Justlase80 wrote: ↑08:11, 10 October 2023
Respectfully, I think Roland has made some poor choices and their new CEO and marketing strategy has seemingly done Roland an injustice.
I really like the Fantom and is my go to keyboard now for sale going toward a Yamaha M8x. It took a competitors release of the M8x to provide a poor v3.02 update supposively fixing the aftertouch issue we waited 3- years for. -proves public opinion does not matter anymore.
Roland basically admitted a problem with their Fantom-8 hardware right when the incredible M8x is released in hopes of saving the platform. I don’t know what happened at Roland but I sense the Fantom will be discontinued soon as it won’t be able to keep up with this new competitors release.
It would have made sense for Roland to fix the various poor programming issues of the Fantom and offer something new after users have waited since 2019 for a fix to the aftertouch and two years hoping real features would have been added that are common to other synths.
I canceled RCM as it is malware, bulky, and does not cater to hardware buffs. They focus on media using words to build up a subpar synth. And resource heave cloud synth stuff you really never own.
This latest 3.02 update has solidified my parting with Roland.
I will sell all my licenses with the Fantom I purchased and invested so heavily in.
Thinks it’s time to move on.
RIP Roland… it was fun while it lasted.
Drop or turn your eyes away from RCM stuff. It’s leading to your downfall.
I see things totally different...Nowadays, many people tend to complain about everything and just put all their energy and focus on the stuff that´s wrong, bad or whatever instead of being happy about the things that actually are there. And I feel sorry for those people, because they don´t seem to be able to enjoy things that well anymore.
So, talking about the Fantom. Of course, there is some stuff that could definitely be better or taken care of. But I´d never ever sell this beautiful synth because the aftertouch is bad (what´s that all about that unnatural "key pressing" anyways, I use an expression pedal, which can easliy be assigned with AT functions) or the sounds are not well organized or the sampling options/speed is not as effective as it could be. I rather take a look at all the great things that the Fantom offers. I´ve been playing the keyboard for over 30 years now and to be honest, the Fantom is best one I´ve had so far and do still enjoy it everytime I turn it on. It has the best keybed by far, the whole instrument is so well built and feels high quality, the workflow is awesome, the zencore engine provides stunning sounds (and personally, I love it that there are new sounds available on RCM monthly), the input/output possibilites are perfect, the output makes any speakers shaking, combining different external VSTs with internal sounds and handling them with the Fantom easily is wonderful, modifying/creating new sounds with the model expansions and n-zyme is satisfying my sound engeneering better than ever and so on. There are so many good things about the Fantom to talk about and to enjoy. Nothing is perfect, but focussing on the 80% that are awesome is way more fun and satisfying than focussing on the 20% that could be better/are bad (almost like the pareto principle :)
I had the chance to visit the Thomann shop in Germany a few days ago and to compare many different keys and what can I say - it´s still the Fantom that fulfills my needs best. I always had kinda a crush on the AKAI Key 61 because of all the youtube videos etc comparing it with the Fantom etc, stating it´s well-built, the keybed feels good etc...NO, the Fantom is on a total different level, and it should be, of course, cause it´s double the price.
Well, to make a long story short: start enjoying your instrument that you own instead of constantly complaining/crying about the stuff that could be better etc. Every instrument is special and when it comes the Fantom, it´s one of the best musical instruments out there, in my opinion, but one need to put some time and effort to dive into all the great possibilites. Get to know your instruments by heart and have fun with the stuff it can do.