Hmmm. I kind-of asked for information, not judgement. I have lifetime licenses for specific plugins.
No judgement here. You asked “specifically how working offline works” and I let you know that the information you have is the most current, but cautioned that it has changed in the past and will probably change in the future so I wouldn’t rely upon it. Sorry if that came across as… moralistic or something?
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Probably in the minority here but I love Roland Cloud. The app sucked for awhile but alls well these days. It’s frequently updated and works great. On the other hand, the actual plans and what comes with what is confusing as Shakespeare written in Dothraki.
Granted, i got a year of Pro membership free with my purchase of Verselab so technically, I didn’t pay to subscribe. However, I do plan on keeping it when it expires.
My Verselab came with 3000 sounds and Zencore tones. The same ones found in Fantom, MC series, other Zencore hardware along with hundreds more. By now, I have atleast a thousand more. I’ve installed all of the expansions and sound packs onto my verselab, tons of new sounds monthly on my Aerophone and a few gigs worth of drum shots, loops and legendary synth samples for my SP-404.
Great value.
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Totally agree! Since my (mostly favorable) screed up thread, the client has improved (though is still not on par with, say, Arturia’s or Novation’s). Pretty much all the plugins are Apple Silicon native now. And their new Play 4 Life subscription gives you permanent lifetime keys each year in addition to the subscription offerings — kind of a “rent to own” sort of situation. Pretty cool.
Heck, even offering just Zenology Pro with all the model expansions for $600 seems like a pretty good deal to me. But again, the caveat is that you need to install Roland Cloud and have an internet connection to keep them working.
Maybe not a big deal, but as an example I bought a lifetime key for the Sound Canvas plugin some years ago, and it won’t register with the current Roland Cloud client anymore. Essentially bricked it and word from Roland Support is it won’t be seeing any more updates.
That could happen to any of the current plugins, too, and that’s something everyone should be aware of.
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Given what you get, $100 or $200 a month is peanuts if you are working primarily in the studio. Roland Cloud isn’t without it’s flaws, but I agree that the value is there.
My Jupiter Xm needs to phone home every 30 days, or it loses the JD800 plugin. I ended up taking a JD-08 in trade for some Euro partially because of this and partially because the Xm’s UI just isn’t that great.
What is less clear is whether the Fantoms suffer from this same problem. Perhaps Roland is thinking that the Fantoms either belong in the studio (valid) or are for acts big enough to have roadies who can fully prep the gear before each show. Which leaves out the vast majority of live performers.
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Wow. I didn’t realize Zenology/Roland Cloud plugs required an internet connection until this thread. I travel/create frequently in remote areas, on boats, etc never had any issues.
I guess I wasn’t ever without internet for a full 30 days. I doubt I’ll ever be without internet for that long but it is possible—so that does suck.
Still, I’m in. Roland has been absolutely crushing it lately. I love the support they offer users and products. My Verselab, SP-404 and AIRA compacts have all received updates since owning and many of the concerns and fixes are directly tied to the community.
Also, I’m a huge fan of software/hardware integration and since Native Instruments have dropped the ball I’m all in on what Roland has been up to with Zenbeats x Verselab and SP-404 and the desktop app which is also AU/VST so you can easily transfer stems, loops, chops, ANYTHING back and forth from your DAW to device in real time.
So saucey. Did I mention the support?lol
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Can’t make this up. I’m giving RC nothing but flowers all day than this…
Nothing is clickable or responsive. Most images won’t load. Click ‘Refresh’ and I get this pop up and it stays frozen.
Restarted RC. Restarted Mac. Shut down Mac. Rebooted Router. Nothing.
Roland man. Why would you do me of all people like this today lol. Seriously. Not cool bro.
The whole thing was completely incomprehensible to me so I couldn’t give them my money.
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I picked up Baby Audio’s BA-1 softsynth a bit ago, and discovered something about myself: I really like it when synths come with stand-alone versions that I can fire up, tweak, and save a preset for, or just jam with without loading up a daw, project, adding tracks, setting the plugin, all that jazz. I’m not saying this is new — lots of plugins do this and there are whole products based around the concept. I was just thinking what a hole it was in the Roland Cloud family that there was no way for me to use their plugins outside of a host when…
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I hate that I can’t use Zenology outside of a DAW. I use it solely for making patches for my Zencore HW so it’s inconvenient that I must fire up Logic or Zenbeats to get to it.
Besides that, RC has improved vastly in the years I’ve been a member. For me, it is the best HW/SW ecosystem this side of Apples App Store.
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I like the ecosystem with the hardware but I mostly just use it to pay for the licenses to load onto my Aerophone Pro.
Those licenses are separate from the cloud membership so you can do that with the free account.
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What’s the story with the lifetime keys? I’ve seen various comments that you keep a license if you sub long enough. Then again I’ve also seen this promoted as a limited time thing.
Is this a thing or have I imagined it somehow? Intrigued to try the 90s digital models but would be cool to pick up a license at the end.
So there are only two ways to “authorize” a plugin through Roland Cloud:
- Subscribe to one of their plans (pay X a month, and if you stop your plugins will be deactivated).
- Buy a “Lifetime Key” to a particular plugin. You pay once and now you can authorize that plugin regardless of whether you have an active plan or not.
On the “subscribe” side of that, the plans come in four flavors: Free, Core, Pro, and Ultimate. These work how you think. They range from cheap to more expensive, and the more expensive plans give access to more plugins than the cheap ones do. Reasonably straight-forward so far.
The thing that has you confused is, as a holiday promotion, Roland will sometimes offer some additional cloud plans plans called “Play4Life”.
Play4Life plans only come in the Pro and Ultimate flavors and can only be billed annually (no monthly option). In exchange, when the plan ends you get to pick a plugin of your choice to get a free “Lifetime Key” for (or two keys in the case of the Ultimate version).
This means you can pay for a plan, “try out” all plugins for a year, then pick the one or two of you like the most to without renewing the plan. But only these special “Play4Life” plans work this way. They’ve been offered the past two years around black friday, I think, so keep an eye out again this year. Details of an old version of the promotion can still be found here.
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1000% yes! It’s allowed me to focus on just one thing (Korg opsix native, for example) rather than worry about setting up routing/tooling.
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Super useful, I get it now - thanks!
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