 8.7 MB) as well as many OS 'wave extensions' which would be just as accessible as the default wave set.

Just wishful thinking I suppose but it would be possible. Anyone care to open their G and find out how much flash ROM it has? I actually wonder whether the factory sample waves are stored in flash ROM (updatable) or in actual ROM. Who knows, maybe the reason the G no longer 'supports' 1GB RAM is that much of the address space has now been assigned to this hypothetical large internal flash memory. I seriously doubt it but I can dream, can't I?

Arjan:

I like the way you think. Maybe you could apply for a job at Roland someday? I don't think it's necessarily wishful thinking. If any of this gets back to Roland, they may discover that they have a potential for some lost revenue over this issue, if ignored. And if they're really smart, they may discover that they could capitalize on a NEW opportunity for NEW revenue over this issue. Certainly, there are a number of ways, as I mentioned earlier, that Roland could address this issue, and STILL increase revenues, not to mention, enhance their brand image. Whether the solution is technological, pricing, or product marketing, it's certainly within their power to make it happen.

With the new sample loading speed, you can load an SRX worth of samples in about 30 seconds.

How would one go about doing that Art? Unlike my opinions, I often come up short when it comes to my degree of savvy with the technical details of this sample stuff. How much RAM would three SRX boards, when uncompressed, take up? Engineer an "SRX sample-load kit" for the G, and I'll beat a path to your door.

rez, according to Roland, each SRX board holds 64 MB of data if uncompressed. So three boards would require 196 MB and that would load in around 1.5 minutes.

I like the way you think. Maybe you could apply for a job at Roland someday?

That thought has actually crossed my mind a few times believe it or not, but there are several things holding me back. Would be an interesting career change for sure but I do have the right background.

I have got this feeling ever since started using roland gear that there is some twisted Japanese humor going on in roland.
Everytime I see new gear and use it there is alway something that just pokes you in the eye and says we know this is going to annoy the hell out of you so where going to do it because we can.

But as soon as we read the manual we all knew the G was not a replacement for the X it was simply an addition to the fantom range.
Okay we now have v1.10 which gave us back 3 vital components..
UNDO, MULTISAMPLING, BEAT CALC.

But then the roland sick sense of humor kicked in and put a pop up requester right in the middle of your midi recording..
Now its hard enough having to move your hands at lightning speed to get as much done during a performance, but put a popup box in the middle of your performance?? WTF??
I mean.. this is NOT a computer (are you sure, are you realy sure, last chance)
FFS!
now were being stopped in our tracks while performing..

This is what i have picked up on.. Its all a sick game with roland programmers to piss musicians off big time..
Obviously i emailed roland about this and suggested an enable/disable switch for popup boxes.. or get rid of them..

sick humor..

"I have got this feeling ever since started using roland gear that there is some twisted Japanese humor going on in roland.

Everytime I see new gear and use it there is alway something that just pokes you in the eye and says we know this is going to annoy the hell out of you so where going to do it because we can."

There are actually some cultural mismatches between the way Japanese engineers and their US/EURO counterparts perceive what "the use case" is, which account for these kinds of annoyances.

It has quite a bit to do with the Japanese cultural value of simplifying and compacting functionality as much as possible. What looks to us as "leaving out features" looks to them like "oh, we can use fewer parts, less RAM, and increase product quality by reducing the number of things that can go wrong"

Knowing this doesn't make it any less annoying.