Ibarch

Last time I was in the Leeds branch of PMT, they had the Nord Stage 4, Roland Fantom 8, Roland Fantom 08, Korg Nautilus SE, Yamaha ModX (I think, a Yamaha something anyway) in addition to a range of synths inckuding a PolyBrute, Hydrasynth Deluxe, and even a latest issue Mini Moog. They were all available to play. I was quite taken aback. They even had a Roland rep working the floor. It's not too far from your end of Yorkshire. If you avoid school holidays when the kids come out to make their beats, you usually can play as long as you want. I've found the staff pretty helpful too. There's nothing like getting hands on to see what stands out.

Roland RD-300sx Around 30lbs and a decent action. First fully weighted keyboard I owned. Has both DIN and USB Midi ports.

The Fantom 0 is half the price of the full monty and still offers a lot of the Fantom experience. If you don't mind losing the v-piano, nyzme synth and model expansions and can accept the lesser keyboard actions, it is a good budget option. The Zen-core synth engine is pretty good and you get very deep editing options with it. I really like the VTW organs and the Roland synth sounds blow me away every time. It includes 15 free expansion libraries but I've not seen anything added to this collection for a good few years. Maybe it might get a model expansion like its big brother some day. Your 'great pianos' criteria may be more problematic. I would say the supernatural ones are good and work great in a mix with some careful EQ but great would be stretching it. As long as you don't put it side by side with a Yamaha CP4 or Kawai ES920, you may not notice that much.

It is a single button press (the param button) on the Fantom 0 when on one of the virtual tone wheel (VTW) organ sounds to switch the 8 faders to drawbars. May even be a setting to do this by default. The 9th drawbar is only on the touch screen. Works OK for an occasional organ patch but would drive a serious organ player mad. It's been a while since I cast ears on a VR organ, so can't verify how similar the Fantom sounds. If my memory isn't deceiving me again, I recall only 3 organ sounds on VR09. The Fantom has 25 VTW presets. Some are variations with different effects but I'm sure there are many more than 3 base sounds here. I don't remember a brake function either but I could be wrong. To me the VTW organs are great, so much better than the Zen-core ones in the Fantoms and RD-88. They arn't quite as good as my Blue3 plugin on the PC but are quite close.

I expected to see more love for Nord here, especially given the cost of their boards. Sponsorship is practically the only way to be able to afford them. It seems Yamaha, Korg and Hammond still hold significant mindshare in our little corner of the music world. For me personally it would be a marriage between Kawai pianos and Roland synths. Kawai Concert Artist piano Kawai ES920 Roland Fantom 8

That's an interesting theory but not one that makes much sense to me. If Roland were the only show in town, then making your virtual instruments hard to use to prop up your hardware sales might be a thing. In reality, if the Roland virtual instruments don't work well, there is always Arturia, Korg, NI or a bucket full of other stuff to go and buy. It is possible Roland believe that their sound is so unique and so desirable, customers won't jump ship but that would be quite the gambit. I don't quite understand why Midi PC support is missing. It seems such an obvious feature. My best guess is that a product owner has got sucked into the marketing persona whirlpool and decided that Jed the EDM producer, their main persona, wouldn't use Midi so it isn't important. I've seen this clueless behaviour and lack of real world understanding on many a software development project over the years.

I'm a big fan of the Fantom. Upgraded from my RD-88 to a Fantom 08 a few months ago. Would have gone with the full one but needed something I'm physically capable of carrying around to gigs with my dodgy back. The full Fantom has a huge library of Zen-core sounds, plus the vpiano, the nzyme synth, virtual tone wheel organs, the supernatural sounds of which the strings are superb and now the new ACB model expansions (at extra cost). With 16 parts available it can make some incredible sounds. With the easily assignable sliders, drum pads , pots, both mod wheels and the roland paddle it makes a great controller keyboard too. And then there is the audio interface with 32 parts direct into your DAW and integration into Logic, Mainstage, Ableton Live and Cubase amongst others. Having the transport controls on the board when recording is very nice. Shouldn't forget about the sampler and pattern sequencer too, even if both are somewhat cut down versions. That is a whole lot of functionality in the one board.

I have a cheap Casio which I use for open mics and practices, than runs on rechargeable batteries. Better than a wall wart and a internal power supply. No cable to forget or fall over. Best option of all. I would like to see keyboards come with rechargeable batteries that could last long enough for one and a half of my longest gigs. Not sealed in like the nonsense in phones and tablets. In a user replaceable format that can easily be swapped out in moments with another, so I can keep a charged battery pack in reserve. Power leads are so last century.

Unless it is named differently, no. The main pianos are X-Ultimate RD Grand X-Pure Grand

For something comparable, take a look at the Kawai ES120 / ES520. I used to prefer Roland pianos until I tried Kawai. For both sound and action, in my opinion Kawai has Roland beat. I've still got my venerable RD-300sx which is almost 20 years old. It has been retired from road duty and is enjoying the more sedate environment at my local church. When looking to replace this for gigging last year, I almost got the ES520. I ended up buying an RD-88 due to the vastly superior synths and Zen-core engine but it didn't come close to the ES520 for piano. The RD-88 shares the same PHA-4 keybed as the FP-30x. It is good but it isn't Kawai good.

Once the scene/zone/tone design is understood, everything should slot into place. Roland use this on other boards too such as the Fantoms. Whilst the RD-88 offers a lot, the programming interface is poor. Menu upon menu, no jog wheel, no touch screen, a tiny display. It makes it harder to setup that it should be. Plus the lack of any proper library app for a computer. It isn't even possible to backup/restore individual scenes, it is all or nothing. Take a look at the Fantom 0 series for how it should have been done.

The Favourites feature is for shortcuts to scenes, not sounds (tones). So, to save a tone, you need to create and save a scene, then add this to favourites. 1. Find an empty (initial) scene. 2. Set the selected sound for bagpipes into zone 1. 3. Rename the scene and save it. 4. Press Favourite [Bank] button then your chosen bank number, from 0 - 9 5. Press and hold the Favourite [On] button and the choose the number to save to, from 0 - 9.

Surface Pro 6 refurbs start around £330\$400 for an i5 8GB ram and 256 GB SSD. And that is a full PC with Windows 10. This is the earliest model I would recommend.

That makes my gigging age 70. And to think, the wife thought my beard aged me.

It seems a simple choice between making the sound check, with setting up twice or missing the sound check and taking pot luck with the sound. If you go with the latter, don't give the sound guy a hard time.

For older boards, as long as you have a reasonable interface (not some no name Chinese box from Amazon), latency should not be an issue. Newer boards with class compliant USB drivers still need dedicated ASIO drivers on Windows. MacOS users may be able to confirm if they play practically latency free without a dedicated interface, I don't know. Regarding the virtual instruments, I notice a similar disconnect on a few but most feel fine. There is a lot of better quality stuff out there than what you mention. Try a free trial of some other libraries. The VSL pianos are very good. Some people really like Pianoteq. Plenty of others too. Personally I don't notice a difference in feel between my keyboards onboard sounds or using it with Keyscape on my PC.

Whilst Nords may be mighty fine instruments, I have never gelled with them. I simply don't like the feel of the keybeds. I'm not a fan of their controls either but maybe that is a lack of familiarity. But fixed split points? That does it. I'm out.

I use a single weighted keyboard for playing pianos, synths and the occasional organ patch. I think that I am playing the synths and organs well enough but all this talk about having second unweighted boards is raising some doubts. I learned classical piano to a decent standard as a kid and have always preferred weighted keybeds to synth style keys. Can synths be played properly on weighted keys or am I missing out something fundamental? Do others play synths on weighted keys too? What difference does having waterfall keys make to synth style keys when playing organ? Sorry if these seem stupid questions but these are the ones I never dared ask before.

If the itch is too much to ignore I would echo the advice that you need to get out and about and go looking for musicians. There is more good live music happening in Yorkshire than you may expect. Go and search out places that host live music. Talk to the people running events. Go and support gigs, get in conversations with others there, talk with the bands. You need to discover what is happening and become a part of a local scene. You may need to travel a little but you must have a good number of places within a 30 - 45 min radius. It likely won't be an instant fix, it make take some time. I would recommend committing one or two evenings each and every week if you are serious about it. Perseverence is key. Don't let a bad experience put you off, just move on to the next venue. And if you can sing and play, maybe invade an open mic or two. Give all those guitarists out there something to think about.

Roland have released a firmware update in the last week that addresses the polyphony issues. Seems to have made a decent improvement.

No worries. Have a good night. Test the setup again when you get time. Physically unplugging power adaptors can be different from running on battery. The transformers are active whilst power is going into the brick, which can still generate noise.

Worth swapping cables over in case one has broken. Have you run the exact setup elsewhere without issue? Did you try with the Surface Pro power adapter unplugged from the power socket?

Also, do your drums provide balanced line outs and are you using balanced cables? A standard jack cable is unbalanced but you can get balanced variants too, balanced lines arnt only found in XLR cables.

It doesn't sound like an earth loop. More like RF interference. Is it just one venue it happens at? Could be lights, dimmer switches for example. Are you using HDMI or any USB hub? These can be sources of interfere too. I had an issue this week with a very similar sounding noise in my studio. It only happened when my usb hub was plugged in. Tracked it down to an unshielded 3.5mm audio cable going from my monitor audio out to the speakers. It was picking up the noise from the monitor HDMI. The noise stopped if I unplugged the HDMI. Replaced the audio cable with a properly shielded one and the noise was gone. So I would check all your cables that are in your audio path, try swapping them out for others. One may be that ariel that is picking up the interference.

Yes. Compared to most Windows applications, it is pretty well optimised for touch. As a VST host, it doesn't control the UI of plugins but all it's own screens are designed to work fully with touch or mouse control. It's perfectly serviceable for scrolling through set lists, selecting songs, activating parts and switching elements on and off.