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Yes, to this. I was also going to say, despite the campaign to get the keyboard length down by moving the control wheel above the keys, that there are good reasons for keeping them down to the left of the keys where your control is better, more comfortable and less likely to make mistakes due to pressing keys or not having a secure hold.

There are strong arguments on both sides - I'd prefer to sacrifice the convenience of shorter slab for moving round to better performance control - especially for live.

Yes, yes, and yes! This is such a no brainer. It mystifies me that the concept is apparently so elusive for most keyboard makers. I mean, duh.

Yeah, I was kinda rushing it. How's this?



Also, I moved everything over so the screen lines up with the center black keys.

[EDIT] Though, to make it my dream machine, it would need 9 sliders, and a music rest, and SN everything.


Yes, portability first in a ostensibly portable DP.

Now we are talking!

Jay, what's the word on the action they chose for this board?. More similar to the FA-06 and VR-09 or the one on the Jupiter 80?

I'll make a point of asking the guys in service tomorrow if they have this information. I'm at head office for some meetings, so IF i can steal away long enough to get the info, I'll post when I can.

Aftertouch works a treat on it though.

Jay

Following up.

The word i got is that the action is Jupiter Style.

Aftertouch works a treat!

Have a few patches where I've used the AT to bring in filter sweeps, and re assigned wheels 1 & 2 to do LFO rate and CROSS Modulation. Really expressive.

I've now started using the Mic input as well to control Cutoff or resonance. The human voice is a spectacular controller for synth parameters. Haven't messed much with the vocoder yet, but appears to be very powerful, based on my short tests so far.

The sequencer is robust and powerful too. Easy to operate, and fast to get to a musical result.

This synth is a winner. A nice combination of classic Analog Roland Synthesis/Filtering, and capability that can only be accessed by the addition of the SuperNatural VA Synth engine. It has a very fat sound and is extremely playable and programmable.

Can't wait to get a SYSTEM-1M to play with it.

Jay

That's good to hear, Jay. Action on the FA-06

Action on the Jupiter-80 is

But I still have to play it to believe it.

Sorry, but out needs to be said. Could you make that graphic any more annoying?

Hey, Jay, thanks for the response. Somehow I didn't notice it at the time you posted. Of course, you are right. I should have known better. I'll just wait eagerly for whatever comes next.

More or less annoying than.....

ElmerJFudd, I like the Roland-rolled-into-one graphic. Is it actually something Roland are using to sell their new hybrid synth or is it something you cooked up?

Ha ha, actually that one has been floating around the internets for a while now. I think it's fan made, as opposed to Roland marketing. They call this an animated gif. little video loop of consecutive pictures, like those picture books from when I was a kid and you'd thumb through it like shuffling cards.

Yeah

Well, if those are my choices, I think I'll go with the dog.

Pre-production unit review.
[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=145&v=64uk__7ryZY[/video]

Got to play it today. Local shop got two in and had one unboxed on the floor, was nice enough to hook it up to some monitors for me to play awhile.

Size wise, deeper than I thought from pictures. Fairly light, not heavy by any means. Yep it's shiny black and lights up all over in red.

The analog side does sound pretty good. Especially on the brassy and stringy stuff. I did realize pretty quick that I wish it was 6 voice, 8 would be nice, ha ha. But yeah, 4 is nice for chording but then you have to get creative with bass or lead parts. But I guess that's what the digital side is for. It has all the sparkly bells and whistles in the presets that you would assume Roland would do. Various filter types sound nice. Lots and lots of FX types and parameters. I especially liked the tape style delay.

Layout is pretty easy to figure out, just a few things I couldn't figure out right away without a manual. For example, turning on the ARP is a button, but not sure where you set the pattern or the note duration. SEQ is simple to figure out. You have a lot of control over each individual voice in both the digital and analog sections, or you can edit them at the same time.

Over all, pretty neat synth. Keys are OK only, I didn't find them markedly better than the FA-06 - if they are supposed to be, I don't know. No after touch is odd, since the synth does respond to it if you have another controller hooked up. But there are pitch and mod wheels as well as roland's joystick pitch mod dual thingy and they are assignable. Plenty to explore if you are into programming your own sounds.