http://www.roland.co.uk/arrangerkey_room_catdet.asp?ID=GW8

Bill

Well, there goes the rumor that Roland are quitting the arranger market

Interesting product blurb:

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The GW-8 is the next generation of Roland's unique GW-series workstations with intelligent backing-track functionality. With its fresh, contemporary sound-set and expressive musical styles from pop to rock, plus authentic ethnic styles and a multi-format USB Memory Player feature, the GW-8 will bring a world of music to your fingertips. It's especially well suited for "one-man-band" performance.

• Contemporary music workstation with high-quality 128-voice sound engine derived from Roland's renowned sound-module lineup
• Wide variety of contemporary sounds and intelligent backing styles, plus additional banks of ethnic sounds and styles from around the world
• USB Memory Player feature allows direct playback of MP3, WAV, AIFF, and SMF files from USB key; Centre Cancel feature for audio files enables karaoke-style sing-along
• Newly designed graphical display, plus Style Select button, Analogue Modify knob, and D-BEAM
• Style Converter and Playlist Editor software included
• Onboard 16-track sequencer for saving your interactive performances

Flagship Sound Engine with Easy User Interface
With Roland's world-leading sound technology at its core, the GW-8 rivals any workstation on the planet with its rich, expressive sound. The GW-8 comes loaded with hundreds of the freshest and most essential sounds culled from Roland's top sound modules. In addition to its authentic sound set, the GW-8 is equipped with many user-friendly control devices, such as the expressive D-BEAM and the Analogue Modify knob, which instantly adjusts sounds to suit your taste. The GW-8 is perfect for live entertainers who play multiple roles in their performances.

Intelligent Backing Styles
The GW-8 is packed with a huge collection of styles, representing a broad range of music genres, from contemporary rock, pop, dance, jazz and beyond. In addition to the excellent library of contemporary sounds and styles, the GW-8 is equipped with ethnic instrument sounds and authentic regional musical styles.* Each backing style has four intros, four main patterns, and four ending progressions for you to craft your own arrangements live.

*Style selection may vary from country to country. For details, please contact our Customer Service Team on 01792 702701.

USB Memory Player Feature
One of Roland's most popular new features is built into the GW-8: the Multi-format Song Player that allows song data to be played directly from USB Flash memory (accepts MP3, WAV, AIFF, and SMF format). In addition, the GW-8's Centre Cancel function can minimize main vocals from pre-recorded songs, great for karaoke-style performances or music practice.

Style Converter & Playlist Editor
Bundled with each GW-8 is Roland's Style Converter software for PC, which lets you convert your own MIDI data into GW-8 backing styles via commercially available USB Flash memory devices.

Also included is the Playlist Editor for customising the order of songs. Users can easily create a dedicated Playlist for each gig
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Quite a few of our oft-stated needs here... Direct from memory playback of audio, 'Analogue Modify' knob for the synth crowd (only one, but it's a start!), center cancel for the karaoke crowd, playlist editing...

But some of the wording leads me to perhaps an interesting conclusion. "128-voice sound engine derived from Roland's renowned sound-module lineup" is curious... What IS Roland's current 128 voice module line-up? FantomG Rack and Sonic Cell, I think. This leads me to conclude that this is probably based on the Sonic Cell module.

That's a seriously well equipped sound set This thing probably sounds GREAT!

One other thing struck me, that I have been saying for years... "Style selection may vary from country to country". Brilliant! No-one needs bank after bank of ROM styles that have no relevance to their market. With these things using flash ROM to store styles instead of the old hardware ROM chips, there's no reason why each country can't have a totally different selection of styles based around what styles are most popular IN THAT COUNTRY.

Maybe, when this makes it's way to the US, we can finally have an arranger with purely American styles, not schlager and beer-hall favorites of no use outside Wisconsin..!

Take this to it's logical conclusion, and perhaps the day when you can chose what styles you want in ROM yourself, online, AFTER you have bought the arranger, is not too far off.

Whether Roland have really hit the nail on the head with this one will have to wait until it's release. I think they have erred by not including speakers, but the karaoke and playlist features seem to suggest a more 'pro' orientation (giggers, that is), as most home players buy arrangers, strangely enough, to actually PLAY, not be an overpriced iPod!

But for all the gleeful spreaders of Roland's imminent demise, a sad day

Personally, I welcome a hiatus in high end development, while Roland put themselves back on track, and rediscover what players actually NEED, rather than what their tech wonks have been telling them we need. THEN get a new TOTL 76 out. I can wait until maybe a combination of Sonic Cell and FantomG technology is available to the arranger division before I will think about trading my G70...

Interesting times...

Just as a TC Helicon Harmony M onto this baby & your ready to rock!! oh yeah!

http://www.voicetonepedals.com/harmonym.html


[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 06-12-2008).]

From the picture this GW8 looks almost identical to the current GW7. I am worried about there not being a quick way to call up sounds and styles. In the GW7 there isn't a numeric keypad. You must use the data wheel to scroll through everything to find what you want. The GW7 sounds good but there is no style editing like on most arrangers and I think the GW8 is almost the same technology.


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George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

Good to see that Roland hasn't bitten the proverbial arranger dust...should be wonderful news for the Rolandites amongst us...but, for some reason...it is not 76 keys.

What gives?

Perhaps there will be a later version with a larger keybed? The GW-80 perhaps?

Was there a inititally a 61 note speaker-less version of the G70...maybe that would give a clue?

Ian

GX90 coming soon

If there's a GW8, will there be e55/65/85? Now updating that trio would bring some interesting results. And where's the G80?

Like I said... Take their time, get it RIGHT. Another half-finished arranger series will kill Roland for sure.

For all Ian's baiting (he's a master of it ), Roland have always concentrated most of their line on 61's (as he well knows ), and have only made one, or possibly two 76's in the entire line. While Roland understand that the majority of the market is fine with 61, at least they don't abandon their more advanced players, and force them into the competition's arms. Where they seldom return from.

I don't think Roland were EVER going to stop making arrangers, and I have never even hinted at that in other posts I have made.

All I passed on was info from a Roland rep that there was no new ***76 NOTE*** arranger on the way, for the forseeable future (18 months or so).

Now Donny, you keep harping on about a "gx90"...so is this just BS on your part or have you actually spoken with someone at Roland?

Come on man give it up if you have got this from a contact at Roland or elsewhere and please don't reply with cutesy winky avatars either..

You either know and therefore you should perhaps quote a source, as I have, or stop sticking it up there like you know everything that is going on everywhere all the time.

Whether it's Donny's BS, or BS form a dealer or a rep (no shortage of BS from either of those types!), or even BS from you, miden (no offense, it's just that second hand knowledge is NOT knowledge at all... even a 'reliable' rep or dealer can be BS'd to by a higher up ), there sure is plenty of it to go around

Even an 18 month hiatus for the G-series wouldn't put it much outside it's regular production cycle, especially if you consider that two MAJOR software upgrades have turned it into a FAR different keyboard from the one that was first released.

I'm far from panicking, anyway, and still too satisfied with the G70 to even remotely consider the competition right now... Heck, even if the G90 came out tomorrow, with today's economy (resort travel is down a bit this year), I probably would still try to get a couple more years out of the G70