{"id":1003,"date":"2022-06-25T08:45:06","date_gmt":"2022-06-25T08:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=1003"},"modified":"2024-09-11T11:12:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T11:12:07","slug":"roland-mc-707-groovebox","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/roland-mc-707-groovebox\/","title":{"rendered":"Roland AIRA MC-707 \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83d\udca9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Updated 11 Sept 2024 with new information about a third party editor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the fourth version of this article, and I have become more critical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently decided to sell my MC-202 micro-composer<\/a> and use the money to buy a second hand MC-707. That’s a profit of 505 MC’s! Although I can hear the gnashing of readers’ analogue teeth I was never ever<\/em> going back to two channels of control voltage. Rather than shelve an old trophy I’d rather have a functioning micro-composer, even if it’s now called a ‘groovebox’ (why not GB-707?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not going to re-iterate all the usual stuff you can find in normal reviews. You can find that elsewhere.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Open the box and there’s the AIRA logo. Wait what? AIRA was once about high level ACB emulation of circuits – this guy is a Zencore<\/em> ROMpler. Marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Some of you might laugh at an old man playing a ‘groovebox’. I’ll remind you that I was running a TB-303 BassLine<\/a> \/ MC-202 MicroComposer \/ TR-808 Rhythm Composer<\/a> combo well before ‘acid house’, ‘EDM’ and all that tat. Tracks like my The East Is Red<\/em> are the prototype of all the dance music that came after and a ‘groovebox’ is simply the codification of artists like me. So get off my lawn.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A quick fluff around and the familiar flow comes evident – not so much like the micro-composers of old as the drum machines of the 1980’s – 8 channels of TR-808 or 909 style pattern sequencing. I was quickly able to make ditties a bit like 1982 – repetitive bits that can be tweaked, holes added, faded in and out and so on. (These boxes inspired Ableton Live<\/em> – although the belief these days is the reverse.) You will want to move this to your DAW to make improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I already own an AKAI MPC Live<\/a> which I’ve used as a sampler and sequencer on tour. I can verfiy that the MPC is a DAW<\/strong> – you can dig down to the individual notes in a phrase. The 707 is not a DAW<\/em><\/strong> – there’s no way to move notes around and tidy up your phrases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A single USB cable is all you need to wire the MC-707 to your real DAW – I like this very much after years of tangled MIDI cables. You can use it as your main stereo audio interface, with live effects included. If you already have a sound interface you’ll likely want to run some audio cables, but I was able to choose the generic ASIO driver in Nuendo<\/em> and set up two interfaces. There was no problem with choosing USB ports on my PC (unlike many other USB connections<\/a>). I was very quickly able to record 8 stereo sound channels fed into REAPER<\/em> and play my master MIDI keyboard out to the 707. It’s about as elegant as any hardware sound source can get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past (as with the Integra for example) there would be a software editor you could use. Not here – you must design your own sounds first on a Zenology Pro<\/em> software instrument, save them as an entire bank of patches and transfer that bank via the SD card on the 707. This sucks<\/strong>, but I guess you then build a master library that you can use on any future Roland Zencore<\/em> machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do I need to mention that Zenology Pro<\/em> is an additional cost<\/a>? Balls. Of course any audio samples will have to be added into the patch at the last moment so even with the software some further editing on the 707 is inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Editing a sound on the unit is not completely awful<\/em> but it’s tedious. Four knobs get you quickly around the ‘simple interface’ and the ‘advanced interface’ is awful on any<\/em> version of Zencore<\/em>. If you dedicated yourself you could get good at it, but I doubt you would ever quite grasp all the elements of the Zen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why even bother with the hardware? A major reason for me trying the 707 is that Zenology Pro<\/em> doesn’t allow user samples – no Roland virtual instruments allow samples. My hardware XV-5080 allows samples – the XV-5080<\/em> does not. I really like mixing the texture of samples into my synthetic sounds and the 707 is the least expensive current Roland hardware to do this<\/strong>. But I don’t see that I would often use the Roland live, and in the studio I would probably end up using software so that I didn’t have to program through those little knobs. It’s not quite there for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like I said I’ve been doing this groovebox thing for a long while. I’ve some reason to claim doing it earlier than anyone else, but you do become more sophisticated in your expectations over time. The 2024 version of me asks – can you remember doing long division? Before calculators? Why relearn this kind of working and be satisfied with a comparatively skeletal version of music?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Update on the new editor.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A newly developed software editor for the MC707 offers some hope for this device, which is otherwise inscrutable as a musical instrument. Sure you can sequence the built in patches and modifications but crafting new sounds on the hardware is a punishment. There’s just four knobs with multiple shifts that only allow some pinhole surgery on your sounds, which must previously be brought in en masse<\/em> on a data stick. Clunky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maestro Benis67<\/a> has spent considerable time deciphering the 707’s system exclusive codes – which apparently are a clusterfuck, spewing out wrong data. Maybe Roland only got halfway through designing the software before deciding to offer Zenology Pro<\/em> instead. Which is a shame as the 707 is the only affordable Roland device that can include audio samples (I know that the Fantom is intended here but I don’t have the space or bank account).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The software is complex, because Zenology is complex. It took quite a while for me to understand the workflow for tracks and clips and tones and dinosaurs but eventually I got the box to talk to the editor software in real time with some good results. His editor is not as pretty as the Zenology Pro<\/em> software but includes controls for all the features as well as a more standard computer based library. It’s really not that different to Roland’s software for the Integra-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the rub. You can remotely edit patches on the MC707, but then again you could edit the patches faster in Zenology Pro<\/em> and then copy them to the box. Either way you have to prepare a library of samples before you get busy with the editing. Once at that point, yes the editor would be a great help in making the final adjustments to include the samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I’m happy with what Benis67 has achieved it remains odd to make sounds on hardware that are exactly the same as software. This release makes the 707 less silly – but it’s still silly. Transferring samples with the editor would be excellent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternative – Korg’s WaveState<\/a>. Even if you keep clear of the complexity of wave sequencing you can have samples and traditional oscillators working in tandem. And you can run it as software or <\/em>hardware as you need. Samples are included in the patch. Roland – heed this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Updated 11 Sept 2024 with new information about a third party editor. This is the fourth version of this article, and I have become more critical. I recently decided to sell my MC-202 micro-composer and use the money to buy a second hand MC-707. That’s a profit of 505 MC’s! Although I can hear the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[30,16,9,7,4],"class_list":["post-1003","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-aira","tag-groovebox","tag-roland-ss","tag-sampler","tag-virtual-analogue"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}