Worst Roland, Korg and Yamaha Synths?

[maindeglorie]

Yamaha: CS-80 - Big, heavy, and sounds thin and plastic.

Roland: Jupiter 4 - Stupid layout, dirty sound and the arpeggiator is LAME.

Korg: Monopoly - A synth named after a board game? Please.

[Gianni]

Korg:
707. Really, what was that?
Close second place: TR-Trinity rack. I needed a small gigging rack with ROMpler sounds, but this was nothing compared to the Trinity, which at least had a touchscreen to control it nicely. You can't add the MOSS board, which is what made Trinity interesting!

Yamaha:
A tie between:
-Motif's children, like MO, MM, and maybe there are more. Motif line is nice, especially the ES with the PLG cards, simple ROMpler with great sounds; but the rest are just to linear and boring.
-FB01. I tried it once. Not recommended for anyone. Tiny box, impossible to work around. Noisy output. A big NO.

Roland:
Old Fantoms.

[Analogue Crazy]

Yamaha: CS-80 - Big, heavy, and sounds thin and plastic.

Roland: Jupiter 4 - Stupid layout, dirty sound and the arpeggiator is LAME.

Korg: Monopoly - A synth named after a board game? Please.

I get your argument about the Jupiter-4...but in terms of sound and character it's one of Rolands very best Synths. I suppose the layout was a little stupid at the time, yes organs were still popular but Roland should have predicted the future a little better and looked at the other Polysynths which were headding in the right direction with thier layouts. It was simply bound to look dated increadibly quickly as it was an early 70's layout at the dawn of the 80's. I wouldn't describe the arpeggiator as lame though, id say it's limited and quirky but fun and useful, especially in combination with the filter sample and hold. And as for the dirty sound...this can be a very good thing and give it a raw edge over other Polysynths. It doesn't have to be dirty: turn the VCA level slider down and close that filter.

[balma]

Korg:
Roland:
Old Fantoms.

Je je, I had the very first one.

I found myself several times pressing the screen, je je, forgot is not the Vsynth.

I received one for one month, in order to program it for a local producer, to make "trance" with it. Sometimes I work personalizing synths for specific purposes.

What a waste of time in this keyboard for God's sake. Almost any softsynth based on .wavs is better than this stupid piece of s**t. The sequencer is terrible, you must move throught a menu clicking the cursor over small squares in order to mute/activate tracks (there are no dedicated buttons for the 16 linear sequencer, is 100% digital screens that must be navigated pressing several times arrow buttons) navigating the patch edition menu is a pain in the a*s. Instead having an horizontal list of sections like most of yamaha workstations (Want to go to amp section press F4, want to go to effect section press F6 etc) the menu was vertical, and you had to navigate pressing the "down/up" arrows.

Only things I could rescue from it, are the distortion effects on the EFX section.

After delivering it with my work, I adviced to sell it inmediatly. Owner pissed off with recommendation je ej.

Almost made me want to use a computer to compose music

[JMP]

Yamaha: CS-80 - Big, heavy, and sounds thin and plastic.

Roland: Jupiter 4 - Stupid layout, dirty sound and the arpeggiator is LAME.

Korg: Monopoly - A synth named after a board game? Please.

I get your argument about the Jupiter-4...but in terms of sound and character it's one of Rolands very best Synths. I suppose the layout was a little stupid at the time, yes organs were still popular but Roland should have predicted the future a little better and looked at the other Polysynths which were headding in the right direction with thier layouts. It was simply bound to look dated increadibly quickly as it was an early 70's layout at the dawn of the 80's. I wouldn't describe the arpeggiator as lame though, id say it's limited and quirky but fun and useful, especially in combination with the filter sample and hold. And as for the dirty sound...this can be a very good thing and give it a raw edge over other Polysynths. It doesn't have to be dirty: turn the VCA level slider down and close that filter.

I think he's joking AC.

[Analogue Crazy]

I had to defend my favorite Roland. God i miss mine so much.
Ahh well, at least im a great Andromeda programmer now and have caught the DX7 bug.

[Yoozer]

Roland D-70 What were they thinking?

They were thinking "U-50". It should still say that on some of the boards.

Then again, I've heard some neat sounds with the DLM technique and the fact that the CPU is such a wimp that the LFO slows down when you hold too many keys - that's hilarious. Of course, not when you've paid full price for it.

This:

Yamaha DX-27 How much could they cut down a DX-7 and still call it FM?

and other people:

Yamaha FB-01

No. These boxes are completely underrated. Get a software editor for this. The basses kick like a mule. I've got a second FB01 coming in and god help me but I'm wanting a second TX81Z too, and I would've gotten that earlier if it weren't for the fact that people sell them for higher prices.

I only have a Roland nomination here: The Sound Canvas.
[...]
Gone were the days where you had full control over your sounds, ADR/CutRes/Vib seemed to be enough for all editing.

You actually got filter cutoff and resonance? They've omitted that on several of the boards, too.

It simply was a sign of the times. I'm fairly certain that you could add a JD800-style control surface to the Fantom and make it absolutely awesome, but people buy those things for the good piano sounds, the wide range of presets, the good keyboard and the lack of on-board speakers.

Oh, and while being a popular sound at the time, the 909 Kick/SD/HH/OH was rarely to be found, instead we had to make trance/house with an 808 kit.

Ah, the elusive AnalogKit! Next to the PowerKit with the gated snares and the poodle hairdo.

Seriously though, that's what they've invented samplers for. Too bad they cost fortunes back then.

The only thing GM sounds are really great for is playing back Sting's "Englishman In New York". Seriously, the Roland GM set with that MIDI? Dead ringer for the original, minus the weird "whoop" sounds in the background.

[Mr Rich]

Korg: the M1. Yeah, I know it was the synth that launched ten thousand albums in the late '80s and early '90s, but it also set the template for boring, low-programmability ROMplers lacking interesting synthesis features like resonant filters, hard sync, portamento, audio-rate FM, and other functions. It acted as a template that corrupted the market for a decade.

A valid argument for both the positive and negative there. I had one back in the day; it was a useful box of sounds, but you're right - it was the template for a 'workstation' dominated decade, where thousands of keyboard players ended up buying multi-timbral instruments which included complex sequencers that none of them needed. I'm more than happy that the last 10+ years have seen a return to the notion of a synth being a synth. We once again live in interesting times. I couldn't say that in 1990.

But I don't think we should be knocking little boxes like the Roland Sound Canvas; it was designed with a purpose in mind - to give a decent set of GM sounds in a small package, for a modest price. I think Roland got it dead right and it was a great little box for people who primarily worked with SMFs. I was not one of those people of course - and I doubt that anyone else here was!

Anyway, I digress... Three 'worst synths'? Should we say something was c**p just because it was useless for our own requirements? Personally, I can only look for pieces of kit that failed to be great for the purpose for which they were designed. Plus, I can only suggest synths that I've owned and lived with for some time. There could well be worse, but who am I to say that the FB01 is shite? I've never had one. I'll go with my experience and some (probably) controversial choices...

Roland W30 - I got one when they came out and was quickly frustrated with the fact that the sample memory was filled to capacity in fifteen seconds. There were some sounds on-board, but they were pretty lousy. I have no idea why I did this, but I 'solved' the problem by immediately buying another one. Two W30s did the job better... On the positive side, they were a piece of piss to use, had a helpful big screen, were very flexible and very reliable once Roland fixed the initial OS which caused voices to drop out when you used the eight individual outputs. I gave one away last year but I've still got one in the garage along with a vast sample library. So Roland, the idea was brilliant, the interface excellent but The W30 just couldn't hold enough stuff to truly be excellent. This leads me on to the really awful Roland:
I bought a U110 to ease the pressure on the W30s, but anyone who's tried to make records with one will know that they sound lousy and have a terrible interface. Awful thing.

Korg Poly 61 - I had one for 20 years. I get the impression that the 61 was supposed to be some sort of follow-up to the marvellous and eternally glorious PolySix. The 61 was a poor affair in comparison and I didn't get a lot of use out of it, even though I persevered for so many years. It was just a bit weedy. Or maybe I just never 'got it'. I know that some of you love them.

Yamaha DX21 - I'd been an FM fanatic since the DX7, but I feel there was a limit to how much Yamaha could cut down the technology to fit a price and still make a good synth.

So maybe be the FB01 was c**p after all...

[nathanscribe]

I bought a U110 to ease the pressure on the W30s, but anyone who's tried to make records with one will know that they sound lousy and have a terrible interface. Awful thing.

Ahaha. I got mine for not many pounds, even got some expansion cards for it... now there are some truly terrible sounds on there (late-80s ROMpler fuzz guitar, anyone?). I mean it's not got anything on the bigger, newer boxes, and could be considered wasted cash when there are plentiful affordable JVs, etc, but it's cheap, only 1U, and has a couple of acceptable presets - I use the piano and strings sometimes, backgroundy stuff with plenty of effects to make it sound better. The editing's a nightmare though, it's like painting a house through the letterbox. I certainly wouldn't want to rely on one for serious work but it fills a gap in the rack.

Yamaha DX21 - I'd been an FM fanatic since the DX7, but I feel there was a limit to how much Yamaha could cut down the technology to fit a price and still make a good synth.

So maybe be the FB01 was c**p after all...

I fiddled about with a few of those low-level DX types in the late-80s, early-90s, and was never blown away by any of them, but even after getting a TX81Z (because it was affordable, and which I still have) I found my friend's FB01 comedically bad. It sounded like a musical christmas card wrapped in cotton wool.

[maindeglorie]

Yamaha: CS-80 - Big, heavy, and sounds thin and plastic.

Roland: Jupiter 4 - Stupid layout, dirty sound and the arpeggiator is LAME.

Korg: Monopoly - A synth named after a board game? Please.

I get your argument about the Jupiter-4...but in terms of sound and character it's one of Rolands very best Synths. I suppose the layout was a little stupid at the time, yes organs were still popular but Roland should have predicted the future a little better and looked at the other Polysynths which were headding in the right direction with thier layouts. It was simply bound to look dated increadibly quickly as it was an early 70's layout at the dawn of the 80's. I wouldn't describe the arpeggiator as lame though, id say it's limited and quirky but fun and useful, especially in combination with the filter sample and hold. And as for the dirty sound...this can be a very good thing and give it a raw edge over other Polysynths. It doesn't have to be dirty: turn the VCA level slider down and close that filter.

I think he's joking AC.

hahaha

AC, the Jupiter 4 is one of the best sounding synths ever. The layout is so clear and easy that you can work in manual mode the whole time live. And that arp is from outer space! Hence the joke.

[gordwiebe]

It sounded like a musical christmas card wrapped in cotton wool.

perfectly hilarious!

[Syn303]

Roland's U-220, has to be the worst untuitive interface i have ever come across especially for editing, you need to apply negative values for attack, sustain & release etc

[Mr Rich]

Roland's U-220, has to be the worst untuitive interface i have ever come across especially for editing, you need to apply negative values for attack, sustain & release etc

Ha. You should have tried the U110...

[Hybrid88]

hmm.. Maybe I'm the only one but I actually don't mind the U-110 if you get them for the right price.

I have two which I bought for $25 AU each earlier this year (thats cheaper than most CD's FFS!) and yes the editing sucks but I'm used to that - owned an RS-70 for years and could never work out how to do microscope editing or program the internal drum machine, but I digress.

The U-110 has many c**p 80's - 90's sounds, dodgy brass, usual cheesy D-50 type stuff. But some of it's sounds are pretty useable, the acoustic piano, bass's and drums, it just depends how you use it - or rather how much you use it, I mean it's ok for the occasional sound here and there plus with FX it can sound pretty good and is bound to be unique given the apparent hating of them.

I say give it a chance, it's not that bad - don't care what anyone says it still shits on the sound canvas' - jeez I don't even like thinking of those things... :pukeright:

[k5k]

roland mc303......
can't even use it as a sequencer since it doesn't retain midi output memory (unless I'm a tard)
can't even be bothered fixing mine to sell!

korg mircokorg - ultra quiet and too trendy! too many bands using the same presets.
(but I love ms2000's, so yes I'm a tard)

yamaha, dunno.