Roland has released a new firmware for these two instruments. LOTS of amazing new features, and new sounds.
Category Archives: News
OHMs EWIs
I’m not sure how I missed this, but this sounds freaking awesome. I HOPE he finds time to finish this.
Roland Aerophone Pro V2.0
Roland is not sitting on it’s butt. It is really moving forward with making the Aerophone Pro THE new standard in Wind Controller.
They just released firmware 2.0 for it, and it takes things to another level. We now can finally get new sounds, patches, and even draw from a bunch of things from the Roland Cloud.
I mean, this is really what it should be. It Akai…..WTF……you’ve had DECADES of EWI under your belt, but you NEVER did anything with it. You created a crap ass editor (that no longer works on Mac), but never tied it into your ecosystem. BRAVO Roland for this. It’s is great.
HOWEVER……..why do we have to transfer these files with a F-ing USB drive??? I mean…..what is this…..1990? There is USB C on this thing. Why don’t you have a program that runs (say, I dunno, Roland Cloud), that can transfer the files over a USB C cable from a computer. Why do we have this archaic boot holding down the menu key, and having a USB C drive connected. It’s stupid.
I’m HOPING this gets addressed in the next update. But seriously though, this is great stuff. I banked on Roland and it’s sound engine, and was hoping for something like this. They delivered with a Librarian function in the last update, but this takes it to another level.
Akai……seriously…….you need to fire your current team on the EWI. You need to put a synthesis engine BACK into the EWI (not a F-ing sample player), and get back in the game. There is NO REASON anyone should be buying the current offerings from Akai. If you can get a 4000S, get it, but……the 5000s and the Solo are dead ends. Roland is the new leader in this space.
EWI5000 and Presonus One 5 Pro
Does anyone have experience setting up an EWI5000 in Presonus Studio One to work with Aria Player or any of the VST instrument group included with PS1? I have everything working with one exception… There is no ability to crescendo/decrescendo by blowing harder or softer into the EWI. There is the ability to create a louder or softer note based on the air pressure at the the attack of the note (like key velocity on a keyboard instrument, but once that musical dynamic is set it cannot be changed with the breath controller. I’m assuming this has something to do with midi “expression”(?) but am at a loss as to what to do. So far the support team at Presonus is “stumped”. To date, the folks at MakeMusic (the Aria Player and associated Garriton instruments are part of Finale) – have not replied to my inquiries.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
Roland AE-30
Roland has released another in their line of Aerophone Digital Wind Instruments. You have the Aerophone AE-10, the Aerophone GO, the Aerophone mini, and now the Aerophone Pro (AE-30).
Retailing for a whopping $1500, it does have a lot of things going for it. It seems to really embrace the synth part more than it’s previous models, or anything Yamaha or Akai is offering up. Sure, there is a lot of cheezy “sax sounds”, and other sampled sounds, but their is also a “zen core synthesis system” which Roland uses in the Phantom and Jupiter X synth lines. This is very cool. And easily puts it way past other EWIs on the market. You’d have to somehow obtain an Akai EWI4000s (which Akai discontinued) to get a synth engine, and it’s not even in the league of the Roland’s. Plus it has Bluetooth MIDI on it. And can be configured from an editor app on your tablet.
Basically, THIS IS THE WIND CONTROLLER you should get. It has the best of everything on it. Sampled sounds, and a synth engine so you can do………pretty much anything.
The ONLY….complaints are the price $1499 is really steep (and it’s mostly plastic…..and at least one reviewer didn’t like the plastic mouthpiece), the insistence of having a built in speaker (why?……I can see this for the “non pro” ones….but the pro? How about losing that and adding a better mouthpiece (ebonite maybe?) or maybe wireless audio from it?) and that these seems to be a lot of key noise. Like cheap sounding key noise.
Would I get this? YES. This is the direction wind controllers/Electronic Wind Instruments should be going. A powerful engine where you can do sampled sounds, but you can also create new sounds. And it’s not looking like some sort of franken-sax. It’s worth the investment. Get something good. Get this.
A new Advanced Editor for VL70m and PLGVL
Hi All
I’m a lucky owner of the wonderfull VL70m, VL1m, S90 with 3 PLGVLs and a WX5 controller and EWI 4000. A few years ago I decided to remove the dust from my VL70m and get deep into the secrets of this synth.
So, I took on the challenge to build a new VL70-m editor and started to reverse engineer (with approval of YAMAHA) the legacy VL-Expert, Visual Editor etc.
The good news is that this editor is not available. You can download a Demo version via www.vl70m-editor.com/site go to try & buy
Rudy
The VL-Wizard
Hereby an overview of the VL-Wiz features:
* Fast and direct access to an organized voice library (contains about 900 voice I did collect, converted etc.)
* Ability edit voice tags and search voices based on this tag info info.
* Native sysex voice file format, so you can also send the voice with any kind of sysex transfer tool
* Realtime parameter editing using 4 graphical editing modules, the Element Voice, XG Part, VL70m Effects, Tuning
* Intelligent activation and deactivation of parameters based on the selected Voice algorithm
* Parameter labels that correspond to the selected Voice algorithm (eg. string vs pipe)
* Ability to load Current Voice dumpout from the VL70m
* Compatibility with PLG-VL cards (XG-VL mode)
* Import capability for .ALL .LIB and .SYX (VL70m format only)
* Voice Template manager (similar to the Yamaha Visual Editor)
* Ability to store voices into the Custom + Internal Voice slot 1 to 6 of the VL70m (and in the commercial version up to 16 slots for the EX5)
* Tooltips explaining what the advance parameter does
* Poly and Multilayer support. Editing VL-Voices across multiple VL70m & PLG VL’s
* Quickly (re)-store a group of parameter settings (eg. EQ’s, Harmonizer settings etc.) using the snippet tool
* Mapping midi controllers to VL-parameters using midi-learn
* Play a one track midi loop while editing using the midi phrase tool
* Sending midi reset (panic) to kill hanging notes
* Extract the VL70m effects from one voice and send these to the VL70m without touching the VL-element part of the voice in the CURRENT memory.
* A configurable sysex engine, set interval time between sysex dumpouts and sysex bytes, handle up to 8 VL devices using their individual Device ID and Part
* Switch your synth into VL-Mode (eg. S90, MOTIF, EX5, MU series) by sending an initialization sysex as defined in the listbook of your synth
* Send extra sysex data before and after each voice(s) upload
* Select multiple midi-in and midi-out ports
* Select the midi-in and out channel
* Enable/disable midi-thru
* Considerable amount of bug fixes
* Color Schemes
* Undo feature (doubleclick on parameter does set back its previous value)
* Improve license key validation
etc.
EWI Tool 2 Enters Public Beta
Steve Merrony has released the first public beta of EWI Tool 2 (rewritten in Java) to the internet
Please see https://github.com/SMerrony/EWItool2/wiki/Using-EWItool before installing and using this release. OS X users please note especially prerequisite number 4.
The jar file below should run on all modern versions of Windows, OS X and Linux providing that the prerequisites referred to above are met.
64-bit Windows users who do not already have Java installed could try the .msi installer file below which packages the required Java runtime with EWItool and installs it privately under your account in Windows without affecting other software or users.
Looks really promising to me. I hope this results in a nice stable editor for modern operating systems, and a vibrant community to share some awesome patches for the EWI 4000s.
EWI 5000
For the Winter 2014 NAMM show, Akai has announced a new EWI.
EWI 5000 comes loaded with more than 3GB of top-quality sounds, including traditional horn, brass, woodwind, and string sounds, plus progressive synths, leads, and other non-traditional sounds. EWI 5000 includes 12 touch-sensitive metal keys on its top and an eight-wheel thumb- controlled octave roller on the bottom. An EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument) Mode is included for brass players, and EWI 5000 also includes eight control knobs for tweaking Filter, Reverb, Chorus, LFO, Breath Amount, Bite Amount, Semitone Tuning, and Fine Tuning. Both USB MIDI and 5-pin MIDI are onboard for controlling software synths or traditional MIDI modules. A 1/4- inch output to connect to an amplifier or PA and an 1/8-inch headphone output for silent practice are included. EWI 5000 charges via USB or wall power and also includes a USB cable, wall adapter, wireless receiver, and a neck strap.
So, basically, an Akai 4000s with USB, a built in rechargeable battery, and some sounds.
Launch Equity Acquires MakeMusic
Launch Equity Acquires MakeMusic:
Today, MakeMusic announced that Launch Equity will purchase the company. You can read MakeMusic’s press release here. Launch Equity proposed the buyout last July (July 15, 2012), with the intent of taking the company private and then investing money into the company for a new CEO as well as updating software (particularly Finale’s base code).
(Via Technology in Music Education)
This is great news considering Avid is falling off a cliff and the development team of Sibelius was sacked and have started a new project with Steinberg.
However, this did crop up. Seems everyone isn’t happy about this.