I’ve been wondering for a while what the next Elektron could be
a serious sample ganular synth with PM would be totally logical and awesome. Something in between Omnisphere and the Nordwave.
I creamed my pants when I saw the Omnisphere 2 demo…
yes only thing that had me interested in software
also mutable Elements + Clouds + pressure pads in elektron format would be an instant buy.
Snap. Watching that omnisphere demo had me thinking about the granular possibilities of A4 + Shapeshifter + Clouds.
Have roland made anything beside the Boutique and Arias? Im curious what your experience is with Roland.
New jdxi, broke all the way through its 3 year warranty, mostly within a month or 2 of being fixed, now out of warranty and broken. Fa06, mod wheel broken within 1 year. Nasty plastic, horrible keys(jdxi) and generally cheap. When I bought them I thought the 3 year warranty was a sign of confindence in their product but in reality it must have cost them way more in repairs than the savings made on throw away components. It makes me laugh when I read phrases like modern day classic in reference to the jdxi, something has to stand the test of time to become a classic, I doubt many will last much past their warranty period.
I was naive when I made my purchases, memories of Rolands popularity when I was young lead me to beleive they were solid choices, wont make that mistake again.
Oh and they release updates with new features that override exsisting ones, with seemingly no clue, the jdxi needed transpose but the button combo was allready being used, and now you cant mute/unmute tracks whilst playing anymore, plain stupid!.
Just out of interest, what broke on your JD-Xi?
The transpose function, introduced in the 1.5 update to the JD-Xi, uses the shift plus octave up or down button or shift plus pressing a key.
Track mute/unmute still uses shift plus a track select button and therefore tracks can still be muted/unmuted whilst playing.
Mostly keys but the soft buttons are failing too, it had about 9 months of use before the first key went, then a month after it was fixed another key broke followed by another two at different stages over the next year or so. After the second key broke it didnt get used much so all in all it had about 1.5 years of gentle use
On a positive note it reinvigorated my interest in making music, just not with Roland gear.
Before I could hold shift with a finger on my left hand whilst playing with my right and drop a track in with my left thumb while still playing, now if I hold shift I can not play the keybed without changing key, not sure what octaves have to do with it?
Well I suppose you have to balance the advantage of being able to use the keyboard to specify a transposition against the disadvantage of learning not to press a key when muting a track.
Sorry to hear about your experiences with the JD-Xi and FA-06, I suppose I should consider myself fortunate in that both my 3 year old JD-Xi and 2 year old FA-06 are pretty much in as new condition.
Thanks! I got mine a year ago. It was my first hardware synth. Still works perfect but I don’t have used it often. I really hate the minikeys, and creating a sound from ground up is a pain if you don’t use a editor.
But the quality of the sound is really much better as i expected!
One of just a few synth that i use outdoors without fear of defects.
To be realistic, for this price i didn’t even expect a decent hardware quality.
I really hope that Roland’s upcoming synths will be worth buying it.
Are you suggesting I should stop playing it and use it as some sort of playback device?. Keyboards(even toy ones) are meant to be played, it is impossible to play and cue/uncue tracks at the same time, up untill recent os it wasnt, it is imo a basic performance technique that they cluelessly trampled on in exchange for a feature that should have been there all along. I know the jd is not exactly a serious piece of kit but it feels like Roland think the average user just wants to press play and not much else, the editors may add a lot but without reliable harware its pretty much a soft synth and I am sure you could buy better software for the same money.
No of course I am not suggesting that you stop live playing your JD-Xi.
I too mute/unmute tracks whilst playing but I don’t experience a major issue probably because I am performing the cues during gaps between playing the keys.
The specific issue here is that if you press a key when you have the shift key pressed, for any reason, you will get note transposition, and of course you have to use the shift key to cue tracks.
Assuming it was not technically possible not to involve the shit key, I suppose Roland could just have given us transposition solely via the shift plus octave up/down keys. Not sure how popular that would have been.
Or they could have used a more obscure button for the new transposing feature instead of one that was allready in use for the last year or two.
Anyway enough derailing, nothing anyone says will change my mind about Roland, they have lost my trust much like Behringer have for some, only a run of extra good products will lure me back in the future.
Curiously, I hadn’t seen the white model before:
I just bought the white model. 3rd time owning this. It has some big flaws, but does soooo much right. I’ve owned almost every groove box, and this one sits at the top, all flaws aside, cause it’s so fun and immediate to get something going and just play. I do wish a handful of things were different and more accessible, but I love this thing for what it is.
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I’m considering getting one of these soon(ish), and now that there’s the white model I think I’m sold.
I’ve been lusting after the TR-6s since it came out, but the JD-Xi has all of the x0x sounds I want the 6s for, plus synths! In your experience, is the JD-Xi a competent drum machine? I don’t need anything fancy, sequencing-wise.
Also wondering about presets and editing. Is editing sounds onboard as annoying as everyone makes it seem to be, or are they just being babies? I tend to be pretty content with tweaking presets, and I’m not really a fan of hooking my synths up to my computer for anything other than updates and recording.
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The problem with the jdxi is it does a lot but its all a bit bland and played out. Really it should have been a soft synth as not only is the hardware pretty shoddy( keybed is beyond bad) but sound editing is either a pain or worse requires external software for anything more than basic control. Using midi from an Elektron makes sequencing much more flexible but then £400 gets you a lot of soft synths in comparison.