08-16-2018, 09:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-16-2018, 10:00 PM by Mattias Westlund.)
Sorry for the monologue here, but I'm using this thread as a sort of road diary for this project so that I have an idea of what stuff was added when, what my impressions were and so on.
OK, the M-GS64. First of all I must say that while I've heard tons of music played back on various incarnations of the Sound Canvas, I've never used one myself aside from maybe plinking some notes on one in a music store in the nineties. And the difference between listening to the WarCraft II or Duke Nukem 3D soundtracks on Youtube and actually sitting down to explore the presets yourself... well that's a completely different story. And I must say I'm pleasantly surprised.
The Sound Canvas range has a reputation for being cheap-sounding. Thin, soulless, generic rompler fare. I dunno, maybe I've spent too much time with the Yamaha TG100 lately, but I'm not really hearing that? I think the M-GS64 sounds really damn good -- not "for a 1995 piece of hardware", but actually good as in something I would consider reaching for outside retro-style music. It has some really lush slow/warm strings patches that would work great for more ambient orchestral textures, or for just providing big string pads for non-orchestral music. A lot of the synth patches are great as well and cover what I consider to be the missing ground in many modern VSTi synths: those sparkly, chiffy digital synth sounds from the late 80's and early 90's that I love (but no one else, apparently). Yes, there's tons of cheesy dated stuff as well, but nothing strikes me as completely unusable in the right scenario.
On top of that it has some very impressive features. 32 parts (16+16 midi channels), 64-voice polyphony, per-part EQ, a ton of effects, two stereo outputs (or 1 stereo + 2 mono), lowpass filter, ADSR envelope, velocity-triggered filtering, detune, and what I think is some randomization to the note attack that helps alleviate the machine gun effect for repeated notes. And probably more, I have only started exploring this thing. All in all it's pretty hard to fault the M-GS64/SC-88.
There is one thing that I don't like about it though. Not a biggie, but it annoys me. The desktop Sound Canvas units like the SC-55 and SC-88(Pro) are really neat-looking little gadgets, with their large LCD screens and friendly front panel interfaces. They are sort of timeless and don't look out of place even in a modern studio setup. The M-GS64 though looks like some kind of lab equipment from the mid 1980's. I can understand and appreciate why Roland used a different approach for the rack version -- it's meant for live use, something to be lugged around in a rack case and able to withstand all sorts of abuse that would likely kill a SC-88 in no time -- but why did it have to look so damn utilitarian? At the very least, some color besides black and gray would have been nice. Ah, well.
OK, the M-GS64. First of all I must say that while I've heard tons of music played back on various incarnations of the Sound Canvas, I've never used one myself aside from maybe plinking some notes on one in a music store in the nineties. And the difference between listening to the WarCraft II or Duke Nukem 3D soundtracks on Youtube and actually sitting down to explore the presets yourself... well that's a completely different story. And I must say I'm pleasantly surprised.
The Sound Canvas range has a reputation for being cheap-sounding. Thin, soulless, generic rompler fare. I dunno, maybe I've spent too much time with the Yamaha TG100 lately, but I'm not really hearing that? I think the M-GS64 sounds really damn good -- not "for a 1995 piece of hardware", but actually good as in something I would consider reaching for outside retro-style music. It has some really lush slow/warm strings patches that would work great for more ambient orchestral textures, or for just providing big string pads for non-orchestral music. A lot of the synth patches are great as well and cover what I consider to be the missing ground in many modern VSTi synths: those sparkly, chiffy digital synth sounds from the late 80's and early 90's that I love (but no one else, apparently). Yes, there's tons of cheesy dated stuff as well, but nothing strikes me as completely unusable in the right scenario.
On top of that it has some very impressive features. 32 parts (16+16 midi channels), 64-voice polyphony, per-part EQ, a ton of effects, two stereo outputs (or 1 stereo + 2 mono), lowpass filter, ADSR envelope, velocity-triggered filtering, detune, and what I think is some randomization to the note attack that helps alleviate the machine gun effect for repeated notes. And probably more, I have only started exploring this thing. All in all it's pretty hard to fault the M-GS64/SC-88.
There is one thing that I don't like about it though. Not a biggie, but it annoys me. The desktop Sound Canvas units like the SC-55 and SC-88(Pro) are really neat-looking little gadgets, with their large LCD screens and friendly front panel interfaces. They are sort of timeless and don't look out of place even in a modern studio setup. The M-GS64 though looks like some kind of lab equipment from the mid 1980's. I can understand and appreciate why Roland used a different approach for the rack version -- it's meant for live use, something to be lugged around in a rack case and able to withstand all sorts of abuse that would likely kill a SC-88 in no time -- but why did it have to look so damn utilitarian? At the very least, some color besides black and gray would have been nice. Ah, well.