As far as I can tell these TR/TB machines are just romplers with fixed samples from the legacy machines. It seems just crazy to release something like that up against the likes of Maschine, where you have a sample library of incredible size, and/or VA drum synths , and/or the use of third party VST plugins to generate the sounds, and/or can be used as a sampler to sample analog sounds from my Leipzig or some other synth, or any combination of the above. How can they expect anyone to get excited over "134 presets" in this day and age? Yes I know these little boxes have their own processor but neither percussion nor bass grooves use much CPU there, so there's not a lot gained from that.
I was a little intrigued by the SYSTEM-1 synth, wondering at first what they meant by "Plug-out" technology. Apparently this is the ability of the DSP on the synth to host plug-ins independent of your computer -- now that's starting to sound useful. But wait, not the VST's you already have, but apparently they mean rather Roland-specific plug-ins that they may or may not release in the future, hoping to sell to us at currently unannounced price points or release schedules... Maybe that SH-101 emulation will materialize and maybe not! That little wheel on the thing must be like the wheel of fortune, you pay your money then spin it for some promise of a random result. Meanwhile the thing only does 4 voices, only has a 2 octave keyboard, and they are pricing in the range of Ultranova apparently?
Are we supposed to laugh with them or at them?
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