General Roland thoughts...
General Roland thoughts...
Roland wants to sell music hardware, that's its core business. Much of what Roland makes is really good, but often it misses the obvious functions that tunemakers need. It would sell a lot more of every product, and spend much less time and money on new ones that don't sell, if it listened more to the people using the stuff it makes. Now Behringer have made many replicas of past Roland products and sold them successfully. Not all of us want the old stuff, but there's a market for analogue gear still. If Roland wants its stuff to be digital and sell well for many years, and become classic products, then since they are updateable by firmware, why would you design 20 new products that do 90% of the job, rather than 3 or 4 that do 100% of the job? A couple of obvious examples, 2 brilliant products that are missing something fundamental, a sidechain compressor for the MC707, and step microshifting for TR8s and TR6s. Two brilliant, groundbreaking products that are let down by the obvious things that are missing. The strangest thing is that the TR8s has external sidechain compression, and the MC707 has 6 compressors for the drumpads (but no sidechain!) and step microshifting that's needed also on the TR8s! It's crazy! Listen to what users are telling you, Roland. You make the stuff, but WE buy it and use it, and in practical use terms, we know more about what's required than you do! That said, we're still huge fans of Roland and its products. Roland certainly makes some of the best stuff going.