The Roland Cloud is not a thing in itself but like a old treasure chest. You pull software instruments such as the JP-8 or a TR-808 from the chest and use that in place of old hardware you could never afford. Little by little other companies such as Cherry have cherry-picked at Roland’s treasure. There are now multiple vendors of near everything that Roland has ever produced. So why would anyone subscribe to the Roland Cloud at $200US a year when you can pick up just what you need for perpetual ownership? Good question! Not good for Roland.
Galaxias (I keep saying galaxians by accident forgive me) is a wrapper around the full Roland stable, holding up to four virtual instruments within an environment of mixing desk, sequencer and effects. It’s a bit similar to the Jupiter-X hardware keyboard in that you can stack four Zenology software instruments – but better in that it also hosts the older AIRA PlugOuts and even older SRX romplers. (While Zenology can emulate older Roland hardware – it’s often thought not quite as good as AIRA.)
This mega instrument is clearly aimed at the live performer with play lists and all. But it will also open in your DAW as a single plugin. A DAW already stacks multiple instruments, but there’s some advantage in having the stack as self contained environment – a super patch. Say for example you bundle up a Jupiter-8 and an Earth Piano. Just adjust the sound balance between the two on the internal mixer, make some changes to the filter, a bit of FX and you have a ‘subroutine’ sound mix that might be just what you need.
There’s eight assignable knobs with 2 banks (16 all up) made available to your DAW or controller. That’s particularly helpful given that the knobs on the VST instruments can become quite tiny when hosted inside the Galaxias UI.
Zenology GX
The latest upgrade to the Roland Cloud includes a new interface for the Zenology engine called Zenology GX. I would like to think that Roland saw some of the tedium involved in making a Zenology patch which is bit like filling in a tax return – but no – it’s obviously because the old Zenology interface doesn’t fit nicely into the Galaxias interface. And also no – Zenology GX doesn’t run outside of the Galaxias interface. Bugger. It does however run considerably faster then the old editor, and you can use an ‘immersive mode’ to hide everything except the Zenology controls. Some of the settings are made more accessible. Fair enough I guess.
The Earth Piano is also new. It is a piano. Yes.
When you sign up for Roland Cloud you will be supplied the entire patch library, which is great for solutions but not very inspiring for anyone that wants to work from scratch. And … really … Roland is drifting ever so gently back into the past, where the Jupiter 8 was the best of breed and the D50 was the bold future. Sure, everyone is gazing backwards but – merde – there’s absolutely nothing here for the now – no wavetables, no spectral, nothing at all that recaptures the leadership they once held. The sounds you will make here will be sounds of the 20th Century. If you have any passion for synthesis then the SH-4 is a better idea.
The remaining problems are ‘A’ that Zenology is a complicated and twiddly system which can be quite discouraging and ‘B’ these virtual instruments have no user sample storage at all – even though the emulated instruments did have samples, so they aren’t really accurate. ‘C’ is you still can’t directly edit Zenology hardware from the Zenology software, only transfer patches.
Sigh. C’mon Roland.