Winter NAMM 2014 gear (all manufacturers)

[TweakHead]

I didn't mean this product looks interesting to me. The concept is good fuel for thought though

I agree that the value of it is highly dependant on promises and, even, that Roland has a bad history of failing to deliver. They did it with VariOS and the V-synth, and they will presumably do so with this one, but only time will tell. This is a point where Access Music does deliver more then usual. Most companies fail to add those extra features even when they're advertised on their release, many are haunted with bugs for life because there's no incentive going back to older products and perfecting them, but on placing new ones to get new money from new costumers.

What I like is this capacity to "off load the processing to the synth" while still retaining sample accurate timing. On another note, for anyone with analogue synths, Expert Sleepers is worth a look, since it enables you to use any instrument with CV inputs with sample accurate timing (I kid you not), plus a bunch of other stuff - check ES-4

I don't think you'll need 2 or 3 years to really appreciate System 1. The physical interface isn't exactly vast, and I highly doubt you'll ever see an instrument with more then two oscillators coming out for it. The Nord Modular had a similar principle: you could load different instruments on the hardware, but then they were presets, not a firmware reset (like plug-out apparently does) and you could build your own instruments combining ready made modules - so that's my definition of versatility. Under the premise that this new digital technology can reproduce the old one to the point it's indistinguishable, we're presented with fairly simple stuff with borrowed hype from the old classics.

Despite all this, I have to admit it does sound good to my ears but could never ever justify getting one. It's still VA even if you give it another name, and it's way beyond the competition in terms of features. You've seen simple analogue synths, you've seen feature rich VAs like the Virus and Nords, now there's more of both, but here comes Roland with a digital synth that's as simple in architecture as simple mono synths from the past... At least they should give you all of them in one package: all the junos, jp, etc.