Need your feedback on Roland

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cello
Posts: 1487
Joined: 11:47, 1 August 2011
Location: Glasgow, UK

Need your feedback on Roland

Post by cello »

Hi all - I'm doing some research and hoping the Clan can help me. I have three questions that give some key indicators to the most important thoughts about Roland. I'd like you to give the following:

Positive - the one thing you think is the best feature about Roland

Improvement - the one thing you think that Roland needs to improve upon

Keep - the one thing you would like to see kept in future products

An example answer might be;

Positive - colourful products
Improvement - more colourful options
Keep - green and red colours

Please note that this is not a bug-chasing exercise!

Many thanks in advance for all responses. I promise there is value to the exercise.
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Tom_1970
Posts: 312
Joined: 23:17, 14 December 2012
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by Tom_1970 »

Positive- Good sounding and innovative products.
Improvement - support for elder products
Keep - Roland's own, stubborn way of developing products (AIRA, ACB Boutique)
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rsaintjohn
Posts: 265
Joined: 02:56, 23 May 2015
Location: Cleveland, OH USA

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by rsaintjohn »

Positive - innovation (ACB, Boutique, JD-XA)

Improvement - user interface: whether it's the organization of digital menus, glossy low contrast physical surfaces, tiny sliders, or software, I think Roland really needs to try harder on UI design. They have some great ideas and products that are often undercut by the usability. So many obvious examples in the JD, Boutique and Aira lines.

Keep - Axial, and similar efforts that keep existing products up to date and useful
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kimsnarf
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Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by kimsnarf »

Positive: The focus of their products. Each is streamlined to be really good/fast at one thing.
Improvement: Software! There is a lot of value that could be added to their products if they kept improving their software both onboard and offboard. They abandon their software way too soon, and the offboard software has dubious quality.
Keep: The excellent Roland sound and Think Different attitude. :)

In some ways, Roland is like the Apple of synths. But unlike Apple, they have not understood the value of improving their software in order to sell more hardware.
spottingjonah
Posts: 107
Joined: 16:01, 2 August 2013
Location: Tennessee, USA

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by spottingjonah »

Positive - Legacy product build quality (JP80, Fantom G, RD700, PHA4 keys, etc.)
Improvement - Put more under the hood with less limitations baked in the cake (i.e. add I-7 sounds to RD800, add ACB to a new "V-Synth", etc.)
Keep - The Pro-quality line of keyboards that seem to be diminishing and being replaced with "toys"
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Hermax
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Location: Belgium
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Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by Hermax »

Tom_1970 wrote:Positive- Good sounding and innovative products.
Improvement - support for elder products
Keep - Roland's own, stubborn way of developing products (AIRA, ACB Boutique)
I second this.
Macska
Posts: 305
Joined: 06:34, 28 July 2013
Location: Oklahoma

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by Macska »

Positive - Quality Instruments with an interest in what customers want.

Improvement - Continued Product Support (Updates, Upgrades, Accessories, Software etc)

Keep - Lots of real-time control with lights for reference
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cello
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Location: Glasgow, UK

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by cello »

Thanks for the great feedback! Keep 'em coming :)
Jan_nl
Posts: 203
Joined: 10:10, 2 May 2008

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by Jan_nl »

Positive: Roland is focused on innovation, looking forward even when they're looking at the past.
Talented engineers capable of delivering great sounding products even in the low budget range: well done.

Improvement: watch out for design decisions which make no sense and which tend to overshadow an otherwise great product in the public's eye. Think it over, think it through from the musician's perspective.

Keep: modeling technology (SuperNatural, ACB), improve it, refine it, optimize it, that's the way to go.
Also keep: the GUI designer, great work.
Another also keep: workstations. Any Fantom-V in the pipeline perhaps?
realtrance
Posts: 128
Joined: 16:39, 8 April 2005

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by realtrance »

Positive: the focus on doing what they haven't already done.
Improvement: make sure not to lose quality of materials and components. Roland Quality and reliability is at the core of the brand.
Keep: independence from too much reliance on inevitably outdated software. Ship once, ship right, one fix for bugs, done. Do NOT be tempted by the current expectation that everything should be upgraded in software forever. Be old fashioned here: do it 100% right the first time, then move on. Software should be a nice to have accessory, not a fundamental requirement for being able to use the hardware 20 years from now. If people want software, they can buy software, not Roland musical instruments. :)
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kimsnarf
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Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by kimsnarf »

realtrance wrote:Ship once, ship right, one fix for bugs, done. Do NOT be tempted by the current expectation that everything should be upgraded in software forever. Be old fashioned here: do it 100% right the first time, then move on. Software should be a nice to have accessory, not a fundamental requirement for being able to use the hardware 20 years from now. If people want software, they can buy software, not Roland musical instruments. :)
It's not that simple. Roland do make excellent firmware, but their offboard software is lacking in quality (like the JD-XA librarian) or missing entirely (like the Jupiter-80 librarian). At the level of complexity of these synths, it is unreasonable to expect the firmware developers to have covered everything at launch (or in one bugfix). I do prefer fewer releases with higher quality (Roland) to many releases which suddenly break things (DSI), but there will be discoveries made and good suggestions after the product has been on the market a while. Roland ignore these. DSI listen and act if it makes sense and requires little effort. I much prefer a company that cares about its products and its users. That does not mean endless support or catering to every whim, but Roland are too quick to abandon their software efforts. Software (firmware) is a huge part of a modern synth and not just "nice to have".
MacTyros
Posts: 99
Joined: 15:28, 5 September 2014

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by MacTyros »

Possitive : innovative high quallity products at an acceptable price

Improvement : a platform that combines all those great innovative features and keeps backward compatibillity with old techs... Integra 7 is a great thing, start working from there, with adding V-synth features, live sets from the jp80 and rd800, acb technollogy and more... There is so much greatness of Roland lost over time...

Keep : diversity in products, RD series, Fa series, aira series.
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cello
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Location: Glasgow, UK

Re: Need your feedback on Roland

Post by cello »

Thanks for all your inputs everyone! Great comments all round. I'm now pulling everything together and so no longer require more data.
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