Roland SH-201

[elwoodblues1969]

In the interest of deviating away from workstation synthesis even further,I've been
researching the SH-201 & have found it to be a very unique,versatile & a very user-friendly board with great retro 80's sounds.

Two things about Roland synth products that I have found to be true from my perspective is this;

Thier stand-alone performance synths have great sound quality,but they seriously skimp on sound quality in thier workstations.

Secondly,thier products tend to be a bit overpriced in comparison to other brands,but still,every now & again,Roland comes out with something quite unique & useful and ultimately it's worth the extra expense to a degree.

Considering Roland's pricing in general,the SH-201 is moderately priced,but the amount of factory presets is a bit of a drawback.

It only has 32 presets,but it does have some other features that make up for it,such as;

-polyphonic arpeggiator
-phrase recorder
-USB midi & audio interface
-VSTi editor
-external audio input to manipulate incoming audio signals,such as a cd player or mp3 player

All in all,a very unique & useful synth for $595.00(USD),but considering the amount of presets and the fact that it was released only last year,I am going to wait for a price drop before I make a move on this one.

http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?objectId=769

Thom

[Moon]

Thom , Roland is making good products. This is in fact a good hardware synth in combination with a pc, but I don't believe it is a match for a Nord, Kurzweil, or Virus...

Moon

[elwoodblues1969]

Moon,

I did not imply or intend for the Roland board to be an alternative to the Nord-not by any means.

But rather,I was thinking of the SH-201 as a post-Nord purchase,as in just another board to add to my collection(speaking in the future tense,of course).

In fact,once I get the Nord,I won't intend on buying another keyboard for a while,by which time the Roland will have come down in price by then,presumably.

Thom

[Moon]

Well, I've seen it happen to many: once you get an Nord, you'll feel so satisfied that you never want another synth. This can happen too when you buy a Virus  So, we'll see... 

Moon

[folderol]

I think that (as with any tool) once you find something that you 'sorta' like, and start using it a lot, then without realising it you progressively get better at making it work for you to the point where everything else feels 'wrong'.

[Marc JX8P]

I a way, I think that limitations on the part of the instrument can lead to more interesting experiments than what you would do on a workstation where basically anything is possible.

Of course, this is a rather crude generalization and it also depends on the style of music you make and the way you go about designing sounds/creating songs, but for myself I know that I have the fondest memories of learning to create sounds with my old JUNO-106 with all its limitations, while my Fantom Xa is not as inviting and I rarely do sound design on it (though I do use it a lot in my tracks and I love the sound). Experimenting with your gear, see what you can get it to do is always fascinating and you simply are more in control in a situation where all the possibilities can be controlled by a limited number of dedicated controls and options. Also, this allows a designer to push a concept and create a specialised, fully optimized tool without having to allow for thousands of other options.

[rharv]

Great point Marc.
 I just mentioned in the Ion thread that having the older synths for sound creating is worth keeping them for.  I still have my Juno 106 and have actually pulled it out of the closet, created the sound I wanted, sampled it into a newer board for shows, and put it back away.  More than once! Same with the moog,etc.  We have had 106 sounds in a few of our songs, but being played by a W-30 or Juno-G.. Barry (our vocalist) lost his 106 a couple years ago and occasionally asks to pull mine out for a certain sound.
 The Juno-G has way more sound creation parameters, but just isn't as fun and intuitive. (Kinda like your Fantom) However it will sample the 106 just fine..
 As a sidenote I still want to dedicate some time to putting the S-series sample library into 16/44 so we can use all those sounds in the Fantom/Juno-G boards. I have literally over a hundred disks of samples. I *think* I have the complete Roland S-series library, plus a bunch of others. There are some pretty good guitars, saxes, strings... I recently rebuilt an old W98 server computer so I can run the old DOS programs necessary to reformat those samples (S-disk, samdisk,w30GET,etc.)