This is where you can tell Roland what you want from the next MC707 firmware update

Make the clips like actual Ableton clips. The big feature of Ableton clips is FOLLOW ACTIONS and MC-707 totally misses that, i.e., what the clip does after it plays, including random follow, jump, stop, etc.

Also SIDECHAIN COMPRESSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep, it's keep coming up, old Sidechain Compression.
This, Roland, seems to be what your public want the most. Personally I'd like more Scene Linking options, volume fades, scatter certain tracks for 8 measures, tempo changes for the tune with speedy-up and slowy-down over 16 measures etc. But that's just me, the democratic majority on this one have voted for....

Sidechain Compression

Hi ,
I would love that the import clip issue be solved .

When I started trying to import a few projects into one via clip import option , it worked as a charm for a few hours but suddenly stopped working giving me the MEMORY FULL message (even if memory was not full) . Now it got to the point where i can't even import some clips in a fully empty project . Giving me MEMORY FULL message even if memory used is at 0% . it now does that with not only one project but all . Usualy its a Tone clip that brings me this problem .

This problem has been notified already on the FB group and a few people also encountered it on their machines .

Don't hesitate to contact me if you need any project file or video of the problem. I d be happy to help .
It is holding me in my work ... and i ve tried everything . It's definately a unbexplainable bug only professionals can fix .

Kind regards ,

FC.

Dear Roland,

I still enjoy the mc707 a lot.

However there are a few updates I would love to see in a future update.

Firstly I would love to see side chain compression on the MC 707.
Secondly I would really like to create FM sounds both synth and drum (FM oscillator?)
And finally I think the song mode is a bit static, I would love to see a way to move clips easier through the different scenes.
Or a different approach like the electron machines did to their song mode.

Anyway, really hoping we are going to see more updates for this device in the near future.

Cheers!

Just a few more;

Pitch Chromatic (per step) control for the individual instruments of the drum machine

Sample Start position as a controller (assignable) on Tone Tracks and Drum Machines, with Random or Alternating Modes too

Alt Samples on the Drum Machine partials, so that the drum machine plays Partial 1 on the first trigger, Partial 2 on the second trigger etc. Very useful for example to alternate between 2 or more Crash Cymbals but only using 1 track. If this mode had to sacrifice 4 partials playing together, in order to alternate between the 4 partials, that'd be ok.

Spring Reverb, Riser Reverb for the insert effects.

Transfer the Master Effect function to Sidechain Compressor instead, with a feed from any internal source, and a separate 'depth of sidechain' setting for every pad and tone.

On/Off for Scatter function in the Scene menu (per scene).

Step prob for the Tone Track sequences, and random note pitch, within a selectable chord, per step

Auto Key for the Tone Track sequences, takes a 16 step bass/lead, adds 16 steps and lifts the pitch of steps 17-32 by a specified number of notes. Then adds another 16 steps and drops/lifts the pitch of steps 33-48 by a specified number of notes etc for all 128 steps in 16 step blocks.

1/4 Speed for Drum Machine and Tone Tracks. 1/8 is great for getting 30 seconds out of a 128 step pattern at 120BPM, and means you can play a background pad for 30 secs rather than 15. 1/4 speed would give you about a minute per clip.

1.82, Roland, if only for aesthetic sake, you can't leave a firmware revision at 1.82! That'd be like having the number of the beast at 642.172, never gonna work is it?😎

1) Sidechain Kompression
2) Sensitive ADSR Envelope per Channel (the one that is now on is just to aggressive, it needs to be more sensitive 1-100%)

Will update this with my notes.

I think I found other things others have not mentioned: unclear or an awkward work flow I haven't seen. Obviously it would be nice to have side chain compression too!

When in step edit - motion mode why is it when pressing clear and a step it deletes the note information and doesn't seem to delete the motion data. But when in step edit - note mode, it only deletes the note info and not the motion information. Seems strange. Is it a bug? Seems hard to delete the motion information on a particular step, I have to be in step edit - motion mode, then select the step then hold clear and press the C encoder relevant to the motion I want to delete. Just seems unnecessarily awkward when it's already set up to select notes / motion very clearly. If I am in the step edit - motion and hold clear and press a step then all it should effect is the encoder I have selected for motion editing not the note date too, I want to leave this intact.

There are quite a few work flow things like that that don't make sense. Like when using the motion designer it effects the entire drum track even though it show me the individual step selected. So I have to edit the velocity of every single step for a certain pad manually to make a drum roll and have other pads in background unaffected. I might want volume gradually increasing on the snare pad drum roll with cymbals or kick drums below it at a steady velocity. Again it's obviously capable and even seems to show me I am editing motion for one pad but it effects the entire track.

Is there not a way to copy an entire bank to another row of empty clips ? I have to copy paste every clip individually to another row? That's very tedious.

Why am I able to save a tone/drum preset and rename it but it's locked into the project it means if I am producing a track and make a mistake and I want to reload my project to bring it all back to how it was I lose any presets I have renamed. I shouldn't have to save it every time I create and want to save a custom patch/preset that's so time consuming and takes me out of the flow. They should be saved onto the universal presets just in a new bank, why not allow us to choose a new bank and name it and then it's all accessible from any project without having to search through projects trying to remember where that one particular sound/setting/patch was, we can't even preview it like the factory ones.

What do the bank letters represent for the factory presets? Why not have them represent the first letter of every preset it would be much easier to find a preset name you want. And one more bank for user presets. Or have some way to skip forward to the next letter beginning of every preset name it's so tedious scrolling through to find one preset. It could all be organised much better.

The sampling capabilities are pretty good but it would be great if there was an easier way to modulate the start point of the sample in both drum and tone instrument.

When I'm time mode and I set the partial mode to be able to edit the 4 partials separately they all still share the same osc is this me not understanding how partials work or does it just not work. I thought we had 16 separate osc which could all be assigned various parts of a sample and then could rotate through them depending on various factors like velocity to trigger a different partial or have different partials assigned to different parts of the keyboard.

Also the manual is totally out of date and there are things that are not even mentioned in the manual but are in the hardware/firmware. Like how to control the quantize what is this strange ratio dial? Normally you have a time signature/beats per bar you want it to quantize into. This dial isn't even shown in the manual under quantize section.

Ran into another annoying problem.

I have a midi keyboard which only sends to every midi channel.

Is there not a way to make it so the MC 707s only active midi channel is the one that is selected? Because otherwise it just triggers all of them at once which is pretty useless.

Wavestrike wrote:

Make the clips like actual Ableton clips. The big feature of Ableton clips is FOLLOW ACTIONS and MC-707 totally misses that, i.e., what the clip does after it plays, including random follow, jump, stop, etc.

Also SIDECHAIN COMPRESSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it can do that with pattern chain mode

Jdom1984 wrote:

Ran into another annoying problem.

I have a midi keyboard which only sends to every midi channel.

Is there not a way to make it so the MC 707s only active midi channel is the one that is selected? Because otherwise it just triggers all of them at once which is pretty useless.

Not sure what kind of midi keyboard you have. Hardly seen one with midi din and using only Omni channel.
Maybe worth looking I get for 50–80 a Midi Box (CME U6MIDI Pro or MidiSolution Router) which can route/filter incoming MIDI to a dedicated channel.
Than you can use the Auto Recieve function.

Else on MC707 for each track you can choose if to receive Midi Note in track parameters. Once you in the Menue you can quickly jump between tracks.

Jdom1984 wrote:

A …. unclear or an awkward work flow I haven't seen.

B … Is there not a way to copy an entire bank to another row of empty clips ? I have to copy paste every clip individually to another row?

C … What do the bank letters represent for the factory presets? Why not have them represent the first letter of every preset it would be much easier to find a preset name you want. And one more bank for user presets. Or have some way to skip forward to the next letter beginning of every preset name it's so tedious scrolling through to find one preset.


D… When I'm time mode and I set the partial mode to be able to edit the 4 partials separately they all still share the same osc is this me not understanding how partials work or does it just not work. I thought we had 16 separate osc …

E... Also the manual is totally out of date and there are things that are not even mentioned in the manual but are in the hardware/firmware.

A – it is 80s/90s style workflow combined with TRRec and Clips … once you get a hang of it becomes very fast. But also depends where you coming from and how deep you go. To me the Workflow that Glenn uses is the one that works well for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpNdVpjzeoM&t=253s
if you have different approach that is fair but maybe that helps

B – yes can copy a full line. See manual Page 14 you need to use the most right clip and than press „>“ there is also a shift C2 or C3 combo.

C – bank letters are acutely not part of the preset names. The presets for tones to represent certainly areas if the Roland sound history…here post to understand the Banks

BrianMcClelland wrote:

Hey, stevel! Brian from Roland Cloud here. …
ZENOLOGY Pro comes with six banks of presets, labeled A-G. These banks are Factory Presets (182 sounds), AX Collection (482 sounds), Synth Legends (128 sounds), Basic Synth (1109 sounds), XV Collection (896 sounds), Essentials (838 sounds), and Essential Drums (75 sounds). Many presets are based on Roland's most famous synths …

D – that is not the Roland ZenCore architecture – recommend to download Zenology Pro trail or start reading here https://synthanatomy.com/2021/08/roland-zenology-pro-review-zen-core-synthesizer-enigne-for-your-daw.html

E I agree the dance between References Manual and Update Manual sucks. For the SP404 the did update the manuals with the version. Hope they do the same. For the quantize setting check out the update manual page 18 - the Area parameter was added version 1.20.
But yes the manual need an update.

would like to be able to use the grid of 8x3 knobs in the same way as a Faderfox ec4 works. This has assignable knobs with a screen above showing a matrix of 3 digit descriptions you can assign to each knob. You also assign midi CCs. So I guess there would need to be a programmer mode where a grid of 8x3 names is shown. You could assign midi CCs and a name, ideally more internal parameters would be opened up to have CCs assigned. You could save different control matrices for different external synths etc.
The 707 makes a fantastic center piece for a small music setup and this would really be a great feature in my opinion. Hopefully it would not be too complex to implement, at least for assigning CCs.
Ideally you could scroll through some standard descriptions for each pot such as Attack 1 (would need an abbreviation), filter cut off etc or assign your own. The display is 256x80 pixels according to Google so I recon it would be suitable giving 32 pixels across for each assigned name.

It very possible that someone already wrote about this, but I didnt found exactly such feature here:
That would be great to have FULL send/return for external FX.
Now we could use it for 1 channel and have it fully wet, or use extra channel for mixing dry sound. Or we could use delay/reverb bus, but in this case we loose one of internal send fx (delay or reverb, depends od position) and cant have fully wet return then.
So, I'd like to have regular postfader send level separately from every channel, that would be independent from external fxs routing.

Don’t know if this was suggested, didn’t come up on search, but I’d love more clips! 16 rows is OK, but why not 99? Could help with long jam sessions where more variation is needed.

Yes, in conclusion......no desire to slag off Roland, but sometimes, I think they fail to realise what they have. Here in the MC707, you have a product that most people really like NOW (not as a retro product 30 years from now!), but TODAY people speak very highly of the MC707. It's a winning design, an easy to use hardware Ableton. Roland, realise what you've got with the MC707, and put stuff on it that people are screaming for, and you will sell many thousands more of the unit. LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO TELL YOU, for the very first time in Roland's history. WE ARE YOUR BEST ADVERT, YOU MUPPETS! 😄