Roland Aira System 1--SonicState review vid

[meatballfulton]

Here's part 1, Nick will do a part 2 once the first "plugout" arrives

Watch on youtube.com

[princefan3]

When Hen Hen...will you lay that little egg

[madtheory]

So let me get this straight, there is no plugout yet?

[Jabberwalky]

I don't want one, but honestly that thing sounds really close to the Sh2 I had.

[ryryoftokyo]

I just don't get the appeal here aside from the high resolution pots and the possibilities of this whole plug out thing. Other than that, you're paying way too much for a dedicated VST controller.

[Hybrid88]

Thing sounds pretty good actually

[Hybrid88]

Bit of info just in;

http://www.matrixsynth.com/2014/06/roland-system-1-sh-101-plug-out-details.html

[meatballfulton]

I agree, it sounds real good. Way better than the zipper and alias infested SH-32 I used to own.

Seems like a typical modern Roland product, great potential shackled by a bizarre feature set. I'm more interested in seeing where they go with the "plugouts" and how the competition responds.

Wonder how soon we'll start hearing Scatter all over some hot dance hit

[madmarkmagee]

I agree that it is a nice sounding digital filter and the ability to put a plug out into the synth is Very good idea, means you can get a lot of different soft synths (hopefully at a cheapish price) and not be glued to your pc.

Hopefully this will be a success and Roland will continue to work with the idea. In a few years we will hopefully see a similar concept in serious poly form.

Looks like you can only install one plug out in the board at a time? If that is the case, it would be a shame.

Good to see Roland returning to their roots as innovators.

[griffin avid]

Wonder how soon we'll start hearing Scatter all over some hot dance hit

You've already been hearing stuff like it and that's why it's in there.
I don't do the promises thing well.

I like the sound too, but unless it's A LOT of plug outs, I'm good.
Because you could accomplish the same thing with, let's say, oh I don't know....FAMOUS PRESETS and call it a new synth. I need something special and a radical sound departure to be convinced I've moved from one Modeled source to the next. I need to hear a NEW ENGINE at work.


IF they do this right, then I could see the value beyond this one keyboard.
Just like IF they add more drum machine sounds to the TR-8- it would increase in value.
Their track record just got good with that new Jupiter because every month they seem to be releasing expansions.

Seeing this [AIRA] is a whole line, I believe future support to be more likely. This isn't a one-off that some dedicated users are loving. These are a range of products and I can't imagine this not being their focus for the next 300+ days.
And like anything else, add more features and more reasons to buy and sales will hold.

At $600 USD, I'm paused, focused and wallet at the ready.

[Re-Member]

Sounds good from what I'm hearing, but this review is sort of lacking... He doesn't demonstrate how the Cross Mod sounds between the two oscillators, plus he doesn't demonstrate how the LFO sounds modulating the pitch, which is where aliasing pops up the most.

I also noticed that on Roland's website, the SH-101 plugout emulation is going to use separate envelopes for filter and amp. This is totally going to ruin how it sounds because the SH-101 doesn't function this way. The filter and amp should be locked into one envelope.

I can't say I'm sold on this yet till I see the price drop and more plugout emulations offered. The raw tone and filter is a h**l of lot nicer sounding than my JP-8000, that's for sure, but I'd also have to hear it pushed to the extremes.

[Hallu]

I also noticed that on Roland's website, the SH-101 plugout emulation is going to use separate envelopes for filter and amp. This is totally going to ruin how it sounds because the SH-101 doesn't function this way. The filter and amp should be locked into one envelope.

This is an inane comment. the 101 had poor features due to it being a cheap instrument, and wanting to make it more flexible is going to "ruin" it? There were a number of people upset that Korg chose to not add PWM to the MS-20 mini, intentionally keeping limitations that existed from a purely financial standpoint does not make sense when the cost to adding that extra envelope is practically nil. The difficulty of setting similar envelope settiings is not hard unless you need someone to patch a poorly made single oscillator mono synth for you - and lets be real that 0 on attack, sustain and release, a bit of decay for snappy bass response is what these things are going to be set at for most of the people using it.

[Re-Member]

This is an inane comment. the 101 had poor features due to it being a cheap instrument, and wanting to make it more flexible is going to "ruin" it? There were a number of people upset that Korg chose to not add PWM to the MS-20 mini, intentionally keeping limitations that existed from a purely financial standpoint does not make sense when the cost to adding that extra envelope is practically nil. The difficulty of setting similar envelope settiings is not hard unless you need someone to patch a poorly made single oscillator mono synth for you - and lets be real that 0 on attack, sustain and release, a bit of decay for snappy bass response is what these things are going to be set at for most of the people using it.

How is what I'm saying inane? It's how the original synthesizer operates. I have the SH-101 sitting right in my studio and while I can admit that it's simple enough to program similar patches onto my VA synths which operate on two envelopes, the moment I tweak the Filter ADSR but not the Amp ADSR or vice versa, it ends up sounding entirely different than how my SH-101 operates in real time. In fact, in order to get my VAs to operate the same as my SH-101 and Juno-60, I have to go out of my way and remap the MIDI CC settings so I can control both envelopes simultaneously using an external set of knobs. It would be the same issue if they added a second envelope to the TB-303. It's not going to sound the same as the original if you're actually tweaking things in real time as you play. The limitations are a part of its sound. But you're probably right, "most people" won't care because they probably don't have experience playing the real deal.

[Hybrid88]

Watch on youtube.com

hmm you know that's pretty much spot on to me.

[meatballfulton]

Don't panic yet, I saw a mention that the two EGs could be locked together for "authentic" 101 behavior.