chilliusvgm's Reviews

supr maro galxy synff!

What a fun thing, a cheesy Roland synth with a unique sound set and fantastic set of acoustic and synth patches. This is my go to for if I'm wanting something Roland-ey with that hint of 'fun realism'

50% gold, 50% fools!

I'm going to start by saying that if you've ever used digital recreations of the Proteus series, you're missing out. The soundfont files for the Proteus lines that are floating around are really inaccurate and sound really bad, and various digital recreations are inaccurate in one way or the other. You won't get anything good, unless you get the real deal.

That being said, this is a fun little synth with a cute set of sounds, I picked mine up earlier this year, and while I've not used it much for actual production, the playing around I've done with it has been quite a treat as I find it to be very fun to fiddle with and see what patches I can mix together to get really cool sounds, plus this thing sounds cool on its own despite having no onboard EFX, no clue how they pulled it off but the 'fakery' they do for simulating things like reverb trails on strings is smart and well done.

Oddly feature packed for a desktop synth... which is fantastic.

The MU2000 is surprisingly shocking on so many levels for "what you can cram into a Desktop Synth", but Yamaha really did a fantastic job at responding to that with "yeah we can put in a lot lol"

The basics.... follows XG/GM2/GS spec, fantastic! Has several different usable patches for each, fantastic! Has its own performance mode for gigging/1patch playback? Awesome!

Then the meat of it, good amount of reverb, chorus and delay settings, SWEET! Has four inserts for processing not only sounds on the unit with EFX but also sounds from the inputs on the device... excuse me, is this even "just a synth" anymore? It can basically function like a small EFX module if you want it to.

and the music written for it? Can sound alike to professionally produced music, except here it's played back in real time. It's a fantastic little desktop midi box and has so much potential for great soundtracks that I can't wait to push it in the future.

Solid.

Very solid workstation with good sounds, comparable to some of the sounds that comes with the HALion VST, except honestly I like this more because the sounds are beefier and sound higher in quality to me.

More Korg deliciousness!

The Korg 01/w is an absolutely fantastic synth that I definitely recommend if you've used some of their previous stuff like the M1 or WAVESTATION before. The sounds on it are cheesy and very 90s and I absolutely adore how they sound in my music, I especially love the basses and woodwinds as well as the pianos and E. pianos. Absolutely great!

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An awesome box of sounds!

I've been using the JV in my music ever since I started in 2018 (though via the VST). Since then it has been my #1 go to for authentic and stylistic 90s sounds that I think go amazingly with the ol' Korg M1. It wasn't until earlier this year I saw a JV1080 for £150 that I thought I would have a go at using the hardware and it's been nothing more than fantastic. Absolutely iconic sounds and the DAC is so warm on this thing!

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An astonishing mess that can still work

I bought the Behringer UMC22 so that I could record my Roland U-220 at a decent quality so that I wouldn't have to worry about cleaning up all my recordings, due to an insane amount of noise floor I was getting from my older recording method. Unfortunately, the UMC22 in modern times is a quite astonishing mess that can still work, with a lack of driver support (instead giving you ASIO4all drivers on their site) and issues with a lack of drivers like sound popping and inteferance it still works and can power my beyerdynamic DT990s 250ohms without it sounding quiet or off.

As well as that, you can 'hack it' to record in Stereo using both inputs if you feel like doing a bit of setup in your DAW, simply buy two compatible rec cables and plug them into each input, align the volume knobs on the front to match by ear and then pan the channels in your DAW and record away! If you've set it up correctly it'll be in Stereo, this is what I did to save on a bit of money, and it worked lol

Decent, but has strange issues.

Roland's VST releases in the past few years have not been the most top tier A* quality releases that they should be, many of their newer VST plugins are plagued with bad performance, inaccuracies and strange issues. Sound Canvas VA, whilst fairly old now, is unfortunately a victim of some of these issues. Its performance is not the worst, it doesn't eat up my CPU or my RAM like hell but it can push things a bit far if you're using multiple instances. Inaccuracies are based on the inaccuracies of the SC-8820, which this plugin is based on, this means that the SC-55 and SC-88 maps have patches that don't sound how they should on their respective hardware and any other inacurracies come down to things like reverbs/fx etc.

Strange issues, there's one that constantly bugs me because once I heard it I was never able to unhear it. The cutoff/resonance filter is broken, in that it will trigger randomly when you play instruments. This means that one note out of many in a piece will sound off, the only way to fix it is to max out the cutoff and apply your own cutoff/resonance in a mixer instance, ruining the 16ch MIDI support this VST has because it doesn't have mixer outputs.

SCVA is not terrible, or unusable, but it still has issues that show a lack of love on Roland's end for their old hardware. Who knows if they'll improve this VST with an update some day in the far future.

The new update made it way better.

A huge issue I had with the original KORG WAVESTATION VST is that the original UI didn't have any form of categorization, meaning that picking specific instrument presets in this plugin was a huge pain, and it honestly made me choose using M1 over this plugin any day of the week. Since the release of V2 however I've found myself constantly coming back to WAVESTATION for its unique sound and the VST finally having categorization making it less of a chore to get the kind of sounds I want from the plugin.

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A good ol' rompler that can still fill in the blanks

I really like the Roland U-220, I generally find it has a good selection of stock sounds and pretty decent patch editing capabilities that can fit into a lot of general applications, whether it's for an instrument up front or for something to fill in the blanks. Of course, I wouldn't say it's something you should stick onto your hardware list if you make particularly modern music, but for those who love an 80s or early 90s kick on our songs it's practically a perfect small little first rompler!

It's insanely good

Not much to say really, it does its job being a good emulation of the YM2612, could get an accuracy upgrade at some point though; has a few little inaccuracies here and there, but overall does a brilliant job. Definitely leagues over what used to be the case for using YM2612 in your music.

Love it, a modern ROMpler; great for what I make

An excellent plugin, comes with really good sounds and is essentially perfect for the type of music I make, also goes for really cheap most places (sometimes going on sale for a dollar too) and overall is just worth it; pure quality for a low price.

The only negative thing I can say is that a few of its sounds are quite 'disposable' use them once and never again sounds, they only occasionally have unique qualities that shine out, but there are instruments on here that do shine.

Good for someone who's getting there

Good headphones, especially for someone who's just getting there with mix and masters, while not the best they are certainly an upgrade from any cheap headphones you may have started out with, good sound though do need an EQ to get them to sound as good as they really should; also sound REALLY good when I use them with things like my Nintendo Switch or iPhone.

Just the M1 Alto Sax

Worth it I suppose if you really need the M1 sax, or a cheapish-crappy 90s sounding sax. Otherwise it doesn't have much use if you already have access to the M1 or need a good modern sounding sax.