Please comment: FA06 or Juno-DS / Juno-Gi ?

[kimu]

hi all,

for working reason, for a while i will not able to play as usual in my home studio with DAW and audio interface, so basically i need a solution in order to:

- practice over mp3/wav file of my band
- being able to record new part or arrangiaments over the mp3 sent by other band members
- having possibilities to sketch new ideas and export them as wav or other audio format

further we are working on new live set where we need several synth backing tracks, i would like to find a solution where i can left home pc and audio interface and simply playing back tracks from keyboards or other hw devices.

i am looking to the following roland workstation:

juno-Gi :
maybe sounds a bit old, but has digital recorder and song player plus dedicated out for click. cons is the lack of a real sequencer and sempler, audio export

Fa06:
great sounds, sequencer can use audio tracks associated to pads (right ?), sub-out for clicks, sampler a-là 404 (no sample spreaded over keyboards and no time-stretching), audio export

Juno-DS:
good sounds, sample can be spreaded over keyboards or assigned to pad, no sequencer, pattern sequencer (not clear if it can mix audio track and keyboard perfomance), no out for clicks, no audio export (?)

any suggestion, idea or comment on this ?
thanks

[cello]

I would say the keyboard that best meets your needs is the FA-06.

Go buy it :)

[nathbeadle]

Hey kimu

I would completely agree with cello. The other two keyboards kind of meet your needs, but based on the 3 points you put forward the FA-06 sounds like the best match... not even including that it's the better, more full-featured keyboard compared to the other two so you'll most likely be able to keep it around longer as you won't bump into as many shortcomings in your future use.

I've had some growing pains with my FA-08 after being used to used to relying on my Fantom-Xa and RD-700NX.. some features and sounds missing... but overall it has been growing on me quickly and this community has been fantastic at finding work arounds to some of the shortcomings.

My last point though is that if this is truly a short term keyboard that you have no intention of using once you get back to your home studio you might not want to drop a lot of money on this so you'll have to find the balance between getting everything you want at a higher cost versus getting most of what you want at a much lower price point.

[kimu]

thanks nathbeadle, your point is right.

but, if turns out that fa06 can handle with no pain also audio backing tracks live, it would be a major plus for me.

the only doubt i have is that in sequencer i can have audio tracks using mp3/wav imported from usb/sd.
not clear how to sync pad with the tempo in the sequencer....

[nathbeadle]

Hey

That's one of the drawbacks that has caused me to hold onto my Fantom workstation... time shifting (as well as multi samples, can't believe that didn't include that in the FA series!!). The FA only plays back samples and gives you very little in terms of what you can do with them. Can't pitch shift them, can't tempo shift them.. need to do all of that on the computer. So if you import samples that are 115bpm, you're going to need to do everything else at that tempo if you want the sample to be in sync.

[kimu]

Thanks clear.

This could be ok, we have backing tracks written in the daw and drummer will have click to play at right tempo.

I am a bit confused anyway about sample and sequencer.

If I have three backing tracks I can assign each of them to one pad and trigger them manually as needed. Fine.

But if I want to a have a song in sequencer with those tracks is it possible?
In the manual I saw that just one pad track can be selected. ....

[bennyseven]

Hello Kimu,
you can set up the pad track with all 32 samples of the current song.
A good example is the factory demo song.
Up to four sampes could be played at the same time.

Should be no problem with your band.
cheers,
BennySeven