Integra-7 Review Part 6: Reviewing the Sounds

Even with its sometimes questionable logistics, the Integra’s sounds more than make up for it.. Of course, with over 5,000 sounds to choose from, you’re bound to find many that aren’t up to snuff or that you’ll never use under any condition. It would take eons for me to discuss all of these, so I’m going to focus only on the new SN sounds. And since I’m not a DJ, hip hop producer, or analog knob-twiddler, I don’t feel qualified to judge the merits of the synth sounds. So what you’re going to get is an overview of the key categories of acoustic instruments.

Acoustic Pianos

Over the years I’ve owned many different keyboards and modules from Roland, Yamaha, Alesis, Nord, Ensoniq and Kurzweil. For me, acoustic pianos either make or break any given synth. And despite the advances in sampled pianos over the years, I never found another ROMPLER-based piano that exceeded the brilliance and complexity of the Roland SRX “Complete Piano” expansion card. 

Until now. The Integra’s new SN-A pianos are superb. They may be a tiny shade less ‘brilliant’ that those of SRX-11, but they more than make up for it with their realism and responsiveness to different playing styles. A number of different options, from grands to honky tonks, are available, and all accurately capture the subtle dynamics of different playing and pedaling styles. Plus, they often a great deal of tweakability. You can adjust hammer noise, sympathetic string vibrations, depth of the stereo field, and tonal brightness. With a little reverb the pianos are well suited for classical solos and with some added chorus and EQ they’ll punch right through a mix. But, hey, if you don’t like them, you can always load up your favorite grands from the SRX “Complete Piano” and “Concert Piano” cards.

Organs

In recent years Roland has been justifiably criticized for failing to come up with a modern, tweakable synth-based tonewheel organ sound to replace the aging B3 choices on the legendary SR/JV “Keyboards of the 60s and 70s” expansion card.

With the Jupiter 80, Roland started taking organs seriously, and the Integra benefits from this commitment. Finally, we get a high-quality, beefy tonewheel organ with fully adjustable drawbars, percussion, leakage, overdrive and rotary settings. Indeed, you can tweak these organs in ways you can’t with a 40-year old B3. With a little effort you can nearly re-create your favorite Jimmy Smith, Booker T or John Lord organ sounds. I say ‘nearly’ because, regrettably, there are no adjustable organ-specific vibrato or chorus settings. If you’re a Hammond purist this may be a dealbreaker. If there’s any consolation, however, most people in your audience won’t know what they’re missing. And while the rotary effects are okay, they don’t measure up to those offered by dedicated ‘clonewheel’ manufacturers such as Nord, Hammond, Numa or even Roland’s own VK organs. You can overcome this deficiency by running your organ part’s audio output to an external Leslie emulator like the Neo Ventilator.

If you’re looking for Farfisas or pipe organs, you’ll find a few scattered among the SN-S presets but you’ll probably rely more on the broader selection available among the XV and PCM expansion banks.

Electric Pianos

Korg, Nord and Yamaha have raised the bar in EP emulations in recent years, so you would expect that Roland would rise to the challenge. Alas, the Integra’s EPs haven’t quite caught up to the competition. They’re serviceable, but there isn’t a great deal of differentiation between the Rhodes and Wurly variations and the core tones are heavy on overdrive and light on ‘wetness’ and presence. Dialing up the reverb and tweaking the amp and speaker emulator effects helps a bit, but if you’re really trying to nail that classic Stevie Wonder or Supertramp tone, you may find greater satisfaction dialing up sounds from the SRX-12 “Classic EPs” card. Or if you’re stuck in a 80’s cover band, any of the very decent DX-7 style EPs hidden away in the SN-S sound banks will also serve you well. 

Guitars

When the XV-5080 was released, its acoustic guitars outclassed those of its competitors. They’re still there if you need them, but the SN-A acoustics have much greater presence and depth, with adjustable slide noise and performance variations ranging from finger-picking to strumming. The electric guitars, on the other hand, are a mixed bag. There’s a nice variety of ’clean’ hollow-body models, but most of the much larger selection of rock and metal guitar sounds don’t really cut it for me. No matter how you tweak them they still sound, well, like synthesized electric guitars. They’re usable for basic, non-obtrusive rhythm work but wont’ substitute for the real thing in lead passages. To be fair, I still haven’t heard a thoroughly convincing rock guitar in any synthesizer or sound module. It’s one category where soft-synths will probably always win out because they can stick a couple gigabytes’ worth of samples onto your hard disk. I also knock Roland down a peg for not offering new SN-A mandolins but no banjo or pedal steel guitar sounds. Fortunately, the SRX-09 “World” card fills in this gap. 

Basses

More than any other sound, the acoustic bass is the one instrument that reliably benchmarks Roland’s advances in sound design. The Integra’s acoustic is the best I’ve ever heard and is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. The electric basses, never one of the Roland’s strengths, are vastly improved as well. There’s a much broader selection of finger- and plectrum-picked basses to choose from, including several standout ‘pop models for funksters and “Seinfeld’ theme fans. And if you’re into hip-hop and dance grooves, you’ll find plenty of excellent TB-303 and synth basses to choose from on SN-S bank.

Brass and Woodwinds

Wind instruments are often the Achilles heel of any synth. Too often they sound excessively ‘electronic’ and are more suitable for video games than in serious jazz, orchestral or Latin-themed compositions. Fortunately, Roland has really nailed these sounds with the Integra. The muted and unmated trumpets are really unmatched in terms of realism and expressiveness. For example, move the modwheel up and you’ll add greater resonance. Or use MIDI to trigger several difference performance variations ,including staccato and “falls” in real time. Likewise, saxophones, arguably the hardest sound of all to get right, are superb, particularly when used in solo situations. You can adjust the level of ‘growl,’ choose among twelve different play scales, and use real-time glissando and fall effects. One particularly neat feature is the ‘breathiness’ that is added to higher notes, which realistically mimics the more effort it takes to play in the higher registers.

Drums and Percussion

Ever since the release of the XV Roland has been so far ahead of the competition in terms of the evolution of outstandingly realistic drum sounds that there isn’t that much further they can be developed in a ROMPLER format. Suffice to say, once you hear these you will probably never use your SRX-01 “Dynamic Drum Kits” card again. Whether you’re playing rock, jazz, Latin, country, world music, funk or hip hop, there’s a SN rhythm kit that will fit the bill. If not, load up any of legacy XV or SRX drum kits—they’re all there.

As far as other percussion instruments are concerned, the vibes, marimbas and xylophones stand out. One neat new feature are automated ‘hammer rolls’ that are triggered by adjusting the pitch wheel---a great feature for those of us who lack the finger strength and speed to do these manually.

Other Sounds

Classical musicians will find a very good selection of SN-A solo strings and string sections to complement the improved brass and woodwind instruments. Several excellent jazz and chorale vocal sections are available as well. The world music choices are a bit skimpy, although a new generation of sitars are the best Roland has ever offered. And if you’re into harmonicas and accordions, there’s a good selection here as well

“Import” Your Own!

Let’s say that Integra’s electric guitars just aren’t doing it for you. No problem. You can plug your Strat into one four instrument inputs and its signal will be integrated into your studio set as an ‘external part’ and output as an audio signal to your DAW or mixer. While your signal can’t have its own insert effect, you can use it in a Motional Sound setup to ‘place’ your instrument in the mix.  Likewise, you can feed audio from your computer to run through this external part, in case you want to feed a drum loop into your Integra mix. I could even imagine a few adventurous vocalists running a pre-amped mike signal through it.