It’s nice that Roland has finally made 808 and 909 plugins. It would be even nicer if they sold them as plugins instead of requiring a subscription to their badly implemented “cloud” service, and if they were actually able to write halfway decent software.
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They’re a bit late to the party…
I wonder how these will fare against the D16 808 / 909…If these sound exactly the same as their ACB counterparts, the diff will be slight.
As much as I dig the boutique versions’ UI’s and UX, their 808 sounds leave alot to be desired IMHO… The 09 sounds aight tho
Not only are Roland less relevant than ever, (along with Korg) - Roland now officially suck… Nothing coming out of Japan seems relevant anymore, just cheaply made pathetic rehashes of overused gear.
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They’re bringing back REBIRTH!
Nevermind, it’s just Roland milking the cow…
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That’s your opinion. IMO Roland and Korg are aight, heck Roland has even been sucking a bit less lately as far as I am concerned. Rolands’ low point for me was the introduction of the AIRA range, its been steadily getting better since then.
All this Korg bashing makes me a bit anxious… so if you could just limit your Korg criticism to facts, that’d be great. I am actually looking forward to playing with the Prologue and all this negativity is slightly unnerving IMO.
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I think there was a new version of rebirth on the iPad. But old grumpy Mr. Roland didn’t allow Propellerhead to use the 303/909/808 skins… When i was a kid, I came across ReBirth through a accident and I fell in love instantly. I didn’t knew what the 303/808/909 was, but playing with ReBirth was something like a epiphany. I wish Roland would just be cool once and just allows the distribution of a free version of ReBirth or a ReBirth plugin…
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These aren’t the same companies anymore. They are not at the forefront of electronic music instrument design, just old guys rehashing old stuff. Japanese corporate culture is extremely conservative and the Japanese economy is probably not doing too well.
I can’t see Korg making something as wild as the Korg Radias , the Wavestation, Wavedrum or Prophecy, or Roland living up to the Jupiter 8. The Prologue - no match for a whole bunch of synths at that price-, the Volca mixer 
and more virtual analogue rehashes of x0x machines …
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Same here, stumbling upon Rebirth when I was about 18, with no knowledge of electronic music or production was amazing!
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I don’t think that the complete AIRA stuff was that bad. I got a TB-8, TR-3, MX-1. A jd-xi. It’s imho perfect for starters, not expensive. Of course for pros there is a lot of better but more expensive stuff around. But there are other reasons why I don’t like Roland (cloud service, selling always the same shit in new forms, horrible manual, cheap plastic gear, lack of innovation, Boutique size etc…)
Never say never, although to be fair, I’ve never considered Rolands old heritage to be particularily ”next-level” or forward-thinking… They just managed to make some boxes that sounded good and were idiot-proof (ie. impossible to make sound bad)
I actually like the boutique form factor
They probably weren’t even aware of how awesome the old stuff was at the time. They just used the analogue components that were available to them, and are no longer in production.
Bit harsh on Korg IMO. The volcas and mini/monologue have all been smash hits.
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And so has Justin Bieber!
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you know what, my spider sense is tingling like crazy… I am anticipating alot of angst, hurt feelings , bitterness and disappointemnts are about to hit this board and others as soon as NAMM is properly underway. I can’t deal with that stress, so I’ll be back in a while. Enjoy the popcorn yall
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Yea, I only have the Minilogue from Korg, my 2-year old loves it!
Me too, a little less maybe, but a keeper for sure.
I have a red SH01a, it is usable, but I would prefer something that’s approximately 1,5-2x bigger, and maybe some additional effects. Mainly the short fader ways can be tricky sometimes, especially in a life jam situation.
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