15 Apr
2010
15 Apr
'10
2:50 p.m.
At 10:09 AM 4/15/2010, you wrote:
I know this ML is for the S-series Roland samplers, but
thought this
may be of interest to anyone who, like me, is using an S-760 live and
has been wishing for an affordable Roland synth/sampler workstation.
The Roland Juno-G is now being sold with version 2.0 of the Juno-G
software and this upgrade now offers sampling features that were
previously unavailable. And for current Juno-G users the update is
available free to download (see Downloads page at link below). So if
like me, you were looking for a single keyboard to use live that can
trigger samples instead of hauling a controller/S-760 rack combo
around then take a look at the Juno-G v2.0.
It should be noted that aside from the terminology and the same
company, there is no relationship between the Juno-G and the S-7x or
S-5x samplers, it might as well be a different unit.
The Fantom is actually the bigger brother. The Fantom-G initially
came out with NO multisampling ability like the previous Fantom-S and
-X. It eventually got it back, same with the Juno-G, but it's the
same functionality really, no additions. The reason for the
removal/put-in-again glitch (IMHO) is that the Fantom uses a
different CPU (more off-the-shelf) and the OS was rewritten to
accommodate it. You'd be surprised about how much the modern hardware
stuff uses embedded Linux technology behind their OS's. Companies
don't have the time nor resources to make their own OS's anymore.
The XV-5080 actually had a S-7x engine on top of the synth engine, so
if you REALLY want the S-7x, that's the modern unit to get.
Aside from Roland, IMHO, the best hardware sampler to appear is the
Akai Z-8. For modern workstations, the Alesis Fusion (no
discontinued) had the best sampler engine, besides that I'd go for
the Motif XS. I use all these pieces and I don't want to knock Roland
but the Fantom-G is immensely difficult to use (too many clicks to do
one thing, the buttons are in ungainly locations).
This year, things may be changing with new versions of the Motif and
the new Kurzweil P3K.
Just my opinion, though.
Garth Hjelte
Sampler User