Honestly, if Roland had released the SH-01 as a 5-octaves keyboard synth and meanwhile took advantage of the increased real estate to add controls for "hidden" functions, I'm sure this thing would have already been there in the studio.
As for the sound of the SH-201, I never heard it "in person." There is still one in demo in one of my favorite music store in Paris, but each time I go there and say to myself that I need to hear it for real, I end up spending half an hour on the V-Piano... and forget the SH-201. And all those (lame) video on Youtube don't make it shine to say the least.
But your SH-01 demos give me some ideas of what you are talking about - but they're too short ! I've got another question if you don't mind : are the envelopes fast enough for snappy patches like kick w/ sub or white-noise snare (ala TR-808) ?
cheers
vox
The GAIA SH-01 sounds fantastic
Re: The GAIA SH-01 sounds fantastic
The envelopes are not snappy-fast, however, oscillators restart on key trigger and there is one of the sine wave variants that has a good click at the start, and if you use it and filter it out a bit you can get a really nice kick drum. Furthermore you have lots of distortion models in the effects sections, so you can create a lot of nice kick drums with it.
Re: The GAIA SH-01 sounds fantastic
The Gaia is not overpriced - $699 is a steal for what you get - 64 voices, triple stacked synth with fantastic sound quality and effects, and the construction is very solid compared to the SH201. Just my 2 bits.