blazerunner wrote:megamarkd wrote:
Roland seem to have lost their way with synths.
...
The boutiques they dropped are loaded with sounds in these mini packages but people can't seem to look past the knobs and the size of the units and forget that roland stuffed gear that cost 1-3K originally into a little box for 300+bucks now that to me as a gear head is pretty cool.
It's only cool if you are satisfied with a lot of the boutique limitations.
I think it's not just about inconvenient size, it's about many limitations connected to that format and price tag, even if the price-value relation is great. I would rather buy something at double the price or more, but with really useable size, 6-8 voices for the synths, better functionality in their drumbox recreations, and also including a better sound for some of their digital recreations. As it is now, I don't care too much about their boutique stuff.
Roland is like Korg they like to more forwards with their synths but people can't seem to get over where they've been instead of where they're going.
Again that's not true from my view. Korg has a recognizeable concept in a a lot of what they do, and only limited weaknesses in their concepts. Roland still builds gear with strong points, but too many unneverving issues at the same time, within one synth or one kind of gear.
The Jupiter 80 was powerful as hell as far synths go the supernatural engine is incredible but people just couldn't get past the name and it not being analog.
While it certainly was no smart choice to call that thing a "Jupiter", this was not the main reason for the selling desaster. The main reason rather was an utterly iditotic UI desgn with one of the most stupid sound registration systems I ever met in all my life, coupled with leaving customers alone with other ridiculous OS weaknesses, missing recording integration (editor/librarian/VST functionality) and lack of overdue OS updates fixing the worst. The JP80 is a great example for an utter nonsense concept IMHO, despite some great sounding stuff on board.
Roland has shown many good ideas again in the last few years. But they are still inconsequent up to self contraditing in about everything they do, and bury their good ideas in too many weaknesses coming in one go with the good ideas. Their potential is much bigger than what they actually achieve, while Korg as the smallest from the "big three" from Japan seems to overperform constantly, looking at their limited resources.
Concerning Behringer: too much talk and too little action over the last two years for my taste. The Deepmind has some unacceptable no gos for my use, but at least it is available and useable for many, after a completely unnerving degree of excessive, pointless teasing. The model D was announced Namm 2017, and finally it's announced as available in April 2018(!) in big stores here in Germany: that's more than a year after announcing it. Instead of delivering what they announced, they rather make many new big mouthed announcements: no good style from my view. Still, a Mini at a mini price is a marvelleous thing and will definitely sell.
but at least with 4 units I can cover the presets for a good set! 
