I think it does actually make a good synth for beginners too. From the large amount of varied presets, to the fairly intuitive controls , it’s a synth that’s as simple or deep as you want it to be. I had zero experience with patch design until I grabbed one, and I’ve really been enjoying coming up with my own sounds on the SH4D .

It's the kind of synth that can be learned to play it's basic functions by a beginner in less than a day, and then will keep giving you more as you learn the various functions over the weeks and months. So it is a great way to go from beginner to advanced if stuck with. I think it's a lot easier to get your head round than an Arturia minibrute 2S for example.

im getting mine tomorrow.

@@technodrone313 Mine is delayed at Thomann. Unfortunately I have to wait a little longer.

Oh :) looking forward to listen to this 🤘

Roland gives you more bang for the buck maan

Would you say you're still happy with your purchase?

Thanks.

But it has no oboes, flutes, or clarinets! This is a huge disappointment for anyone that wants to make brain-melting Belgian techno in 1991.

Thanks.

I should try that!!

Do you mean the small buttons or the bigger ones on the sequencer/"keyboard"? I actually rather like the bigger round buttons on my LXR-02, they feel responsive enough and are just large enough that you (probably) won't have too many fat finger mistakes. My only beef with the LXR is the smaller buttons that are used for switching between menus and parts/saving and loading, but even those aren't too big of a deal. I use mine when performing live and it hasn't been much of an issue.

High praise indeed. Thanks.

@@StarskyCarr Keep it coming.

Idem...

This is exactly what I intend to do with it. But also impressed with its own abilities. I’d like to control the Prophet 5 with the sequencer and the arpeggios.

Hi Kenny, thanks for that.. another couple I've been doing but omitted from the video.. duh! Its funny how you can focus so much on trying to give a comprehensive breakdown that you miss some of the basics!

🤓👍

hi Kenny. I need to thank you, because while creeping on your profile to see if you are Kelvin Larkin's brother, I found a video about optimizing your studio monitors and after a half a bottle of wine and some napkin trigonometry, I made some changes that I'm pleased with.

@@negativesaucer excellent… now that’s a community! 😀

@@negativesaucer Ha! Nice one! 💪🏿❤️👍🏿

Its got a 'analog' function in the tone menu for all oscillator types which destabilises the tuning - from gentle to absolutely f*kd :)

If you mean could the audio come through via channels on USB I doubt it - you need a driver for the audio USB to work. As far as midi is concerned I think it should but have never tried it.

There's the option for legato or 'normal' glide.

You can real time record (I demo it in my last video), or step input. You can live tweak 4 lanes of motion or go into individual steps.

The manual has tones and patterns as separate saves. I believe you can copy patterns, but it’s unclear if you can copy a pattern to another bank.

You save your tones independently - so they're referred to by the pattern. If you change it... save it as another patch. You can copy patterns to another bank, and simply extend a 1 bar to 2/4 bars as it replicates what's in there. you can copy whole patterns, just the part or steps. That's probably another complete video tbh.. its not hard, but I've not done enough of it to give a confident demo yet.

@@StarskyCarr That’s one of my pet peeves of contemporary instrument design. Seriously each pattern should contain its own copy of each patch. There’s no reason with the inexpensive storage technology we have now for this to be the case, likely they’re cheaping out on internal storage with that decision.

@@StarskyCarr Sounds great, thanks!

@@sub-jec-tiv It could also be a creative choice. If, for example, you;'re using the same patch across a few patterns (if you're playing a track/song over a few patterns for example) then having the same patch on each is useful. So if you change the bass tone it remains the same across the patterns. I think there are pros and cons with each option.

Good question! I assume so but haven’t tried it. It sends MIdI but I’d have to check if you could tie drum hits for longer chords.

@@StarskyCarr Would be cool if that was the case, i'll be grabbing one anyways, sounds great to just sketch with on the couch, great vid mate

did you see the short demos on my first video?

Putting a video together now trying to get to the bottom of it! Looks like each oscillator is a voice.

@@StarskyCarr Right on! That will be extremely helpful info to have.

I have the mc707 and I’m considering getting the sh4d, I don’t think one can replace the other, the 707 is best as a performance machine, the sh4d is a desktop synth and a portable sketch pad for ideas creations.

I think they serve different purposes. Technical differences and capabilities of the Zencore vs this more "optimized" engine aside, the SH-4d is primarily a multitimbral synthesizer with a great hands-on interface. You pick this one if you love sound design or want a synth to perform sound shaping on live. The MC-707 is a device if you are primarily interested in writing songs. It has 8 tracks, a more capable sequencer, lots of live performance tweakability of the sequencer (vs the synth) such as Last Step, direct shortcuts for playback modes, multiple clips per track, 8 discrete tracks, song mode, etc etc.

@@sinewaymusic I think the 4d has first step, last step, direction etc. I don’t see a huge difference between the two sequencers if I’m honest from the videos.

@@AcidAlex You're right that the features are technically there on the SH-4d too. The difference, which ends up being massive, is in how the interface is designed to help you make use of them. On the MC series, these things are a button press away. You can randomize the playback of a track's clip by holding down the track number and pressing ">", or you hold down Track+Seq to engage Last Step. On the 4d, you access these things via menu diving and scrolling or using arrow keys. This means that you will not be able to use these in a real jam situation, but instead these are utilities you can engage when noodling in the studio. But the key difference is in how the sequencers on the MC series manages clips and lets you mix and match different clips per track and even chain them up into "scenes". Another big difference is the 128 step capability (vs 64 on the 4d). All these things add up to making song writing much more straightforward on the "real" grooveboxes. Then the last difference is the overall project management. On the MC grooveboxes, all sound presets are stored within the project and you don't have to worry about saving things separately and maintaining different copies of the sounds across different patterns/clips. On the 4d, you would have to set up separate sound presets for different patterns or find yourself having the sounds reset to the default state each time you switched pattern. Even the simplest song with just two different patterns would require setting up two sets of 4 sound presets to support smooth transitions (assuming you wouldn't just use the synth as a static sound module). All in all, I'd say that the 4d sequencer is perfectly adequate for sketching out song ideas, but it's not a replacement for the sequencing capabilities of a proper Roland groovebox. Hope that makes sense.

@@sinewaymusic yeah I see your point :-) Regarding the pattern/tone saving, I think they’ve tried to address one of the biggest complaints I see of the MC-707 which is the inability to save individual presets or drum kits. At least you can do that on the 4d. Looking at the manual, you have the option to have a pattern reference the tones that you used, either by overwriting them with any tweaks or by saving new tones to keep the original preset intact. Seems quite flexible to me, although an additional option to save the tones with the pattern (without having to save each tone to its own slot) would be welcome.

Yeah you can reserve up to 60

Although I’ve not tried 😂

I think each oscillator is a voice...

@@StarskyCarrReal world voice count would be appreciated. The Zencore engine for example uses up additional “ voices “ for super saws , specific filters types , and effects . This maxed at 60 sounds great , but unrealistic . How far from realistic though ? For example dose a 4D parch with 4 super saws or 4 Juno oscillators and effects use up 20 voices for a monophonic patch ?

@@Death_By_Media it says max polyphony is 60 voices in the manual ‘varies according to the sound generator loaded’

You can turn that off by setting the chorus noise to zero if you want

I think Roland are emulating the noisiness of the original Juno chorus, but thankfully you can reduce the volume of the noise right down to zero. I guess that in the time of records made with actual Junos, recording to tape meant the highest frequencies got rolled off "naturally", but with modern systems the "white noise" frequencies can be very tiring on the ears.

Roland uses proprietary drivers for their digital audio MPC works with class compliant devices

There's 303 style bit in my Voodoo Ray 101 demo in the original video. Its not really a 303 though!

It doesn’t emulate the Jupiter 4 - so if there’s specific tones you’re trying to recreate then I’d say not. If you’re after a more generic tone then it’s as close as you’d get with a Juno emulation (if that makes any sense whatsoever!)

@@StarskyCarr Thankyou very much for answering, appreciated. Unfortunately I am used to Roland not coming back with updates and dropping their products as fast as they release them.This SH-4d Would be a nice format to add further engines later on, though I lack knowledge if its even possible compared to, say, Arturia's Microfreak for example. Oh well...maybe one day. Cheers

It means you can use CC from your daw (that’s if the CC is a mod source - not got it in front of me to check). In Logic, for example, there’s a really flexible LFO that can send CC, or you could draw in CCs to automate the modulation any way you like.

@@StarskyCarr gotcha. Any chance of doing a how to video showing examples of the mod matrix? Seems to be a section that people seem to skip and or quickly go through, even though it seems to be a very powerful creative tool. I have a unit on the way and am excited to get into it, cheers

@@tomfoolery4077 I think thats because there are different options depending on what oscillator model you're using - so demoing in depth and showing all the options would be a pretty tedious thing to watch (and to make). Also, once you have a quick play and try a few modulation routings it all falls into place. What I do here is about as complex as it gets - but there's lots to explore.

@@StarskyCarr Thats fair, appreciate the reply.

It’d be a very tedious video tbh. The options aren’t the same for every model as they all have different functions. So you’d have to talk through all the options on all the models. Shame there’s not a Roland graphic.

No it’s only what I show here. You ca make 4 note chords on the 4s model by separating the notes per oscillator - just takes more time and not as easy to modulate etc.

@@StarskyCarr actually I just took a look at the manual page 35. Looks like you can change the waveform between sine, tri, square and saw using the OSC 1-4 buttons.

@@AcidAlex cool. There’s so much in here - when I got it the manual wasn’t ready so I found stuff then forgot how I found it … then forgot I even found it! Like this. That rings a bell.

@@StarskyCarr yeah I did think you probably didn’t have access to the manual at first. Anyway, it’s good that you can change waveforms :-)

Roland has updated the tr8s and other units numerous times. Id be willing to bet we will see some updates to this as well in the future.

I'd buy this in a second flat with that update

Good point!

Yeah I thought it was an odd choice, maybe they’ll update that

I saw in another video you can also assign source/destination by turning knobs/moving sliders - at least for those things on the front panel.

@@wavesequencer yes press enter when you're at the menu item you want to change (source or dest) and just tweak the knob. I should've demo'd that.

@@StarskyCarr You did a fine job already :) quite tempted, but need to hear more synth sounds played on a keyboard. Interested to hear if it can do some more complex evolving pads given the extra modulation available if digging deeper.

The Juno 106 doesn't have that oscillator - its from the alpha Juno. The sawtooth on the 106 can't be modulated (although you could do it with the pulse PWM).