With so many keyboardists and composers turning to soft-synths these days, it takes a lot of chutzpah for a company to put out a $2,000 sound module. It takes even more guts for a company to bundle in hundreds of decade-old sounds into the mix. But Roland has shrewdly tapped into the GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) zeitgeist of its audience by introducing the new Integra-7 sound module. And those of us who want a huge selection of high quality sounds without having to fuss around with dongles, multi-gig samples, and VST players that don’t often play nice should be thankful for the effort.
The Integra is squarely aimed at Roland XV and Fantom owners. One reason we’ve been holding on to our boxes for so long is that we’re just not ready to give up our favorite Roland legacy stock and SRX sounds. Well, now we don’t have to, because the Integra combines all those old waveforms, patches and drumkits with a huge selection of new acoustic and synth sounds, in a double-rack module with a redesigned effects system, a generous supply of analog and digital input and output options, and an interface that doesn’t require a degree in software engineering to operate.
I’ve been playing around with the Integra for several months and am here to give you one of the deepest reviews and discussions you’ll find anywhere. But let me warn you: it’s going to take a while before we talk about what you really want to know: How good the sounds are. Feel free to skip ahead to those sections if you want. And, since I’m a player and not a programmer, you’re not going to get geek-level discussions about its sound design capabilities. Oh, and while the Integra has more new synth sounds than you can shake a stick at, I’m primarily an acoustic player/composer, so there won’t be any detailed discussion of the numerous new pads, bells, waves and beats you get with the Integra other than to say that most knob-twiddlers and electronica players will be highly satisfied with their variety and sonic quality.
Still here? If so, let’s
start with the interface.
I can only get part one to play. Even if I move the cursor to another part it continues to just play part one. What's up?
ReplyDeleteBy default, each part in a studio set is assigned to a different MIDI channel, i.e., part 1 is MIDI channel 1, part 2 is MIDI channel 2, etc. Try switching the MIDI channel output of your keyboard to the MIDI channel of the part and see if that works. Alternatively, you can edit every part in a studio set to respond to channel 1, but this will probably cause "layering."
ReplyDelete