Roland SOUND CANVAS virtual vs vintage SHOOTOUT! 

Thanks for having me on Woody! Awesome stuff. For any viewers curious, I now have my video on the SC-88 Pro out so for anyone who wants to learn more about it in-depth, you can check that out :)

When I hear game music now, I have to think of Ben Daglish. Rest in peace! It's great to see these comparisons on you channel. Thank you very much for the great content.

Great video Woody & Speedy! I still have the SC-155 I bought new in 1992 which I used along with a Roland D-10.

I'm impressed. This is the first time I feel like the VST really nailed it. The tones and even effects are so spot on that I couldn't tell when you changed tracks. The distorted drums did have ever so slightly different EQ, and I do like how the hardware shaped that curve, but that is not important for playback fidelity, or would be lost in post after more heavy-handed processing was done anyway. I have no interest in investing in clouds, but if you CAN buy this outright, I might just do so. My hardware 88 Pro won't live forever. Huge thanks to Speedy for a fantastic walk through - it's always great to tap the mind of a real enthusiast in some niche. And of course thanks to Woody for consistently fascinating and genuinely useful content. :-)

Been waiting for this. great vid!

Fantastic video! I have this in my Roland Cloud and I am very pleased with the results. I'm involved in a sound design video game project that wants this exact aesthetic and sound. Glad I discovered this video, great job again!

I still remember my 8 year old self, which was heavily into Sierra titles such as the Police Quest series at the time, trying to cajole my dad into buying a Roland MT-32 unit along with the MPU-401. It didn't work. He saw the price and said "maybe when you're older and you can pay half." That was a very good deal at the time! The problem is I had moved onto newer games with each time I aged up, meaning the games I was playing eventually didn't end up needing any midi sound modules at all as the music was all mostly included on the CD-ROM itself. I'm glad that I can still experience these old DOS games and finally hear the music as it was supposed to be heard. That being said, my dad did come up with one rather elegant solution way back then: he had a colleague that owned an MT-32 and a SC-55 and he was going to get him to record the soundtracks from my favourite games to audio cassette so I could play from the tapes as I was playing the games! Pretty interesting solution, but it ultimately didn't end up happening. It was a nice thought though. Thank you again Woody for the informative video!

Thanks to both of you for this collaboration! Interesting comparison. The first tune sounded nearly identical on both hardware and software. On the second tune it was obvious that the software version has more high frequency extension. That said, I would have a hard time picking one over the other. I guess it would depend on whether you want a slightly darker, authentic sound or a more modern, high-fidelity approach. Either one is a fantastic example of mid-90s multitimbral synthesis.

Great video. I still have my SC-55. Haven’t used it in a long time.

I purchased a Roland GR-1 (Guitar Synth) in ~'94 and the sound engine on that was/is the Sound Canvas. I never did much tweaking of sounds with it but I found dozens of sounds that I used and loved for many years. I still have that GR-1 and it's still working just fine 24+ years later and counting! Horns are particularly good!

Great video! I myself own a sc880 and loving it! Great intro song btw 👍

I love the Roland Cloud Sound Canvas for some of those iconic 80s 90s tones. So under rated imo. Great video. really enjoyed it. You remind me of Matthew Corbet :D 👏👏👏👏

Thanks to Speedy for the detailed explanation, I remember the MT-32 to SC-55 era but not really much else. Really liked the comparison - the tracks did a good job of highlighting features and a range of sounds, and I found not too much of a difference. Some of the other VST vs. Real things have some obvious difference, but not too bad here. It is funny - when doing my 'home studio' in the late 80s/early 90s, I did have both Roland and Yamaha (and Emu), but for the Roland it was the Juno 106 and then I went to the JV-880 with the analog expansion. The Yamaha I did two of the FB-01s, which was a similar concept to the MT-32 but honestly much more technically limited (I had to add a second FB-01 because of polyphony limits, lucky they were cheap and loads of people were dumping them used even soon after release). I have been using the Sound Canvas on Roland Cloud and really like the sound - they definitely take you back! Thanks again - now off to check out Speedy's channel!

There is an 88Pro on my desk mainly for midi files and DOS games. It really is a great unit considering the era it was produced in.

Just want to say all your videos are great!

Thanks for this, amazing!

The hardware DAC is not limited to 32 bit, which is bit depth (the SC-55 and SC-88 output 16 bit audio): it's limited to 32KHz, which is bandwidth. That's why the top end is somewhat missing.

I never had a Roland Sound Canvas, but I did have and used a lot my Sound FX 1000 Classic (what a name) GS compatible Roland SCC-1 clone except it didn't have any built-in effects, but it had all the GS sound samples and sound banks. In addition to that in the same category I had a Korg 05R/W module which was very much in the similar physical format than the Roland SC-55, but had in addition to the GM bank the "real" Korg sounds and mode which sounded much better than the GM bank on the same module. The third device in this similar kind of category I had was a Yamaha MU90R, which was a bigger 19" rack mount version of the MU90 with some added features. Or actually I still have all of those... only the Sound FX 1000 Classic sits inside my old 486 PC so I really can't use it, but the Korg and Yamaha modules are still used by me. The GM/GS/XG sounds are very different on Roland, Korg and Yamaha modules, even they were meant to be "compatible" so you could play the same general midi files on those. Even the Yamaha CS1x keyboard synth has all the GM/XG stuff inside, but also with that the GM bank sounds much more weak than the "native" sound bank on the same instrument. The multitimbrality "eats" some of the sound quality, as the native sounds on many GM compatible devices use more layers of the samples. But would someone want to use the GM/GS sound bank for real these days? I really don't think so, even there are a lot of those GM files made. They used those modules a lot on TV for the jingles and theme tunes for tv shows and you could always recognise the typical GM sounds on those pieces of music and that was not a good thing... :)

The original module seems to just have more, I don't know, "glue" to it I suppose? Sample wise, the VST sounds spot on, just not sure it is mixing as authentically as the dedicated hardware. Cool shoot out, I have to say as a heavy user of the VST this makes me a little less likely to continue seeking out a used module because the VST is just so much easier to use in DAW!

I struggled to hear a difference for most of the time but there was a subtle extra clarity to the highs on the VST. But if I hadn't been trying my hardest to find a difference, I would never have noticed it.

Wow! The speedy explanation of the sound canvas is super useful. Where was I in the 90s? Seems I totally overlooked this GS sound canvas thing, even though I owned Roland synths at the time - until today, when I picked up an A33 for $75. Then became curious what this GS standard was all about. My question is whether the virtual sound canvas will accept the bank/patch button messages from the Roland A33? Might be a question for speedy.

Thanks for this! I’m gonna get one for music composition. Now I know where they got the choir sound used in the Metroid prime series

I am humbled. This is the first time I could not tell any difference between plugins and hardware. I closed my eyes and was fooled...😮. Agreed on the HiFi on the 2nd track. Definitely noticeable. Great vid..

I use Sound Canvas VA to listen to some game MIDIs and it's amazing

I am a long time Sound Canvas user for live work in my midi assisted band. I have been doing this for about 25 years and always gig with some form of Sound Canvas. For the past number of years I have used the Roland Virtual Sound Canvas in my laptop playing back on an old version of Cakewalk. It's somewhat limited in fidelity but when pumped through a PA system with added room acoustics in clubs it isn't noticeable. Thanks. Nice demo. I have wondered about this for years since I use the software version of the old Sound Canvas and leave my SC-55 home. I can't hear a difference.

Nice video! I always enjoy the "retro" gear videos. I recently bought a JV-1000, which has the VE-GS1 board installed. Sort of like a mini-sound-canvas board with 28 notes of polyphony to add to the JV's own 28-note engine. You get dual engines in essence.

I love this "not so much realistic" sound of 90's keyboards.

cool comparison!

Such an awesome video for a topic I would have not expected you to cover too be honest , this was actually really beneficial as someone who wants to understand how old music was made,etc like dos tracker programs , highly advanced midi modules , primitive sound sampling techniques ,etc > The real difference I could hear was a metalic tinny clarity with the software compared to the hardware which I think adds too the overall sound. Thanks so much!

Sound Canvas also released in many physical forms. The keyboard form such as Roland JV-30, JV-35, JV-50, and XP-10. The daughterboard form for SoundBlaster 16 sound card such as Roland SCD-10 and SCD-15, and Voice Expansion Board form VE-GS1 for Roland JV-1000 and JV-90 synthesizers, and A-90 expandable controller.

Wow. I had no idea that anyone besides me still used sound canvases anymore. My SC-55 (I've had it since the early 90's) is still useful for making quick sketches.

Great Sound Canvas shoot out video. Thank you. What is the possibility of creating an in-depth tutorial of the Sound Canvas VA?

Nice shoot out. I had the SC demo for a while but never bought it and the cloud stuff is not ready for prime time yet. I have an MU50 and MU128 if I want a small GM sound unit. The MU128 has a DX7 card fitted so it's pretty useful. My JV-2080 is a tad larger but also will do instead of an SC unit and my PC has the famous SW1000XG card in it which also has all the GM and another DX7 card fitted as well. You can generally get the patch maps for sound modules on the web so it doesn't hurt to buy a cheap unit or two from eBay.

Watching Woody's videos is like listening Lana Del Rey's - yes to heaven song. The best reviewer of software synths and literally the only one "comparison-man" who always compares hard with soft synths. Thank you Woody! (also wanna thank you for telling about which patch was used in popular songs. i think it's good topic for videos because many people interested to know which synths and patches used for famous songs)

Happy to hear (literally) that there doesn't seem too much of a difference between the hard- and software solutions. The plugin is most likely cheaper than even a single real SC-55 unit and one model might not be enough, as there are different revisions, control roms and so on. Like with the MT-32. For my retro gaming needs, I use the Falcosoft Midi Player with different plugins like Munt for MT-32 and CM-32 on my laptop, which is connected to the MPU-401 interface of my DOS/Win98SE PC via a Roland UM-ONE Mk2. At the moment I only have the SCVA trial plugin and am thinking about getting the full version. I'm also looking at Ebay and real SC-55s but the prices are higher than the software for all except one bid which might shoot up in it's two days left and I might need another revision and/or control rom for certrain games. Emulating all off these is far cheaper and switching between them is easily done without changing plugs or a cable salad behind my setup.

What a great comparison you put up here Woody! Clean tracks at a decent volume level, making sure no excessive youtube audio compression kicks in. My ears clearly tell me the gain in high-end, headroom and added harmonics on the VST side (the latter mainly noticeable in percussion and pad sounds). Though the 32kHz native sample rate on the SC-88PRO hardware module may be less clear compared to its VST sibling, it has some pretty big advantages aswell in my opinion: Mixing is a breeze since there a no samples "competing" for top frequencies (low end can be a challenge though since there's lots of it). When you're composing retro game music the "lower end" sound of the SC-88 does blend incredibly well with high def ambience and sfx samples. I guess the VST has a better user interface so that would give it a slight advantage over the hardware. Again, this is all just my opinion. Thanks again for the video and good luck with your channel!

The sound canvas line and the yamaha MU series are really, really good for making some nostalgic 90's house/jungle/garage/etc. It sounds like like 90's video game music in a box. Gonna pick one up and sequence it from renoise and see what happens. 🤷🏽‍♂

Great video, I actually started a career with this module! And at 4:45 you nailed it, Descent ][!! PMA-5 was probably my favorite SC variant

Only thing to note about the VA is the SC-55 support. It emulates a SC-55 mkII which has some slight slightly different sounds and sound references compared to the SC-55. But this doesn't matter much in 99% of cases I think.

Ah, very cool. I wonder if LGR will see this and look upon his midi mountain with great pride.

Hi Woody. An interesting comparison. I wore headphones to listen and there was a better ambience in the VST track (imho). That may be due to the EQ or dynamic range or the recording of the audio. Having said that the differences are minor. Reckon worthwhile keeping an eye on both hardware and software products.

I have a SC-55 gs I saved my edits as a system exclusive part in Cuebase.. If I run my old files through the plug in.. will the same synth edits be applied to the virtual synth?

Sounds virtually the same to me. I have my SC-88 (non-pro) from 1994 (paid $920 for it), and the plugin. I think it sounds pretty dated, but it's occasionally cool for a contrasting color.

That choir sound sounds like the one in metal gear solid on the ps1👌 nice sound dark and mysterious

The Yamaha MU90R is also very recommendable and SC-88 compatible to a certain level.

This is awesome. I wonder if anyone has done a comparison for the Yamaha XG softsynth vs. the actual hardware like MU50. That would be interesting.

Seems like the sounds are fairly comparable, but effects are more adrift. Always wanting a Sound Canvas, but for some reason it never happened. A got an Integra 7 a few years back, which I guess is the modern HD version. But I love the idea of these single boxes that do 16 tracks plus effects. I work in the box but don’t like having folders of lots of samples and romplers sitting around for that odd chance. This means on the computer side I can focus on key tools and experimental sounds, and then have the Integra 7 for those pedestrian sounds, a rock band or orchestral - without much clutter.

Does the SoundCanvas include the soundset from Roland VA-7?

What did you use to record the outdo song? It sounds incredible 🤩

Not much difference if you ask me. If I had closed my eyes, I wouldnt have been able to tell when you were switching between the two tracks.

Did they use one of these to make the Symphony of The Night soundtrack?

Hello, I have a Roland A 33 as a gift, no speakers or other devices. What do I need, so that I can use it? I have no knowledge with Roland, I have heard some using Roland sound canvas device and others software. your help please.

The Sound Canvas VA could also be used as a way to get the sounds into your DAW from the JV-30/35/50 and XP-10 for those that are familiar with those keyboard synthesizers. I have the iOS app of Sound Canvas and want to add the VST to my PC DAW. I could then put my XP-10 and W-50 (Like JV-30 with Rodgers organ tones) in the closet.

If I wanted to play prepared midi tracks with the Sound Canvas VA on a laptop can I use a simple midi player like VLC or Van Basco midi player or do I need something like Cubase?

Ooh! Woody and Speedy sitting in a tree... 😉

One big difference between multi timbral hardware modules and VST, In VST, you can assign individual outputs to different effects where as in hardware units, all instruments are shared by same set of effects. So the VST can be made to sound different. Regards.

14:51 Bits and Hz’s are very different. Hz is the frequency of the wave, bits is how many divisions there are between -1 and +1. So basically, the hz would be illustrated horizontally while the bits vertically.

Great Video Woody. Is there any overlap between these Sound Canvas platforms and Roland's recent Cloud service? You got to be a real aficionado of everything Roland synths to support their Cloud model at CAD $20 month.

they are indistinguishable 😁 OF COURRRSE they would be, because the VA is engineered from the same factory as the source of the hardware models, copying precisely the raw material that went into the hardware modules 😆😆 When Yamaha did the same with the S-YXG50 they also perfectly reproduced the classic XG sounds without a HINT of difference in the "output of the" software version versus the hardware synths 😆😃 Thanks again Woody for a very informative and "critical" video, you'll Never be sure of the "authenticity" until you critically and independently compare 😄

WOODY ... ANY IDEA ABOUT IF ROLAND WILL RELEASE A VST VERSION OF THE JD 800 ?

Close enough for me!

Wow, I *actually* like the VST a little better. It's a hair brighter, so it would cut a mix. but it's easier to remove than it is to add, I could use an EQ to get that slightly darker sound if I wanted. As a massive fan of Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy 7. (The whole reason I got a classical education) This brought me to tears. I'll be making the purchase very soon. Thank you so much, Woody. Thank you so much for this demo, finally, the sounds I've chased for years are available.

The Sound Canvas sounds great. It would be a delight to craft an entire soundtrack with it. The sounds and textures really capture 90s gaming (the golden era). I'll definitely be checking out more of Speedy's work. I don't see the point in comparing a rompler to a VST. It's just moving data from one box to the other right? No wizardry or modelling required? I'd have enjoyed hearing you play some sounds though.

Of course pcm based synthesis is very unfashionable now but this reminds people that, in the era when analogues were unavailable and high end digitals expensive, Roland did an awesome job of giving musicians on a budget access to a massive range of high quality sounds.

If I wanted to use the VST to play MIDI files on my laptop in a live performance situation, what would be the most user friendly way to do so? I don't want complicated DAWS and all that. Just an easy way to play the MIDI files, and change tempo, or key if necessary. Thanks!

Now the Sound Camvas VST is a subscription service. If I want life-time licenses - Which sound sets do I have to purchase to get the Mario 64 and possibly other N64 sounds?

I’m so old lol I remember them like yesterday. Thx for the memories woody. 😃👍

I bought an SC-88 Pro a decade or so ago, but it's been sitting in my closet for many years. As a DAW or game tool, it works Ok, but as a performance synthesizer, the individual voices are not that impressive. And it lacks some professional features like rack mounting and 1/4 inch outputs (it has stereo-style RCA outputs). As for the VST vs. original, they're very close, but in a few cases, the VST is slightly brighter and clearer sounding. The original was never better than the VST. So, if you are interested in one, the VST definitely seems to be the more convenient option. There's an iPad version too, which is probably just as good.

i use the 88 pro still today

anyone know how to load up whole drums kits not just individual samples to play?

Difficult to discern difference given the RU-vid eq. I can't speak for the SC series. I have an SD80 (Studio Canvas), wouldn't swap it for the world. It's golden.

G R E A T video! omg i think that the software version is just a bit brighter than the hardware one, no significant differences there! roland (again) doing a great job.

The hardware DAC is 32-bit, and the software is 48KHz? How are you making a sound quality comparison based on those 2 unrelated stats..?

LOL I had an SC-55, not too hard to beat, these days, I am thinking :). It was very useful connected to my Yamaha Clavinova though.

Nice video Woody! I actually wanted for a long time to get my hands on a Roland Sound Canvas and use it for writing game music as well as a sound generator for my midi keyboards. I finally found a SC-88 in decent condition and for a nice price and bought it a couple of months ago. I have read in many forums that the VST sounds have noticeable differences from the original, something that I couldn't tell in your video. However, I find the aesthetics of the device to be a very good reason to have one in your desk instead of a virtual one in your PC. They are reasonably priced and most of the times cheaper than the VST.

For me, the only difference that I'm picking up on is that maybe the the VST is oh so slightly louder? Otherwise sounding 1:1 to me.

To me, I didn't notice any difference. The hardware may still win out, though on processing. I was playing around with Munt on my laptop and it kicked 7 bells out of my performance.

Hello from Alaska, Woody. I agree with you - the software version is 'brighter' to my ears. It seems to have less of the muddy sound to it. I agree again, it may be due to the 'bit' difference the older hardware version contains. Thanks for your valuable comparison. Michael McGaughey

Hi. I want to use Roland Virtual SC on a PC using windows 7. But it won't work. Any alternatives please?? Thanks I think it last worked on Windows XP

The vst version has the same issue as most thing in daws, It is more clear, but it hurts the high frequencies by making audible "cracles" in sound.

I never had a sound-canvas, but did spend a lot of time with the Yamaha SW1000-XG card. XG and GS competed well against each other, but in the end ... well, nothing but the "big boys" for me. Eventually I needed some good I/O for the computer for recording, and actually making sounds with it fell off (until VSTs, but that's another story.) The VSC (and the whole Roland emulation thing they have going right now, for the most part) sounds very authentic. Yes, I can hear the VSC sounding a little more "open" and having a little more high-end, but if they compressed the samples a little less then that's expected. But for me, both sound very 90's SC, and I've moved on from that. Probably a great way to resurrect old MID's however!

This is propably the worlds most popular Sound Generator of the 90'es. The SC-55 and SC-88 is propably Rolands most selling sound generator ever. These Sound devices is what is inside most of the Rolands E-series auto accompaniment keyboards upto around the E70, and also a fair amount of their cheaper Synths of the 90'es. The very first ones of the E-series had the MT-32 SG. The rest used the SC-55 for quite some generations before they switched to the SC-88. The main reason for this SG's success is propably cause of it has an very homogenous selection of sounds that just blends fabulous together in a mix. Not that the individual instrument samples anyway near rivals the best ones of the decades other romplers, and Roland must have made tons of money in these things, since they pretty much was unchanged in every new keyboard (E-series) thru the decade. They jumped a bit up with the SC-88 2-3x sounds. Better samples of some instruments and larger selection of sounds in each sound category. This was "THE" SG for using with either homemade or professional midi-files wich was sold thru the decade. When using these things with a Computer and eg. Cubase and you start reading the midi implementation section of the SG, there is just as many things you can edit as a normal rompler based synth. You can make changes in the sounds with both SysEx or CC. Cause of Rolands use of MSB and LSB CC's pretty much everything can be edited with just CC's. A few things like System setups, having drums on more than 1 channel other than the std GM channel 10, Text messages and eg. Karaoke style lyrics can be send to the displays via SysEx only. Every sound have its own ADSR EG for both amp and Filter. It has 2 Stereo Effects, one for Reverb/delay and one for mod/delay effects. The effect system is coupled with 2 sends for each sound, and iirc also has a pos. of routing the mod effect to the reverb effect. For what these things was selling for it was absolutely amazing what you could get out of them if you were working with midifiles and did your homework of editing the preset sounds. Only thing they were lacking was "custom" sounds. You had to save your edits of the sounds on the computer and eg send a bunch of CC's and some SysEX messages in the first count down bar of each song to give the SG time to initialise.

The software has a more bright sound. I wanted to like the hardware more, because I'm a bit sick of software stuff right now, but in this case, the vst has a more "hi-fi" sound. However i still want to have a real SC module.

Thank you for this great review and comparison. Actually I am blind so I couldn’t see all the eye candy on the screen but it’s very interesting to hear all over your talk and all of the sounds. In the mid 90s I had the JV 80 and I was longing for the SC 88 pro actually.

The drum track had some significant distortion on the VST. The panning effects worked the same. Overall, I wouldn’t be able to tell any difference if you use one over the other.

good to know there is software for sale but I prefer the actual unit as I have gone dawless which has increased my creative output tenfold. but honestly couldn't tell the difference between the two.

What a great comparison shootout! Shoutout to Speedy for doing a fabulous job in this video. Some great tracks too, well done! Always wondered how close the plugin actually sounds like the original.. Well, watching this video sure answered that! They sound extremely close, in my opinion. The only difference I hear, is that there is a bit more clarity, or should I say, more in the higher frequencies. But that probaly has to do with the analog outputs on the hardware version, and the cleaner sound, and higher samplerate, from the software VST. Very interesting video guys :).

The differences are minimal between the two. In a few places, it did seem as if the VST had a slightly cleaner or more clinical sound than the original hardware - likely the result of the difference in bit depth. Where there was a difference, I think I preferred the original.

Hi Woody, at 14:55 you say that vst sounds clearer because of 48 KHz sampling rate while the hardware is 32 bits DAC, did you mean 32 KHz? From what i know the SC-88 sampling rate is 32 KHz and also comparing bit resolution with sampling rate doesn't match, because bit rate is about dynamic range and sampling rate is about frequency.

Welp, guess I'm getting that VST. Retouch some of my old General MIDI Doom mod tracks and maybe even get back into doing GM music every now and then. Thanks for the video, very informative!

Only tiny difference is in high tones (different DAC rate as your mentioned), but even that is pretty hard to catch (dunno how much difference is youtube compression thingie doing, might be more noticable on raw output).

Very close comparison, I think at 14:32 I did notice brighter transients in the software emulation. It has a lot to do with what mix of instruments you're hearing. Pretty cool what they've been able to accomplish with software!

Uh...You played the music on the software emulator, and you said you're going to compare it with the hardware counterpart? I didn't catch that in this video. Can you show me where you compared them? Like same music, different playing media?

it is absolutely crazy you can't buy this plugin Stand Alone from Roland. You have to rent it, and get a subscription on their Roland Cloud service. Absolutely garbage.

I wonder if they will ever release a StudioCanvas vst

It should also be noted that there is an iOS version of this virtual sound canvas appropriately called sound canvas released by Roland.

Starts @ 11:27 Took 17 mins to compare a total of 2 track segments for about 2 minutes of actual sound comparison time. Bravo.

Hello and thank you for the nice Video. What a shame (just joke) you forget to mention the Sound Canvas Flagship ever! The Edirol/Roland Studio Canvas SD-90, very rare and difficult to find. I own one brand new, I love the old Studio Canvas gear. Aside this I own the SC88 Pro and two brand new Roland SC-8850. Is it possible to get the MIDI Files, or can you recommend some good website for download such a files? Best Regards from Switzerland

Korg XG midi soft synth was the best 20 years ago... and now it's quite powerfull. Roland was always dull on PC soft synths

The vst version sounds really good, I think it sounds a little better (: