WOW! You hear that, Diki? I know you aren't going to take that lying down. Next, he'll be saying that G70 PLAYERS are ready for the old folks home. Hey, I would've called him on it but I know you like to take care of these things personally. Take no prisoners, bro'.

chas

PS: Before anyone gets up in arms, I hope Mike et al realizes that I'm only kidding around.

Boy..! There's a lot of moist panties 'round here!

You can't honestly have forgotten the run-up to the VIMA launch, have you? Or several other of Roland's rather underwhelming products of late...

This could be a 30W keyboard amp, for all the hype is telling us!

Legendary Roland synths? Let me think...

System 100
Jupiter 8
JX-3P (first Roland with MIDI)
SH-101
JX-8P
Juno 106 (the sound of Madonna!)
D-50
MT-32 (first 'one box does it all' module)
E-20 (first Roland arranger)
SC-55 (first General MIDI module)

Got a decent selection of 'Legends' to choose from! From Roland's current line-up, I'd say they are lacking in maybe a good General MIDI module (Sonic Cell not quite the hit the SC's were) or maybe a Juno-106 clone (for all the pop-synth stuff going on). We MIGHT get a J8 clone, but that boat already sailed with the Arturia model. I'd be pretty happy wagering it AIN'T a TOTL arranger, mind you!

And, if patience is a virtue, we must be the least virtuous forum on the planet!

Correction... only two of the three flash intro's showed a Saxophone. Sorry. I see though that the youtube video put up by Roland Media lists a violin. With all of those instruments and then showing a keyboard it kind of negates the idea of a Jupiter 8 scenario in my opinion. The Jupiter 8 was an analog 'synth' and from what I understand it didn't have the capability to reproduce "acoustic" instruments. Another scenario is Roland perhaps compiled a huge assortment of sampled instruments e.g. Sax, Guitar, Violin, Drums, etc., etc., and will sell a bundled assortment on either a USB drive or through download from the Roland website that can be used with various Roland keyboards that have USB and Sample memory capability. Third party vendors are already doing that for the Roland Fantom G so maybe Roland decided to get in the game themselves and could possibly turn out to be a lucrative proposition for them if indeed it's true. Multisampled instruments (if done correctly) can be of much better sound quality than what's contained in the keyboard itself. Just a theory... but since Roland is being tight lipped until 4.6.2011 we'll have to keep guessing.

Obviously Roland is trying to generate interest in this "new" whatever by adding additional information every so often. Hopefully when 4.6.2011 rolls around the bubble won't suddenly burst with disappointment. Time will tell..

It must be the new V-station

V-synth, upgraded Fantom engine, upgraded arranger/arpegiator engine, Vst support....

A Kronos competitor...

I would be ecstatic if the entire industry adopts the SSHD streaming sample technology that the Kronos has. It is the next obvious evolution in hardware keyboards, avoiding the complexity and stability issues of pure 'open' keyboards run on computer OS's, but radically (exponentially!) increasing the amount of available ROM and RAM (now essentially the same thing) for hardware synthesis from that point on.

Kudos to Korg for making the leap. Now we need to get everyone to follow. Can you imagine an arranger like the T4, bulletproof operation, but with 12GB of samples instead of 512MB

Wow!

We need to make our needs known. This is a game changer for synthesis in general. Probably the most radical step forward in keyboard hardware in twenty years, IMO...

Hi Diki

Korgs previous workstation (OASYS) was based on Linux OS for its operation, so it’s possible that that the Kronos is the same, (Particularly as all the instruments and operations mentioned are available in software) rather than a propriety hardware system as used in current hardware keyboards. (Should be interesting to see once it gets dissected)

Bill

This page has a patent application for the model JUPITER-80

http://directories.csa-international.org/xml_transform.asp?xml=certxml\087117_C_000-2211-81.xml&xsl=xsl/certrec.xsl

Good find. Yep, that must be it. Not sure why that picture of a sax player, though... I don't recall the Jupiter-8 having much of a sax sound..!

But while the underpinnings of the system might have been Linux, the Oasys didn't allow you to piggyback regular Linux apps or instruments, did it?

I think what we are seeing here is a sort of hybrid between hardware synthesis generation, and perhaps a Linux-like OS to run it. Rather than the OS do everything, including the synthesis (like the MS does), the hardware does most of the work (guaranteeing polyphony count and drop-out free operation) while the OS takes care of operation and data handling.

But, however it is achieved, it is the new benchmark. For working pros in studio and stage alike, bomb-proof operation is the FIRST thing needed. Unfortunately, so far, the 'pure' software instruments have struggled with this, as any combination of VSTi's can pull even a modern multi-core CPU to its knees. Using a more modern OS to handle data streaming, while hardware still takes care of much of the sound generation and manipulation seems, until maybe we have a few more CPU generations with a LOT more power, to be the more reliable route.