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Seems to work fine, but...

Wouldn't you rather have Roland put time effort and money in an enhanced SN engine with 256 polyphony , instead of gimmicks like this ?

I'm probably too cynical...

To what extent is the Air Recorder dealing with audio (wav &/or mp3) and to what extent is it dealing with midi? I couldn't quite work out what sort of files it was playing back, and how they were being modified by the demonstrator.

It looked very easy, but how on earth could you record a piece like that without taking into account and setting the time signature, metronome, the patch to track allocation, channels (if midi), levels, effects processing, eq and compression? And all the rest of the usual paraphernalia of the studio.....and that's if everything goes according to plan as per the publicity brochures, which it has never been known to have done - at least in my experience.

Looks too good to be real...I would be just getting round to the closing-down-the-troublesome-drivers in the o/s at that stage

This didn't look like midi recording. It looked more like stream recording (mp3,wma or whatever apple is using). The playback of an itunes song was definately not midi.

Mmm, Ok, so the question of how on earth you'd modify that music straight from a DP remains. Does the iphone intelligently separate all the tracks out, notate the music and match them up to the nearest patch in the FP-80 library?

I think you're looking for too much magic. Think streaming mp3 via Wifi Ad-Hoc network.

Yes, streaming mp3 wirelessly is one thing - not particularly remarkable. It's just that he said he was able to modify (ie overdub or re-record) using the FP80. That's the part I do not understand - especially if, as you suggest, this is not using midi!!

I might be missing something but i see only that he is changing the key and the tempo.

.....unless it just records you sticking your own contribution on top, and mixes it with the backing track as in karaoke. In which case, he should have said: 'Look, it's got a karaoke function'. But that would have looked kind of Casio wouldn't it?

According to the description on roland.com it simply records and plays audio streams with the additional possibility to change the pitch and the speed which can be easily performed on audio data.

Well then, I can't quite see the point of hooking that up to a keyboard. Why not just do the pitch & speed change inside the phone and plug it into computer monitor speakers?

...which is to ask: What does this do that you can't already do in any computer with a free version of Audacity in it?

A wise man once said "Wouldn't you rather have Roland put time effort and money in an enhanced SN engine with 256 polyphony , instead of gimmicks like this ? " -JFP

You are so right!

Run on an iphone/iPad. Record wirelessly from your keyboard. Playback wirelessly into your keyboard (if your keyboard has internal speakers).

I don't know how many people will find this "gimmick" useful or not.

But the manufacturing cost of the app is zero, which is probably not true of whatever would have to be done to increase to 256 polyphony (i.e. you're comparing a free add-on to something that would raise the price of the piano). And honestly, I don't know how many people would really find 256-note polyphony useful enough to pay more for it, all else being equal.

I think Roland is just looking for some "gee whiz" stuff that salespeople can use on the showroom floor. Used effectively, an app like this might sell more DPs (possibly more than more polyphony would). I think that's really the point of the app, to help sell more units, which is, after all, their goal. It might work.

Yeah... and they should make a deal with Apple. Buy one FP-80, get one iPhone for free.

I'm not going to buy a iOS gadget just to get a 'digital' connection to my DAW. They should at least offer this gimmick for Android as well.

So, it's a gimmick - to lure people into buying. Like having your car talk to you and do weather forecasts in 3D , but provide it with a crappy old engine.

By the way - I don't think developing iApps is cheap by default. There are several divisions involved at a company the size of Roland and programmers are well-payed people , probably making a lot of hours getting bug-free , working iApps out. So they could have spend that money on re-engineering the SN engine. Doesn't have to be revolutionary ; just add some more processing power and a few tweaks here and there. AND include the Studio Grand on the DP series - they have it in stock anyway + R&D costs on that sample set have for long been earned back. No reason, other than guys-in-suits who don't play reasoning , to leave that out.

Also - no Lesley on/off on foot pedal : why - is that really too much to ask ? Question of really thinking things through just a bit more. And this strange routing of effects, as I understood, where effects apply to both mic input AND the sounds you're playing and settings/routing can't be separated. Talking about settings; the rudimentary way changes are stored (see comments in this thread). And the list goes on.

The FP-80 is good because it has a good keybed, is well build and has good basic SN sounds. In programming, routing and additional gimmicking that could have been more wisely spend, the FP is ...well not as good as it could be , to put it nicely (ahum). And that is regrettable.

Same dude now with FP-50 demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpuG0OXTX8

That´s pretty much exactly the same as what I am used to say about my Roland console piano HP-505. The keybed, SN sound and speaker system together really make an amazing instrument! But don´t expect much more.

Not even the metronome is pragmatic to use when switching between normal piano playing and recording modes or staying in recording mode without saving each take.
Or to give a different bad example: for sure it´s nice to play a cathedral organ sound with much reverb and flat EQ and keybed dynamis switched off, while the SN piano sound lives best from subtle reverb and with headphones from flat EQ but with the speaker system from more reverb and EQed to the maximum rised high frequency (max "ambience" value) for circumventing the otherwise present muffled sound of the HPs, and of course the keybed dynamics on (i.e. on level "H1"). Everything set up correctly for the different situations, the HP does not have any muffled sound but sounds magnificent!
Can anybody give me a good reason why on the console style HP it is not possible to save a variation of these settings for having them easily on hand when switching a sound? Changing from piano to organ sound is just not possible without stopping your living room concert for a parameter reprogramming break! How much would it cost to provide me 6 programable memory presets for this, 3x for headphone settings and 3x for speaker system settings? The portable and stagepiano FPs 50 / 80 or the RDs 300 / 700 NX have such preset options, as I understand you. How is it possible that somebody decides that a console HP musician would have no need for this??? I guess it even cost(!) them effort to take this functionionality out of the HP, like it will cost them effort to deactivate certain functionality in the smaller HD models in comparison to the bigger HP models, but the marketing department seems to still see an advantage in such musician un-friendly moves.

In fact, some settings are "global" and for some reason (like unfortunate result of a coin flip) cannot be saved to registrations (=presets). This includes (but is not limiterd to) EQ or all Piano Designer settings.

They might. If they were going to do one first and see how it goes, iOS probably makes more sense. Also, iOS is inherently able to do some music related things that Android does not (whether at all, or as easily, or universally) because Apple includes the low level infrastructure for it as part of the OS. Though whether this Roland app falls into this category, I don't know.