New keyboard from Roland???

G-Man wrote:

Well, hello there and welcome back, Dan :) (even if the G forum is probably not such a nice place to be).
As for the dude in the video, he says that he has a friend who works for Roland, and that's how he knows the future plans..
Now that's a job for the secret Roland agent :)

Uhhh . . . I'd like to help out but . . . my girlfriend Bernice and I are on vacation.

Well, enjoy it then! This is a such a great time for revealing secrets! We can no longer be afraid of being [deleted by secret Roland agent] ! At least for a while!
oh and...sRa, be careful with that acupuncture ! You know what I mean :D

The daft thing to me is that I think Roland could regain some user confidence if they wanted to, without spending thousands on R&D.

- "Correct" or implement all the possible missing or badly implemented aspects of the Fantom G's OS (a 10 minute cursory glance of this forum will tell you what the key fixes would be).
- Add a decent (future-proofed) amount of flash ram, say 2Gb.
- Paint the cases black and rename it the Fantom Mark II, or whatever.
- Allow the OS to be used by existing G owners (excpet for the flash ram bit. Storage could be a setting in the firmware controls).

But, I suspect we'll get a few more accordians and piano benches before we get the "Jupiter G" or the Fantom FU.

I confess, that whilst I love my existing Roland gear (and I do have a fair few bits) they need to do something special to get me excited about buying my next big synth/workstation. Other manufacturers look much better right now, AND appear to listen to and interract with their customer base.

Regards
Andy

they need to do something special to get me excited

Very true..

Dan says he hates when people speculate..
weLL there's really no other way to go with the lack of communication and with that we only have passed
realeases and patterns to speculate on.

I think its a given if it happens its going to be a repeat or combination of a range I have already listed.
So the only thing left to offer is gimmick or two as an adition to make you want it.
so far they have been obvious with things like

Mp3/Wave playback direct from card or usb

Thing that need to improve

>>>FILE SYSTEM!!<<<<

sample sound editing and rendering

Sequencer on all levels

One of the most irritating things about the g integrated midi/DAW systen is it treats it as a single block instead of individual units.

Example:
if you have an external DAW and you have several track recorded and want to add more
you simply arm the track press record and then play your keys on the keyboard
now for this instance you have changed your master tuning up or down to make it easier to play
and your recording
stop and replay your day all is great!
reset your master tune and your ready to begin again..
try do this on the G?
result your !!!entire DAW gets returned!!! now how stupid! is that?
Now i can probably understand midi being re-tuned but AUDIO?? tracks
that would never happen in the real world and it dont happen on the X either unless you Manually do it so
why are we forced upon on the G?
And even if you say.. well that kinda makes sense so you can play along at the same tuning..
untill you stop and try playback what you recorded only to find its all out of tune and reseting your
master tune does not help it also retunes your record so it never remains in tune.

when ever i have managed to speak to roland on issues like this they tend to lock up and defend them rather than listen and discuss it and usually the line used is..
No one else has mention this
(so that makes it not a problem?? I have mentioned it needs to be addressed..)
This was the same on many issues with roland.
You think they listened? see the results now..
So anyway nuff ranting..
just expect more of the same in both production and service.
(I realy wish it was much different but has not changed in the last 10 years so why should it start now)

OMG...Dan is Back...to announce the new and exciting Fantom G 2.0 update.....(yeah keep dreaming...snooze)

Dan if you don't like the speculation...then come clean at least about the Fantom G...is it game over ? put us out of our (waiting for an update that is never going to come) misery..

I think aster is right. I have nothing against Dan in fact I learn a lot from his videos on youtube. But he should come clean and be honest as to the status of the Fantom G. I mean, does Roland really care? We need a straight answer from him and not just announce his twitter.. Come on.. Post FG concerns on twitter??! Wanna flood your twitter with problems? So like me right now, I moved on. I can't even believe I posted on this thread. (lol) Don't get me wrong, I still love my board. Its just incomplete in its basic level. So to answer the question.. Does roland care? Based on their feedback which is n-o-n-e., I'd probably believe they don't care. Dan, I think you can do better. A simple "move on" is enough to clear the skies if there would still be an update. At any rate, if theres a new keyboard coming, I'd probably not get it considering how the FG users were treated with lack of OS support.

I have many friends that work for Roland Canada. You need to understand that if Roland employees do know what Roland Corp. has in the works, they are obligated not to disclose that information until they are given the 'green light' to do so. Dan has been very helpful thanks to his numerous tutorials concerning the Fantom G, and I am certain that he would happily share any news regarding updates if he could.

I also understand his position concerning forum visits. Why should he have to wander through numerous forums when he is very open to connecting through his twitter or facebook account? I appreciate that he pops-in to remind us to do just that; logical logistics.

Nothing against anyone either but..
Its a bit pointless someone putting themselves as representing roland and then for it to yield nothing of that realm.
as in the past.. with or without any roland rep on the board has yielded the same results which have been non productive.
even if these reps can say nothing..
if they have come here they have/had the ability to take all feedback from here and have it make a difference and if done so we should have seen results by now.
Obviously it has made no difference what so ever, so in future no one should come in saying they represent roland unless that statement is going to help make a difference for its users.
Its easy to read roland and any rep..
the fact that thay say nothing means thats what you can expect
especially when they dont even ask for our input which clearly shows roland is not interested in what you want or think.
They represent themselves and their own interests, the only time they will offer anything different is when it starts to hurt their pocket$$$ thats the bottom line.

this looks like os2.0 for fantom g.... If i just could press shift and a key to setup the keyranges in studiomode, ?? :) .. It might be a wireless bench on batteries though.

Interesting to see Dan from Roland pop up in the Fantom G forum just a few days before a new RolandConnects is unveiled. Just sayin'..........

jabberwocky wrote:

this looks like os2.0 for fantom g.... If i just could press shift and a key to setup the keyranges in studiomode, ?? :)

Or maybe use the knobs to adjust pan, reverb and chorus in the audio mixer...

jabberwocky wrote:

It might be a wireless bench on batteries though.

Now that was mean :D

Maybe it's ARX-04 "Battery" allowing you to use the fantom G away from mains supply.
or it could be ARX-05" Accordion"......

Since I got out of the purely hardware game, I've been having a great time. I still use Roland hardware (an A80 is my main board in my studio, an A500 rests on top of my UF-70), but outside of that I've got no use for a workstation. Everything I could get from a hardware solution is available to me in software for a fraction of the cost and in a much more convenient way... For me to come back to the hardware world, Roland would need to tempt me with some specific things I'm looking for. I only offer this information because maybe there are some likeminded individuals out there who share my opinion and would like to see it reflected on here.

At the moment, for me, the only thing a workstation can offer is increased convenience. The things I miss most about my G8 (and then subsequently, the G7) was the opportunity to write MIDI phrases and sync the G's clock to my DAW, in order for me to use it as a groovebox while I played around various sequences and composed. Working well on the first verse and need to hit the bridge? Press the relevant pad and I'm into the bridge, can work on that for a bit, go back to the chorus etc... Very nice and intuitive to work with. It was great to hit upon a nice bass riff, take a couple of examples, put them on the pads and then try ideas out. Everything was MIDI-fied, so every pad played out to a MIDI channel and I would always have my bass on a set channel so I could move between different projects etc... It was great.

We still haven't got a decent VST for arpeggiating - there are some good VST instruments with onboard arpreggiators, but in terms of MIDI routing it can be quite tricky. I'm not talking about straight up/down/random pattern arpeggiating, I'm talking about something more sophisticated. The step sequencer on the V-Synth is fantastic. The arpeggiator on the G8 is woeful. If Roland could find someway of incorporating the arpeggiator functions of the V-Synth into a more fully featured workstation, they'd be on to a good thing. All the cool things about the G, the chord memory, the studio control functions, the visual feedback, the live sets and key mapping, the fantastic build quality... It was just so nearly there for me.

There's no reason to use the G's onboard sounds really - not if you know you can get better ones elsewhere easily. Why else would they release the expansion boards? Dropping hardware meant that I could switch to vast libraries of sounds which incorporate the subtlest of nuances in their use - the tiniest mechanical sounds in a piano library for example, enhancing realism beyond compare in the hardware synth world. From the day I bought it, I knew I would only ever use about 3% of Roland's sounds. It's no use having 50 pianos from stock without actually having one which is actually any good.

Roland needs to do at least one of two things with their next flagship:

1) They concentrate on completely refreshing their sound pallette - if we want the old sounds, we'll buy the old keyboards. Roland were pioneers in this field once. Just look at what Eric Persing's doing now. I wouldn't buy it, but the board would have some relevance.
2) Turn their latest Workstation keyboard into something that could be at the centre of a modern studio which integrates and facilitates a software based setup. This is what would capture me.

My dream is of a master keyboard which includes all of the chord memory/pad and phrase features/arpeggiating features of the G but enhanced and fixed for easier integration. 16 MIDI channels available at once, all of the keyboard mapping and liveset features of the G - a screen to do this with, lots of controls with LED feedback and motorised faders... The works. Something designed to work with VSTs. It could be done and Roland would clean up with it. I could stomach more substandard sounds on board and an inflated price tag for this.

People are always on about how a pc daw and vst's are the way forward and that the workstation is dead. WRONG!! I don't want to take a laptop and controller on stage with me - I have a MacBook and have tried running mainstage with a vx70 alongside my fg but it was a hideous experience. The MacBook locked up twice and I found myself ignoring the laptop solution and relying (as always) on my trusty G.
In a live gig I use lots of layered and spilt live sets incorporating samples and rps on the pads, and the occasional sequence/phrase for intros etc. I think this is what workstations are designed for, not full productions as a Daw replacement (although I often write using the g sequencer, I find it doesn't 'get in the way' like daws can.)
So please, before you start harping on about using a laptop or a daw or vst's think about us live performers. It's not all about the studio you know!