Having just received my Fantom 7, I’ve watched so many reviews and tutorials, and this is easily the best general video I’ve seen to cover the basics. Thank you. And thanks to Roland for the update, especially the sampling capabilities.
It's insane that you'd go so in depth, covering really important stuff, at a really easy to listen to speed, without getting paid by roland. I hope the views are making this worth while. Instant subscribe.
Yeah I agree, it's incredible what he does without pay from these companies. A company the size of Roland should be ashamed for not giving him the synth at the very least, regardless of how much Loopop earn from his channel I think! Not sure how I feel about it tbh, now these companies just expect they can actually charge highly talented people for their marketing services, kinda insane!
Hey - thanks for the concern - Roland did leave the synth with me and while I think in general creators should be paid for work, it’s not that Roland refused to pay me, I refuse to ask or accept payment from companies for reviews when offered as a matter of principle.
@@shogunai I see your point. Trouble is neither scenario is ideal - reviewers who receive stuff for free (particularly if it's to keep forever) are more likely to err on the side of favouritism towards the company as they know if they are overly critical, they/their publication will be dumped off the list and they are unlikely to be sent future releases. Conversely if the reviewer has to spend too much of their own money then unless the product is downright unfit for purpose they're also likely to give a more favourable review because it's generally observed that buying something makes people psychologically better-disposed towards the same item given for free. Truly impartial reviews are very rare!
Dude your a life saver!! I didn't know it had microscope editing!! Game changer! I'm using my fantom in conjunction with an mpc x and you can't later in midi so I have been racking my brain sequencing on the fantom and trying to re record everytime I screw up.. thankyou good sir!!
The Fantom has matured. This is the real 1.0 release. Can't wait to see the full circle integration (hopefully with the next major update) with a computer, so we don't need to crouch over a tiny screen to do all that sampling and tone editing.
I've always wanted to hear your musical ideas in some sort of standarised form. And finally I could check out your first album. Some of these tracks sound so organic it's hard to believe it's man made, for example Figments of Color. I was absolutely blown away. I hope you get hired for a big movie or game, because your music absolutely deserves the recognition, same as OPN.
Thanks so much for taking the time to write and the kind words! While I prefer to focus on the channel, if Spielberg calls, I'm coming :) What's OPN btw...?
@@loopop Oneohtrix Point Never also known as Daniel Lopatin. He scored a couple of movies, including Uncut Gems and Good Time. He is also known as one of the fathers of vaporwave.
Great video as usual. I’ve had a Fantom since November 2019 and it is just incredible. Roland’s support of the Fantom has been amazing - they’ve taken a lot of grief for releasing this without sampling but have consistently updated it, and significantly, over the past ten months. It’s amazing.
A matter of perspective, I guess. Updates and release cycles that fix bugs and add additional features are common in software - not sure why it should be any different with hardware any more. For my part, nothing about the Fantom ever felt half-baked to me. It’s classy, the workflow is great, and it sounds fantastic. And now there’s a whole new feature set that wasn’t part of it when it launched.
I tested this and the Montage and found them both excellent. Overall the Fantom was easily the best for workflow, but the acoustic sounds were average at best. The analog patches sound about the same as the old Integra 7, which were dated at the time. The synth tones are good, but mostly from a heritage point of view. I think Fantom is good if you’re wanting old Roland sounds, Montage if you’re looking to push boundaries with more contemporary sounds. Montage kills it with acoustic sounds, but suffers on the sequencing features, if thats something you need. My 2c worth.
Great video, thanks. I've been looking for a starting tutorial on the Fantom and here it is. Since you seem well advance user, as a piano tuner, I think the pianos in the Fantom are not sampled separately for the damper pedal effect. On a acoustic piano, playing one note and keep it down gives a different sound from playing the same note but with the sustain (HOLD) pedal down. I always wondered why synth companies did NOT implement the hold pedal to just add reverb to the sound on top of sustaining the note. Try to do it on an acoustic piano, the note with the sustain pedal down will sound like there is a 10 seconds reverb added compared to the same note played without the sustain pedal. On the acoustic piano, the other strings are resonating sympathetically and this is what cause the reverb sound. It's like the spring used in old analog amplifier to add reverb to your guitar. The spring can reproduce all the pitches your guitar play like the other strings does with the sustain pedal on the piano. So my question is "can you route/assign a reverb to the HOLD pedal input when you press the sustain pedal"? That would faithfully reproduce 100% the sustain pedal on an acoustic piano. And I think it would be easy to implement to.
Your channel has become my goto for synth-like stuff. Highly professional video's that make even complicated machines seem operatable. Thank you. And yes would love a video on the Zen core. That is exactly one of the layers in Fantom (I own one) that I struggle to understand, yet.
WOW You really covered it all. Thanks for sharing. This is one powerhouse Workstation. Very complex and very powerful. My brain is on fire. WAY TOO Much Info for me.
I love your videos so much. They help me learn about synthesis and hardware more than anyone else. Also, could you update the Blackbox and explain everything new to it? There's a lot. And no one can explain it better than you.
Not news, but your channel has some of the best production value in this genre. Not mention you are lucky to have a great understandable voice, and you certainly do your homework. You should collaborate with other channels. (I know, when the hell to I find time for that?) Helping raise the production value of others helps everyone. Obviously you should be compensated. ;-)
The video showcases the instrument so well that I watched even though I'm not interested in a workstation. I owned at one point...actually kind of have two old rack Alesis and E-mu that are workstations sort of, they're fun still. The interface is colorful and enjoyable to play around with this Roland, and the look of it is nice. It definitely is attractive for anyone I would think, but plenty people on here want it, I don't know if they want a workstation or just are attracted to it. Workstations are more for professional musicians playing show to show, or home studio recording for entertainment business or such and possibly more, but even still, the huge amount of features, a musician depending on what one is doing, is exstensive to the point I think they'll not go. I suppose one can even do a techno set of prerecorded jams, so not just for a trained musician
I recently become a Patrion of your channel and wanted to say thank you very much for your Book. Its awesome and exactly what i was looking for over the past month or even years. Thank you Mr. Ziv! 🙏🏻
After much deliberation and coming from a Korg Triton Extreme, I just bought a Fantom 6. On a positive note, the sounds are great, and the controls for those sounds are very comprehensive. It connects to my PC easily and acts as a 16 in/3 out USB interface - I use it with Cakewalk by Bandlab. The latest upgrade allows sample mapping to the keyboard, and some basic sample editing functions. However, for my two penn'orth, it has some real failings: 1. The navigation keys and the sequencer keys are all black against a black background and small - they need some contrast. 2. The memory does not appear to be expandable - 2 Gb is your lot, and when the free new expansions (17 in total before you start buying new ones), are all loaded in, it uses up over half the memory available, which is shared with the sampling and sequencing memory. 3. There is no facility to do a linear sequence - ie use the sequencer as a performance recorder. I often build a song from patterns, but then solo over the top; this won't work with the 6. 4. After touch seems to be very insensitive - even changing the settings makes little difference to it's effectiveness. Sadly it often seems in the rush to get stuff to market, that one side of a new instrument is really well developed, whilst other functions found in previous models are neglected or lost.
Excellent video again and as always packed with loads of information. An update to OS 3.x would be cool - especially with the n/zyme engine, that is a really cool wavetable addition.
Please review the new Roland Fantom-0. I am looking for an honest review of the keybed quality, actual sound quality compared to Yamaha MODX and Korg Nautilus, and what has really been cut from the flagship Fantom. Your reviews are always amazing!
Small point from your video. Before v2.0 you could trigger samples in a pattern. Each scene has a setting for assigning a sample pad track and then keyboard maps all the pads. You then trigger the sample you want by programming the sequencer. New sampling features are what everyone has been waiting for, mainly multi sampling - which is great. You mentioned the limit of 2 mins 40 secs for sampling to internal memory, but if you sample to a pad the limit is either 1 hour or the amount of available space left in the 2gb record bank for pads. Apparently it's actually 2.7gb available.
@@loopop You are welcome. One thing to note, and i've not tested it yet in v2 - if you are triggering one or more samples (in a track as a pattern) as part of the scene you can't record the entire performance to a pad because the sampler is in use. Which is really annoying. I like to record loops and trigger them in pattern, in which case you have to use an external recorder or DAW to record the song 'live'. I got the Fantom 8 to make music as standalone without relying on a DAW (although it is really great using Logic w/ all the audio and midi going thru one usb cable) - if they could fix this issue, the fantom would be getting towards a 9/10 for making DAW-less music
I've now tested it, and as I suspected pad sampling still doesn't work to record a song which uses pad samples. If they introduce audio tracks to the fantom this would be one way of recording the audio into the sequences without having to use the sampler. The pad sample bank (i tested it) is actually 2.4GB total (this is separate from the 2gb you see on the expansion and kbd sample screen) and the maximum is 60 mins per sample (which is a file size of 640MB on my fantom) - the online manual has been updated to show the 60 min maximum. It would be nice if the expansions could be assigned a separate storage area, to free up the installed 1.47gb of expansions. - 500 odd MB is hardly anything to fill up even with short kbd samples.
I was wondering if you could make a video in how to sync clock or sequencing with other devices I think it would be very helpful for others and noticed there are not to many strait forward videos on this mater. And great video thank you very much 😊
Loopop, one thing I forgot to add below - the new way of getting content in the Fantom is via Roland Cloud rather than Axial. The Roland Cloud ecosystem has expanded rapidly, and that includes many Zenology tones that can also be loaded into the Fantom. It’s not always clear how to do that, I’d add - but I’ve been impressed at how much they’ve developed that platform. The “model expansions” (virtual emulations) are supposedly coming to Fantom as well - they’ve already been released in software form. A longer look at Zenology Pro when it is finally released would be great.
Have you been able to install and use the Roland Cloud expansions? On my Fantom 6 on the latest firmware, I can only use what I download from Axial. Nothing else works. Roland support has been worthless - they can't even tell me if I need to register the Fantom to my account, etc. Their only answer is send it in for service. Boo!
Props for just getting this thing set up on your desk. The Fantom is a beast! The 8 weighs in at 66 lbs, but even the 6 is a pretty chonky monkey at just over 30 lbs. As always, another great review/tutorial! Keep em rollin' (or should I say Roland? 😂 ).
That’s true. A piano is always going to be a piano and the same for other instruments. The advances of the last decade or so have achieved much already. There’s no need to feel like your missing out if you don’t have this keyboard, but it’s still fun to have for those of us who can afford it without a strain.✌🏾
2 года назад
You didnt understand Roland’s mind. You dont need good sound , connect with your daw use what vsti you want, use Roland Cloud to download all kind of packs.
Thank you .The Fantom has been out for a while and I am glad that you are featuring this .What I like about this is the fundamental access to editing is physical buttons .Menu diving for advanced features .I do wish that the chord assist could be triggered by the pads .Instead of the jog wheel .The eighty eight key is about twice as heavy as this one .I did have a play of the Fantom at a music shop before lock down .I made a string riff with the TRX .Then I used the motion pad to do interesting things with the sequence .Perhaps give that a try .
Insofar as exporting stems to a DAW .This would be done via the USB with DAW mode ? Would it be able to be done through the audio inputs into a audio interface and to the DAW ? I do believe that the Fantom will integrate with windows DAW applications .In any case I think that I will route it via audio out through an interface .I would build the project on the instrument .Then mute tracks that I did not want to send via audio .Then progressively send them over one at a time if necessary .Thank you again .
I wish they would just make a fantom midi keyboard. Love the feel of roland keys and they're one of few companies that use the joystick instead of the wheel. My first tracks I produced were all done on the Fantom X6 until I moved to logic. I ended up selling my fantom x6 years ago and have never been able to find a midi controller that had a keybed and pads that felt like that. I just wish Roland would make a midi controller based off of the Fantom platform. They would dominate that space!
You forgot to show the coolest/most useful touchscreen feature - being able to touch and drag filter cutoff and resonance with one finger! There is also the keybed of the Fantom 8. It is far superior to the competition, in my opinion. The montage 8, for example, has a very light feeling, almost half weighted key feel (lighter than any real piano at least). I like that they put such a realistic, high quality keybed in this.
@@loopop fair enough! I have actually liked performing the analog filter *that way (during playback into the computer). It took me a while to be convinced (because it usually would result in too big of movements) but the touchscreen allows for subtle rolls of the finger (if that makes sense) that I have found to be very musical. Somewhat like vibrato on a string. To each his own! Thank you for all of the excellent content over the years - it has been very inspiring and informative. I have immense trust of your opinion, pros, and cons.
@@loopop I actually just discovered that it also allows for taps, which is quite exciting (when using two fingers - although I am not on the new firmware yet)
The new Fantom is a significant step up from the prior workstations and clearly leverages a consolidation of the software implementations within the Roland product family. Someone in the Roland product team is actually listening to the consumer base as some of the new firmware features are directly from the prior FA series workstations. However, the price point is a touch high and I'm dissappointed that there is no SD card support for long term project or sample management. Otherwise this is a solid machine for a generalized workstation.
Why do you want an SD card when there is a USB thumdrive socket on the back? You can use a USB SD Stick reader with it, BTW, but not for firmware updates, the bootloader only accepts USB sticks or harddrives/SSDs.
Zen core drum design please. And thank you for the incredibly fast pace you have put out this video after the 2.0 update. I had the Fantom 6 for a weekend but had to send it back due to firmware hanging but I really enjoyed the instrument. After the 2.0 I have just bought the 8 to get away from the computer. Saying that there is a lot of menu diving at the moment but guys like yourself hopefully will highlight workflow to Roland who seem to be listening after such a rushed product release.
I think a review of the ZEN-Core engine’s details would be nice, but only after the announced Zenology Pro soft synth is released, to get a full picture how everything hangs together.
Nah, sooner is better for those interested, Roland's soft synth ain't worth waiting on, and then he reviewed the 707 and still hasn't reviewed the Zen-Core engine itself, but anyone with experience with 21st century Roland romplers will know their way around the Zen-Core engine anyway as it is mostly the same 4-oscillator Fantom-X-derived engine but melded with the Supernatural Synth (but not Supernatural Acoustic) engine and then some, plus a bunch of parameters get their ranges upgraded from 128 values to 1024, which, for example, translates to smoother filter closing/opening action when manipulating that manually
I’d love to see more about the online additional libraries, how much it cost, how many can be loaded all together, and also if some more of the Zencore synths would come to the Fantom such the Jupiter, Juno, SH1, etc... If we could all load them in the Fantom, it would boost it like crazy, making the computer less relevant.
Loopop, your video is excellent, as always. But Roland presenting sampling capabilities in a 2020 flagship and expensive synth is a joke. The V-Synth is almost 20 years old. CPUs are infinitely faster today. Anything else less than a fully developed V-Synth technology in a flagship is as sad as offering the very old sounds of the card expansions, which I have and I love, once and once again. No zero crossing, slow processing times, myriads of menu diving, no recognisition of sample pitch... Jesus, this is old technology. Roland can do better.
They are constantly improving it - I've had it since it came out. I've been really happy with the constant upgrades to the software. I am sure those details will get in there
@@wiredbassclarinet is it more stable and less prone to crashes now? I heard that when it was released, it would crash a lot. Even the salefloor demo units at the local Sam Ash here would often be in a crashed state when I'd visit
Licinius Varrus I’ve never had as much as a minor glitch on mine. That said, yes, Roland is presenting us a shit sandwich with this update and calling it steak. They haven’t caught up to their own technology from 20 years ago sampling wise, and they haven’t caught up to their acoustic sounds from 2013 either.
Great review (as always), but seriously... even with the v2 features, the Fantom is a ”toy workstation” compared to the now 10 years old Korg Kronos. Yes, the UI has a more modern touch, but it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. Why on earth does Roland release this barely half finished sampling functionality?
Does the Kronos really trump the Fantom as a sampler workstation?I just want to know because I have been using standalone samplers like the Roland MV8800/Ensoniq ASR10...I also require versatility with connections and integration with computers...
Great review as always. Although the Fantom is a very capable workstation, I went with the Yamaha Montage. For me the user interface is must better designed and the operation is more consistent. The Fantom can only play one arp for the entire scene while the Montage can play up to eight per performance. Personally I don’t need the DAW integration features. The FMX engine of the Montage is very powerful and easy to use. But is all about personal preference :-)
If you speak to anyone at Yamaha they will always say their goal was to make it a great Sound Engine and leave it up to the musician to decide what other outboard stuff to add for sequence and workstation stuff. Yes Montage is incredible there yet Roland Blows it away for True workstation platform. It is kind of unfair for both to be compared to each other. Both leave the other in the dust for their strengths.
Having to save scenes and tones separately was already an issue with the last gen Fantoms. Saving a song you made in the sequencer would not save the sounds, you have to save the Studio Set separately. It is annoying, but I kinda get it. That way you can build a studio set with which you can do multiple songs, and you won't accidentally mangle your other songs made with the same set because the saving function is separate. That being said, why not have both the separate saving and save all function?
But if you use an external sampler, the MODX allows you to add any samples you want to a performance, and you don't need to load them into internal memory. They can be streamed directly from a USB drive. Yamaha sadly seems to be the only vendor that allows you to use wav files without first installing them into the preciously small internal storage. And any of them could include 10GB internal RAM for pennies more.
I got it before it came out!!!! The best keyboard workstation in the world, even though I would like more things added in from the initial release date!!!
Fantom could become pretty much THE perfect all-in-one flagship synth if the next two major firmware updates gave us a Virtual Tonewheel engine and a 6 or 8 Operator multi waveform FM engine. Pretty please, Roland!
@@kaitsu9608 Even if not, there are really good open source FM synths out there so reverse engineering one shouldn't be super difficult for a company like Roland, in theory. I'm guessing they won't (Virtual Tonewheel is more likely) but hey, I can dream.
Looping is easier if you use your Zoom tools. The looping resolution is finite, so impossible to get a zero crossing every time, but you can get close. Sometimes you have to try using the next or previous cycle, to line up within the editing resolution.
Great detailed overview. This synth is growing on me since I’ve had it for a few week, but a bit disappointed that I can’t play back a midi file greater than 64 measures and no Seamless Sound Switching on Vpiano and Tone Wheel Organ😊
Nice to see you finally got one, too. BTW: There is no need to add a group twice or multiple times in the song mode you can set a repeat value in Song Edit and even loop whole sections of scenes.
As usual..quite the solid review.. hehe ;) Had i been a keyboard major, instead of percussion..this would definitely be my Go-To instrument/platform. In the end, I just went with the usual old PC based DAW..and my multiple MIDI (and analog/acoustic) instrument setup..with a handful of good VST libraries. Thanks for the review. PS: Its good to be back watching one of your thorough videos. I shall watch the Arturia one now. ;)
Great review! I like the controllers and pads but, I like the sequencer from the korg kronos better, 16 audio tracks. I wish the kronos had XLR inputs and phantom power, I hope the next korg flagship workstation includes those features.
@@ErwinSchrodinger64 no, midi sequencer. You an also do step and I'm not really a fan of karma. I build my songs from scratch. I record real-time to the midi sequencer I hardly quantize.
@@descargamusicalny I'm new to the Kronos and I'm finding their sequencers to be very difficult to work with. Honestly, I'm new to Korg and the Kronos and it's a big learning curve. Thanks for your input.
Glad they added sampling more like what was done on the Kronos but I like it better. I sold my Kronos 2 88key for the Fantom 8, Thanks for this great video.
Super review. I really wonder why Roland didn't consider to implement a chord function for the pads, and also making it possible for users to define their own chord set for the 16 pads, or maybe mapping them to one octave on the keyboard.....
DO YOU HAVE THE VIDEO FOR THE DRUM EDITING AND TONE EDITING ALREADY OUT ?THANK YOU , I JUST GOT THE FANTOM-06 AND WOULD LIKE TO LEARN ABOUT IT. THANK YOU
Well. If I pay 3,300$ and need to do the work with 700$ mpc one, then something odd going on in Roland developers mind. They tried to do it all which is nice. But they delivered a medium performance machine. And above all why oh why user tunes are limited to 512. It has enough memory to save more isn't it. Why Roland care so much to limit their customers. Modx can save 3000+ and it only cost 1/3 the price. Overall tunes in the fantom specialy the acoustic sounds are same 2013 Integra7 sounds and it's fairly to say some of them sounds like motif xf. So let us make our sounds efficiency. The fantom has good base platform but it needs deep os changes in order to be relevant in this price range.
@@kubaxthree4751 Definitely hope so. Although Roland doesn't have good reputation regarding updates. Let me make it clear I think Roland know how to make good products. Some of the most iconic gear in the history of music had been made by them. But they think economicly and limits their products intentionally in order to prevent cannibalism in their products line. Any thing they make can be very good and along side of that has some serious *ucks. Can you tell me what's the problem to put a velocity response pads? But they don't want you to be satisfied cause they want you to buy their drum machines like the 707. So they put cheap pads and made it not really useful. So why bother to put it in the first place. If you make something make it good or don't make it at all.
You missing something here... MPC ONE/Live has only 8 tracks that can be used externally/internally with polyphony. It isn't real 16 tracks as advertised. You can't use 16 internal tracks with synths with polyphony... no go.
First off , this is the best and most comprehensive tutorial out there thank you ! I like to assign different drum patterns to each pad and trigger them individually. Have you found a way to be able to assign a different pattern to each pad and be able to play each of the pads simultaneously? Currently I have been able to play only 4 pads simultaneously which seems like a waste since we have 16 pads available.
It's weird that none of the major workstation developers ever thought to release a keyless workstation. A lot of people have plenty of keyboards and don't really want or need one, but would probably like a DAWless workstation synth.
MC-707 is a Zen-Core based workstation without keys "DAWless (DAW keyboard) synth" lol it looks silly to refer to a DAW keyboard as not a DAW when you meant to say "PC-based-DAW-less" or so
Great Video! Thanks It is possible to place large audio files on the pads and then insert them into the sequencer? What is the limit(size) for the audio files in the sequencer(patterns)?
SH201 is still the best!! 😄 apart from too many cheesy sounds this synth is way too complicated, by the time you've learnt how to use it it will be out of date ( actually the sounds already are) but as usual loopop your videos are excellent!👍👍🎧🎹🎹🎧
I really enjoyed your video. Not only that but I learned a lot and I am thirsty for more. YES, please add more videos in deep for how to use it, may be each video takes one feature. Not sure if you did a video for this or not, but I really need to bring new tone and sample it. Very simple one. I need to create a new sound for certain instrument (import .wav) and make it one of the Fantom sound to be played when needed. I saw that you mentuined on this video but not in deep. Hopefully you can guid me if you already have done a video or will wait for a one. Thanks again for the video.
Just checking in, you still can't do linear sequencing for stuff like time changes/odd time signatures? I'm ASTONISHED Roland launched a product in 2019 that can't do that! I hope they add that sometime soon!
Shawn Saul I’m sure it is. Looks like a fab machine indeed. But in this era of software replication of hard ware synthesis, these machines should be selling for no more than €1k. I would consider the purchase then. But €3k+ is extortionate IMO in 2020.
