Users Offering to Pay Roland 4 Soft/Firm Enhancements

Myrk - Don't ever google the words 'Roland Cloud' or you may go into complete meltdown, mate!

That's looking like one such subscription service (From your most loved hardware manufacturer) featuring a dead donkey that you pay each month to pull. :)

Just looked up Roland Cloud. Pay-to-play synths? It was only a matter of time I suppose. That will now be number one on my list of justifications to the wife of why I need more hardware. I am curious as to why Roland are calling one of the Streaming Synths "Anthology 1987" and not D-50 though. I'm assuming that's what it is as they say it's one of the most iconic synthesizers in history. Unless they are cloning a Korg M1....

I don't get the whole 1987/D-50 thing either?! It's almost as though someone else has the name - They do realise they are the same company who made all that really cool gear, right?!! :)

It's like the 8TB piano on there, i mean, how that sits within a DAW project is going to be anything but 'the future', as they claim - And it doesn't operate in realtime as a live device either as it has to be rendered.

Maybe film scores and game audio clients will love it, but to me it looks like an idea that's dead in the water, even their demonstrators aren't making it clear that this higher definition of midi spec is what they'll be pushing in the hardware.

That 8TB piano has me very confused as to how it will actually sit in the workflow, and as far as the plugin synths go, selling them as complete bundle (like the Korg Legacy set) would probably have been a better idea. I'm really not sure who they are trying to target with the cloud stuff, time will tell I suppose. And seeing as this is the FA forum, I have to say that the Anthology 1987 bell pads on the FA are very good.....

Skijumptoes wrote:

Myrk - Don't ever google the words 'Roland Cloud' or you may go into complete meltdown, mate!

Roland Cloud...


Hmmmm... I just don't know what to believe anymore! Soon someone will work out a way to make every musician pay monthly to use their ears - using hands as well will be a buggy DLC. lol

In general, I think it would be insane to pay Roland to fix bugs. OTOH, depending on what the functions/features are, I might part with $$ for an update that adds significant new functionality.

Off the top of my head, I would really like to be able to transfer files to/from my DAW without physically moving an SD card. I'd pay $20 for that. I'd be willing to pay for this because I clearly understand how this works before I bought my FA.

@Mryk - Roland only charges $1000 for the FA-06 hardware, and they have no where near the profit margin that software providers have on DAW's. If they charge too much for hardware then many entry level folks and many experienced will run to software because its cheaper, even if some don't want too. To say its disgusting to have the option to buy software expansions is not very pragmatic about the world of hardware vs software and what it takes to compete, and if the hardware manufacturers start to seriously lose that battle our options on hardware will be reduced.

If Roland's game is to get people in to a moderate workstation like the FA series then why not offer software enhancements for those that want to go further but couldn't afford huge upfront costs of a top-end workstation which also still fall short many times.

The FA-06 is awesome sound engine when you program it... amazing.. and i have owned Triton Extreme Pro, Kurzweil PC3K, Korg Krome and many others. But when you get into it you realize some of the pains/limitations, yet you can tell the interface was designed to be flexible enough to add more functionality. So why not offer us folks bite sized software releases. I'd pay $150 bucks each year for a software upgrade that provided additional features to my hardware.

Again i do indeed want to clarify. Bug fixes should be free and supported for life of product. I'm talking about new features added to help in workflow, sound performance or whatever.

timswiley I think you'r assumption of how hardware companies operate is pretty off there. Sure for a small company like Arturia, but Roland sell so many units that they will have way higher profit margins than you assume (especially with the later synths being plastic bodies and similar components - a lot of products use the same ACB chip, etc). For every musician on stage with a Roland product I'd guess theres at least 500-1000 bedroom musicians with the same product. As for adding functionality remember these hardware devices are NOT computers, they don't just simply take updates. Most of the time the hardware is limited to the what the functionality is - not a software limit but literally reducing down the components to necessity. I used to think similarly that it wouldn't be too hard, but have been educated and done a lot of reading up, and it's hard stuff to be able to add a feature - juggling the memories of all the other features whilst aadding more when you are already maxed out... Sure I agree the interface seems very compatible, but the hardware probably isn't, and more importantly Roland aren't (remember this isn't an official Roland forum, it's for users because Roland don't have a forum!). I've argued the FA with customer reps and support guys - the system is pretty maxed out, it would need physical additions to add features. Other features they just seem unwilling because they have a hardware turnover rate of about 4-5 years. FA is on the end of it's life now, but I really do question whether Roland will entertain the dying Workstation market anymore.

The key with Roland products is to shout VERY loudly when the product is first released. This generally causes them to sort things out (cc on boutiques, etc), but after 2 years forget it, they don't service us guys. It's turnover profit rates that determine all this stuff. Hence why I believe a 3rd party company is the way to go, if there are any options, but I'm not sure how easy it is to program a Roland piece of hardware, and if it has some lock on that side of things. My guess is coding firmware on a Synth could be destructive... someone would have to risk the functionality of their synth, both in firmware functionality and hardware, in order to be able to code it. I can't see many people wanting their FA to turn into a brick for the sake of possibly adding some small features which (with total sales of micropayments) may not cover the cost of a replacement FA +effort and time.

It's unfortunate that there are products that go completely neglected when they show so much promise. On a similar front Roland completely abandoned support and user database of their flagship GK guitar processor the VG-99, which creams the GR-55 (which came out 5 years later). The VG-99 is still to this day the most powerful device for Guitar synthesis, and still sold at original price in most retailers despite being 10 years old. When windows 10 came around it took an army of users to beat Roland with a stick to make a Windows 10 driver. I guess it depends how much money they have for aftermarket activities to keep something going with updates and new features.

But we have winter NAMM way on the horizon... Roland didn't release a great deal early this year, so assumptions are currently that Roland could release a new workstation... possibly. Or going on trends yet another 303... lol

Guys on gearslutz forum have another idea though:

@Mryk - Nice to chat. I get some of your points but i hope i can provide some background. First off i'm a software developer... Now i don't do audio/product development but i know a ton about hardware and firmware. There are a ton of enhancements that can be made that don't require integrated circuit speed and the way the interface was designed with the combination of the shift key additional options/menus/shortcuts can easily be added... Even if there were was absolutely no memory left for workflow expansion which is not true then you could augment enhancements via storage on the USB drive. Let me give a few very simple examples:

1. Copy tracks from one song to another. (Memory mapping feature only not needed in realtime very easy upgrade). If the product did this then you could actually reserve some songs just to record pattern sequences that would allow you later to copy and arrange to other songs and work around the pains of a linear sequencer and all the complaints of not having a pattern sequencing feature.
2. Reverse sample in sample edit. (Memory mapping very easy feature).
3. Copy Pad Settings Across Songs. (Memory mapping very easy feature).
4. Save all... I'm tired of saving song... saving studio set... and saving tones when the primary workflow is designed to be studio-set / song based.
4. This next one would be a little tricky but it is very irritating to me. The sound modify sections/knobs are a bit irritating as you are changing to different tracks within the studio set. And lets say you turn the cutoff knob far to the right on track 1... Switch to track 2 which has a default cutoff far to the left you can't smoothly use that cutoff knob again because it will jump the cutoff. So maybe a way if there isn't already.
5. More features with playback using the pads... right now you can mute/select etc but the could easily enable the ability to switch pad modes using short cuts with the pad control buttons on the left providing more live playback DJ capabilities.

As Far as The Hardware Thing.
The Electron Octotrack, Soon the 2017 Akai Live and Akai MPC X are fullly Stand-Alone (No computer necessary) hardware production centers and Native Instruments is releasing one too. Akai realized after Electron and Pioneer Torais that they made a mistake creating products that steered everyone away from hardware back to software and are quickly trying to correct that. Now i would love to sit down and use my product for end to end production and as far as my needs are concerned the product only needs a few things for me to do that which are mainly listed above. but further what i'm saying is if Roland planned for upgrades to do additional things like add new FX's, or Reverse samples etc.. the interface design allows so many options and flexibility that adding new menu's and sub-menus is easy... However as soon as the unit is sold with the current Hardware model only, Roland has no interest in it anymore even with support. Paying for software is a way to keep the equipment relevant and increase their margins and more importantly within their brand. As it stands now to do my work i will either be painfully using my Mixcraft software, or purchasing an older MPC Renaissance to do arranging as they are cheaper now or springing for Elektron, waiting for MPC Live...etc.. When all i want after a month or two of learning my Roland FA-06 is just a few features that keep me from having to learn another piece of equipment, and i bet there is a market for people feeling the same way... and from the feedback here on this thread it seems likely. I realize paying $1250 is not going to give me an fully featured enterprise workstation, but if i could feature up over time with smaller software upgrades its a way for Roland to get people in small and build up their investment in their product.

Pointless looking at enhancements/fixes from a software/developer point of view, we can all say it's "Easy", but anyone who's had experience in working in an organisation that's just a smaller chunk of the size of Roland would realise that it comes down to Budgets, Approvals, Quality, Management, and plenty of top level decisions before the coders even get a sniff at looking.

Out of the entire Roland product range, ask yourself:-

Firstly, why would money be put into the FA range above all others? What's internal policy on updating outside of 24 months release, for example?

Would it create any additional revenue, versus developing new products?

Are QA/Testing equipped with the hardware to ensure no other features have been broken, or serious bugs introduced?

If new elements added, how would it affect the product range as a whole?

Would changes in the firmware affect the common code base which is used in other products? i.e. certain libraries will be shared with other Roland products.

Are management happy with how the FA currently performs?


As much as it would be nice to pretend that they aren't a big corporate business, they actually are. It's not possible to look at one of their products with a blinkered view.

On the whole, i think Roland have done a great job with this keyboard, versus what i've had in the past, you can see a lot of thought has gone in... And of course, it's almost limitless when you start to think what else they could add... i.e. There will ALWAYS be something else you could add.

I think your whole first paragraph can be nullified, because if a software producers making products like Cubase, Mixcraft, Fruityloops, Ableton, and countless others have mastered adding/subtracting features while maintaining stability, quality and compatibility with differing OS's, differing audio hardware etc while MAKING substancial MONEY in the process thru releases and upgrades then your argument as to why this can't be applied to Hardware is silly because its even easier to do because you only have to support your own products I.E.: Roland.

I remember a debate i had about 18 years ago about offering higher quality digital music at a premium surcharge price. Most everyone thought it was pointless too.. Then Tidal -> Bought by Google, HDTracks, Itunes for a while charged a premium for better quality music.

But this IS hardware, of which software is a component, and the hardware itself is simply a component embedded within a company that have a wealth of other product lines. It's not Ableton, Cubase etc. They ARE Software companies, it's what they do and a huge percentage of their team work on software development, with a single focus and routine product updates which can be co-ordinated based on that focus.

Realise that Roland must hit 800-900 million USD a year revenue compared to Ableton 18-19 mil USD/year. It's just not a comparison that can be made. Roland has LOST the same amount of money, that Ableton takes as revenue in total over a year, in recent times.

I worked at a company who started with 800k turnover and hit 8-9m/year within a 5-6 year period, and i can tell you now that costs could easily spiral out of control, and legacy support became an issue - which, at one point was our niche feature - but the biggest issue was the hoops that had to be jumped through to get an 'easy' drawing changed for example. What used to be a simple case of opening up the CAD file and changing it and putting a new version on file changed, it then had to go to head office for approval, to customer and/or supplier for approval, then internal review, then production review etc. And a 5 minute job suddenly became a 10 day turnaround - That's Roland, probably infinitely worse in fact! :-)

On top of that, companies like Cubase, Ableton etc. can bring people in of a certain standard who use the standard frameworks/IDE's in use at the company, meaning that scalability is easily achievable if they foresee the need.

As you have a background in software development, have you ever had to do so on a low level basis as is required with hardware synths for example? DSP coding, Assembly etc.. You're starting to get very specialised, particularly when it's on a chip and integrated within a unit that could over time differ in it's components. If you've never had a go at it, try it and you'll appreciate what a headache it is compared to higher level coding.

Also remember that people have to update their firmware manually, which opens up a huge potential for machine failures as it's a true firmware update on the chip, it increases customer support cases, returns etc. as it could result in dead hardware. It's not like Ableton, who can release and update and follow it up with another update to fix the issues caused in the previous one, for example. An update will only take place if the changes are truly worthy and outweighs the possibility of machine failures, of course.

So, How 'hard' or 'easy' it is to do from a software point of view, doesn't even come into it, because of the specialised talent, which brings limited resources, and management will continually put focus towards new product launches and early development to clean up initial bugs. Of course their team could achieve wildly great things in the firmware if they had masses of resources, but that's not even up for debate as it's not getting to that stage...ever!

Hand on heart, i don't think Roland consider the FA to be buggy, in fact, i don't either, i think it's pretty well finished off and has some really nice workflow considerations. But for those who think it is buggy, it's not giving the whole picture to say x task is easy to achieve from a software point of view.

It also needs to be understood that 'if' they were to fully flesh out the sampler features for example, it immediately encroaches on other products - and i think it's clear that's just not in their interest to do. It's just how business works.

By the way, because of the reasons above, i think it would be a good idea to pay for additional updates/user requests. Sorry, only just realised you were the OP who started this thread. Not against the idea by any means!

I started with low level programming Assembler. I haven't worked in it for a long while. And i realize realtime processing requires very very optimized coding approaches and integrated circuits, but workflow optimizations and expansions are quite a bit higher level and they don't need superior speed and performance. Again something as simple as copying a track from one song to another song. Or merging the midi contents of two tracks into one. Short cut keys on the pads to allow you to quickly change between part select, part-mute, sample play and FX on or off.

This can be done in realtime but is buried in the menu choices and would greatly amplify the Pad functionality if you could alternate btw those quickly while playing/performing or experimenting with arrangements. As far as other enhancements that do require speed of processing they should be able to measure machine processing capacity.

For example in Mixcraft it tells my System CPU Usage from the app. So i know as i add on tracks/fx/automation that i know i have to play within the limits of what my system can do. Hardware manufactures should do the same thing if they want to protect operating efficiency. Build these things with some wiggle room that allow enhancements to be added when/where needed based on available processing power. Enhancements are pretty knowable (Additional FX, ReSampling, Higher Res EQ, Scene Morphing, A couple/few Mastering FX for mixdown) etc..

I have found myself a bit tanked with the FA-06 because it is a linear based sequencer and very difficult to experiment with arrangements in building a complete song as a pattern based sequencer. The copy track to other songs would have been a good work around because you could use some songs just to store patterns in the first measures and then copy those around to your song, but the product doesn't allow that. I love the synth and workstation in one and the sound, but the linear based sequencer is so much a pain that as much as i don't want to i have to reach for my laptop which is truly what i was hoping to avoid.

Point i'm making mate, is that the whole software/development process is anchored deep within a plethora of other management issues, decisions etc. So how easy things are from a software viewpoint really has very little relevance sadly.

And don't forget that the chips that go into these units are Roland custom designed as far as i'm aware, so you could presume that workflow/interface changes are higher level, but i'm wiling to bet their chip development is quite old school and done predominately by hand using basic, but hugely efficient tools.

I think your idea is great in terms of a paid upgrade, and it would give a company like Roland some incentive, i would happily pay if it offered some good improvements. Otherwise, these updates aren't going to happen i expect (like most).

Unless, they believe the FA would see a boost in sales (i.e. the V2 Sampling update that the Juno G had - it had new stickers on the units in stores, sat next to the M50 etc.) I just don't see the FA needing anything major that would justify the expense and would be immediately saleable. Perhaps non-linear/grid based sequencing? But really, is that a big pull with the majority using computer workstations now.

On the flip side 'if' a paid update was to happen, how an earth would they manage it? At the end of the day it's just a bios file, there's no protection on that file that, i don't know if they can protect the bios update so it only works on your serial numbered unit, for example.

So, to enforce that would require some kind of security check, a system of registered users requesting custom files with their serials embedded securely etc. or else the file would just be taken by freeloaders, many of which would justify it as believing that the update should be free.

Personally, i think a better way forward would be for Roland to have some true representatives on boards like this and engage where they can with users, not for small fixes and day-to-day use as the community can help with that, but on higher level subjects like this, and serious requests for improvements. Even if it was just a month.

The biggest issue, for me as a customer, is not knowing if you will ever see support in the future. I always presume the worse with Roland, so i expect no updates to the FA, and expect the USB Midi/Audio driver to lose support in the very near future - luckily, the FA has a generic USB Midi mode, but that does mean Audio will go at some point.

I hope they prove me wrong, but history shows not.

I will say one more thing on this also, i got my FA after watching videos like this:-

https://youtu.be/op2XlVV__fE?t=990

Notice at 16:30, Gareth, the guy from Roland specifically says that the blanks for the pad modes can be filled with 'whatever' he wants, as it's *just* software, or at least that's what the experts tell him in Japan. And it's hugely intimated that updates will be free flowing because of the *just* software statement.

...yet no update, and no follow up from any Roland representatives on the subject either. :(

It would be areas like that where some of your ideas would be implemented too, as it would be most logical to put on the pads.