I’ve always had two complaints about most Roland gear: the lack of manual controls and needlessly navigating through incomprehensible menus. However, earlier this year, the company launched the Aira Compact S-1 Tweak Synth. Its menus sent me into a spiral of rage, but it does offer a fair amount of hands-on control. Soon after, Roland introduced the SH-4D, which not only had a large number of knobs, buttons and faders, but also had streamlined menus and a screen that predated the appearance of home computers. My biggest issue is the form factor; I really wanted it to be a dedicated synth with a keyboard, but it’s more of a pseudo groovebox.
So when Roland announced Gaia 2, a belated update to its 13-year-old virtual analog synthesizer, I was cautiously optimistic. The S-1 and SH-4D are signs that the company is moving in the right direction when it comes to interfaces, and they both sound great. At first glance, the Gaia 2 seems to have everything I’ve been looking for in a Roland synthesizer: plenty of manual controls, a nice screen, simplified menus, and a full-size 37-note keybed. However, at the risk of seeming impossible to please, I came away from Gaia 2 a bit unsatisfied.
All sounds except drums come directly from Gaia 2. The only additional processing is some EQ and compression.
hardware
What’s most immediately impressive is the build. Now, to be clear, the Gaia 2 doesn’t feel cheap, but I expected slightly more from a $900 synth. The top panel is metal, but the rest is plastic. The keyboard is great, but it lacks aftertouch. The knobs are mostly fine, but a few encoders feel loose and have a lot of wobble. The brakes on some are also very flimsy, making it easy to miss your target.Additionally, the pitch wheel and modulation wheel are strangely small. All of these things are easily forgiven on a $600 synth, but at this price I’m a bit disappointed.
The Korg Minilogue XD, for example, costs just $650 and generally feels sturdier, even if the keybed isn’t as nice. Elektron’s Digitakt and Digitone don’t have keyboards, but at $949 (just $50 more) they feel nearly indestructible.
However, the controls are extensive. Roland hasn’t solved all the menu diving issues yet, but the Gaia 2 is pretty close. There are more knobs and buttons than I can count. Everything is organized logically, and while there are some transformations, many of the controls are single-purpose, giving you the freedom to adjust almost everything with one hand while playing. This is increasingly difficult to achieve as customers expect more powerful synth engines and more modulation options, while also wanting instruments to be more compact.
Gaia 2 is not small. At about 26 inches wide and 13 inches deep, it does take up a fair amount of desk space, but it’s not bulky. It makes good use of the front panel, cramming it with controls and a decent-sized screen.
Your eyes are inevitably drawn to the “dynamic” trackpad just below. This is one of the highlights of the synth, my one complaint is its placement. It’s at dead center, which makes sense if you use it to navigate menus via the cursor. However, just using the knob is much faster. The trackpad feels less natural when it comes to navigating the interface, and it’s less cumbersome on the left side of performance – there’s definitely room for more than toy-sized pitch and modulation wheels.
Horrible name aside, the Motional Pad is great. At first glance, this seems a bit gimmicky—a large X/Y trackpad, unlike the Korg Kaoss Pad, dedicated to modulation. But once you get over the initial strangeness (and Roland’s factory patch, hard Getting into its gimmicky side), it’s hard not to see its value. It’s used to control the wave shaping and phase modulation of oscillator one, but you can also assign almost any parameter you want to the X and Y axes and change them by simply dragging your finger.
What’s more, you can record the action, essentially giving you a third complex LFO. It not only records the shape of finger movement, but also records time. So you can slowly draw small circles from the bottom left to the top right to open the filter and increase the resonance, then quickly zigzag back to the starting point. Many factory presets feature this animated modulation sequence as a novelty, outlining small figures, leaves, and of course the Roland logo.
sound engine
This isn’t obviously a huge issue, but it does illustrate a broader problem I have with Gaia 2: many of the presets feel like tech demos, and I don’t find them particularly useful. Now, I can already hear people standing up. “Well, a real musician designs all his sounds from scratch anyway!” you might say. I’m here to tell you to kick rocks. There’s no shame in playing presets, especially if you make music as a hobby. Furthermore, factory presets should demonstrate the synthesizer’s capabilities, not only technically, but also musically. At this point, Gaia 2 is still in its early stages.
This ultimately left me cold on Gaia 2: it sounded dated. The original Gaia was a strictly virtual simulation event. Its successor retained the same three-oscillator structure but replaced one of them with a wavetable engine (the other two remained virtual analog). There are a lot of great, modern-sounding synths that use wavetables, but Gaia 2 specializes in a specific brand of Roland cheese. It’s a perfect soundtrack for a turn-of-the-century cyber thriller, and while some will enjoy it, others won’t.
The two virtual analog oscillators sound clinical, but the lower register lacks oomph. This filter is extremely versatile, with each of its three modes (lowpass, bandpass and highpass) featuring three different slope options (-12dB/Oct, -18dB/Oct or -24dB/Oct) and a drive option. It may sound a little thin, but it works.
I wish I could say I’m more enamored with the sound engine, because otherwise this is probably the most enjoyable modern Roland synthesizer I’ve ever used. Gaia 2 strikes a near-perfect balance between complexity and ease of use. Three oscillators, multi-mode filters, dual LFOs, dynamic pads and a rich effects section provide a fair amount of depth yet are very easy to dial in. Everything is clearly labeled and all the most important parameters have direct manual control. Even most things that require shift functions or some menu diving are very intuitive. Programming is really fun. If it weren’t so expensive, the Gaia 2 would be a great instrument for learning synthesis.
Applying an LFO to any parameter is as simple as holding down a button and turning the knob you want to modulate. There’s even a step mode so you can design custom waveforms in 16 steps. Motional Pad and a good sequencer are easy to use. Having faders instead of knobs for both envelopes (amp and filter) is a nice touch. There’s no modulation matrix and you can’t reroute envelopes, but I don’t mind that much.I rarely encounter such a situation real I wanted to do something when I designed the patch, but couldn’t. It’s a simple synth with enough depth that even experienced players can spend hours tweaking the knobs.
Model extension
Once you’ve tired of the main Gaia engine, you can load model extensions to add emulations of classic Roland synthesizers such as the Jupiter-8 or Juno-106. It even comes with the SH-101 emulator pre-installed. Honestly, this sounds better than the preset virtual simulation engine.
Of course, the model expansion doesn’t come cheap, priced at $149. Suffice it to say, loading them onto Gaia would be annoying. You have two options: You can buy an optional $100 wireless USB adapter and send it through your phone. Alternatively, you can copy the files to a USB flash drive and load them manually from there. (You know, like 2001.) This is one of the few places where Roland stubbornly remains stale. Although the Gaia 2 has a USB-C port capable of carrying audio and MIDI (as well as power), it cannot connect to the Roland Cloud Manager app to load model extensions.
Effect
The highlight of the sound engine, though, is definitely the effects. There are seven reverb and delay options, three great-sounding choruses, and 53 other effects, including compressors, bit-smashers, lo-fi and scatter. The new shimmer reverb algorithm in particular is gorgeous. The sound design space in the FX section is almost as large as the rest of the synthesizer. It’s also a great option for adding some character to an often cold-sounding main oscillator.
wrap up
Ultimately, what was disappointing about Gaia was that it did exactly the right thing but couldn’t quite stick the landing. Writing patches was a lot of fun, but I just wasn’t clicking on the results. It’s a masterful blend of approachability and depth, but would be too costly to recommend to beginners. It finally provided the manual control features people had been craving, but the quality of the encoders, knobs, and buttons left much to be desired. I wanted to like Gaia 2, and I’m sure a lot of people would, but it just wasn’t for me.
This article was originally published on Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/roland-gaia-2-review-roland-finally-delivers-the-hands-on-synthesizer-weve-been-begging-for-150058035.html ?src=rss
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