Roland Verselab ... a beast ...

Want to talk about music hardware or software that doesn't include Reason?
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avasopht
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08 Apr 2021

I think Roland has come up with one of the best offerings available.

For $750 you've got yourself a real powerhouse. It's compatible with Roland's Zen-core, which means you have access to their latest sounds as well as all the legendary SRX patches and lots of other modelled Roland synths.

I think they made a mistake by not providing USB ports to connect keyboards. But it costs roughly the same price as Ableton Push 2, but you get a complete hardware music production environment that is live and production-ready.

I've started to tire of all the minor performance issues a PC brings (latency, crackles, having to wrestle with live antivirus and background tasks consuming resources, etc) as well as the penalty of using a PC for gigging (it can be complex, there can be random software issues such as unexpected Windows updates, being a little awkward to carry around, etc).

The only shortcoming is that there's no Reason rack & Refills, and I would miss my Korg VSTs as well. But this is close to being a done deal.

Would be uber awesome of Roland bought Reason Studios and made REs and Refills available on these devices. I think that's where electronic music production is headed.


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Zac
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08 Apr 2021

avasopht wrote:
08 Apr 2021
I think Roland has come up with one of the best offerings available.

For $750 you've got yourself a real powerhouse. It's compatible with Roland's Zen-core, which means you have access to their latest sounds as well as all the legendary SRX patches and lots of other modelled Roland synths.

I think they made a mistake by not providing USB ports to connect keyboards. But it costs roughly the same price as Ableton Push 2, but you get a complete hardware music production environment that is live and production-ready.

I've started to tire of all the minor performance issues a PC brings (latency, crackles, having to wrestle with live antivirus and background tasks consuming resources, etc) as well as the penalty of using a PC for gigging (it can be complex, there can be random software issues such as unexpected Windows updates, being a little awkward to carry around, etc).

The only shortcoming is that there's no Reason rack & Refills, and I would miss my Korg VSTs as well. But this is close to being a done deal.

Would be uber awesome of Roland bought Reason Studios and made REs and Refills available on these devices. I think that's where electronic music production is headed.

I thought about getting one. A few things that put me off were the main sample track is limited to about 6 minutes of stereo audio which isn't bad but it has to be used in a time line fashion which doesn't adjust to the other sections if they are changed.

The screen is small.

It doesn't have anymore sounds or advanced editing (like the 707) than the mc-101. I've had a 101 and really liked it but obviously you're stuck to a purely Roland sound palette.

You can use two of the sections as loopers but they are very limited and all samples eat into the memory allowance.

I ended up getting a Polyend Tracker and love it. If I ever get bored of it I might try the verselab at some point it still piques my interest as a one stop shop.

PhillipOrdonez
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08 Apr 2021

Damn, you got the polyend tracker? I've been wanting one of those for a while...

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Creativemind
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09 Apr 2021

The main thing for me, is the sound, does it sound like a Roland machine from back in the day or does it just sound nothing more than what you could do with some 909 samples and a few vst's / Re's? my guess is it's nothing special "soundwise", sounds wow-ish in the video but (and I hear this a lot nowadays), music is going backwards soundwise. It's advantage though is, it's portable.

After being able to afford some decent vst's 18-20 months ago (U-He Repro 1 & 2, Synapse The Legend and Antidote, Adam Szabo JP6K and the Korg M1) and watching comparison video's, I've come to realise software isn't anywhere near as lush sounding as hardware. Cheaper though of course.
:reason:

Reason Studio's 11.3 / Cockos Reaper 6.82 / Cakewalk By Bandlab / Orion 8.6
http://soundcloud.com/creativemind75/iv ... soul-mix-3

avasopht
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09 Apr 2021

Creativemind wrote:
09 Apr 2021
The main thing for me, is the sound, does it sound like a Roland machine from back in the day or does it just sound nothing more than what you could do with some 909 samples and a few vst's / Re's? my guess is it's nothing special "soundwise", sounds wow-ish in the video but (and I hear this a lot nowadays), music is going backwards soundwise. It's advantage though is, it's portable.

After being able to afford some decent vst's 18-20 months ago (U-He Repro 1 & 2, Synapse The Legend and Antidote, Adam Szabo JP6K and the Korg M1) and watching comparison video's, I've come to realise software isn't anywhere near as lush sounding as hardware. Cheaper though of course.
This is the same sound engine used by the hardware, and you get the exact same sound with zen core no matter what platform you use it on (Fantom, Jupiter or VST).

The 808 is indistinguishable from the original hardware. Better to compare Roland's And Korg’s VST with their hardware as they have the resources for more in-depth circuit modelling.

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Zac
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09 Apr 2021

:D
PhillipOrdonez wrote:
08 Apr 2021
Damn, you got the polyend tracker? I've been wanting one of those for a while...
Yes 😁 I live very frugally and don't have much else. No car etc.

The PT is really inspiring me. I've never really worked with samples other than for drum sounds. The wave table and granular stuff is very refreshing to me. Hope you get your hands on one soon. It is fun fun fun.

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Creativemind
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Location: Stoke-On-Trent, England, UK

09 Apr 2021

avasopht wrote:
09 Apr 2021
Creativemind wrote:
09 Apr 2021
The main thing for me, is the sound, does it sound like a Roland machine from back in the day or does it just sound nothing more than what you could do with some 909 samples and a few vst's / Re's? my guess is it's nothing special "soundwise", sounds wow-ish in the video but (and I hear this a lot nowadays), music is going backwards soundwise. It's advantage though is, it's portable.

After being able to afford some decent vst's 18-20 months ago (U-He Repro 1 & 2, Synapse The Legend and Antidote, Adam Szabo JP6K and the Korg M1) and watching comparison video's, I've come to realise software isn't anywhere near as lush sounding as hardware. Cheaper though of course.
This is the same sound engine used by the hardware, and you get the exact same sound with zen core no matter what platform you use it on (Fantom, Jupiter or VST).

The 808 is indistinguishable from the original hardware. Better to compare Roland's And Korg’s VST with their hardware as they have the resources for more in-depth circuit modelling.
The same sound engine as a Juno? what gives a Juno it's sound is the components, so they're the same components?
:reason:

Reason Studio's 11.3 / Cockos Reaper 6.82 / Cakewalk By Bandlab / Orion 8.6
http://soundcloud.com/creativemind75/iv ... soul-mix-3

avasopht
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Posts: 3931
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

09 Apr 2021

Creativemind wrote:
09 Apr 2021

The same sound engine as a Juno? what gives a Juno it's sound is the components, so they're the same components?
No, it uses the Zen-Core "sound engine," which is the exact same one used by the Fantom and Jupiter and is a superset of the JV/XV/SRX samplers while featuring their VA tech.

For their VA devices, they use component modelling (and they have much more resources than U-he to analyse component behaviour). Here's a comparison between VST and analogue hardware:


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Zac
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10 Apr 2021

I can concur that the zencore sounds are excellent. I had an mc-101 which uses it and it sounded great. For drums and synth stuff.

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DaveyG
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10 Apr 2021

I've played with one briefly. It's good but it desperately needs a bigger display.

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demt
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10 Apr 2021

I got the nektar aura for all the sounds of reason a versatile sequencer great pads and an almost unchanged bank balance.
Reason 12 ,gear4 music sdp3 stage piano .nektar gxp 88,behringer umc1800 .line6 spider4 30
hear scince reason 2.5

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Creativemind
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Location: Stoke-On-Trent, England, UK

10 Apr 2021

avasopht wrote:
09 Apr 2021
Creativemind wrote:
09 Apr 2021

The same sound engine as a Juno? what gives a Juno it's sound is the components, so they're the same components?
No, it uses the Zen-Core "sound engine," which is the exact same one used by the Fantom and Jupiter and is a superset of the JV/XV/SRX samplers while featuring their VA tech.

For their VA devices, they use component modelling (and they have much more resources than U-he to analyse component behaviour). Here's a comparison between VST and analogue hardware:

I've watched a lot of comparison video's and what you often find is the raw oscillator sounds sound almost identical or maybe the hardware is a tiny bit better sounding but then when they get to the filters, the filters in software don't alter the sound the same. A lot of software sounds like the sound just gets duller and quieter when you reduce the cutoff. Hardware adds colour or something to the sound. Resonance is also slightly better on hardware and the envelopes can be a little better on hardware too. Seems to depend on what type of sound your playing, what octave too can matter. It is the culmination of all of those things in hardware that gives it a big difference. Quite often a lot smoother and a little warmer.

Admittedly some of those comparisons on Alex Balls video there, the JX-3P especially were very close.

The JX-3P here though:-



The strings were way better on the hardware but one of the sounds sounded spot on. As I say octaves and which types of sounds you use seem to matter too.

What I've also noticed is, if I try to recreate a dance track I know and love from say 90-92, the culmination of all the sounds in software don't sound as good overall when a small percentage difference in each adds up to 20% overall.
:reason:

Reason Studio's 11.3 / Cockos Reaper 6.82 / Cakewalk By Bandlab / Orion 8.6
http://soundcloud.com/creativemind75/iv ... soul-mix-3

avasopht
Competition Winner
Posts: 3931
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

14 May 2021

Creativemind wrote:
10 Apr 2021
I've watched a lot of comparison video's and what you often find is the raw oscillator sounds sound almost identical or maybe the hardware is a tiny bit better sounding but then when they get to the filters, the filters in software don't alter the sound the same. A lot of software sounds like the sound just gets duller and quieter when you reduce the cutoff. Hardware adds colour or something to the sound. Resonance is also slightly better on hardware and the envelopes can be a little better on hardware too. Seems to depend on what type of sound your playing, what octave too can matter. It is the culmination of all of those things in hardware that gives it a big difference. Quite often a lot smoother and a little warmer.

Admittedly some of those comparisons on Alex Balls video there, the JX-3P especially were very close.

The JX-3P here though:-



The strings were way better on the hardware but one of the sounds sounded spot on. As I say octaves and which types of sounds you use seem to matter too.

What I've also noticed is, if I try to recreate a dance track I know and love from say 90-92, the culmination of all the sounds in software don't sound as good overall when a small percentage difference in each adds up to 20% overall.
That's quite a big difference, but might just be down to not turning up the condition knob high enough.

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