Roland Zen-Core

[Moonglow]

Tossing out a wide-open question to y’all…

 

What are your thoughts on Roland’s Zen-Core engine?

 

I’m not sure how I feel about it. My experience has been with a Fantom where I found some of the “Scenes” to be very impressive (as well as the overall instrument) but thought many Zen-Core “Tones” sounded somewhat flat or dull. I understand that it may be difficult to disentangle Zen-Core from the features associated with its host keyboard, but in general, where does it excel? Where does it fall short? How do you feel it compares to other Roland engines (e.g., Supernatural)?

 

I’m mostly interested in hardware applications.

 

Thanks!

[ProfD]

41 minutes ago, Moonglow said:

My experience has been with a Fantom where I found some of the “Scenes” to be very impressive (as well as the overall instrument) but thought many Zen-Core “Tones” sounded somewhat flat or dull.

I do not have 1st hand experience with Zen Core but I've heard a similar sentiment from other Roland users. 

 

Hopefully, someone else will chime in who can explain whether that is a by-product of the software or some disconnect with the hardware. 😎

[GovernorSilver]

My entry into the ZenCore world was the Roland MC-101.   I'd read positive reports about it and heard and saw some demos that l liked - I should note this was on a forum focused on electronic music-making.  So when good ol Black Friday sales came up, I ordered one. 

 

I found quite a few presets that I liked, but eventually wanted to be able to edit presets more than the MC-101's limited synth editing capability would allow.  So I bought an MC-707 when I found a deal.  MC-707 has much nicer UI than the 101 but quite a bit of menu-diving may still be required for preset editing, depending on what you need to do.  There was this one preset from one of the add-on sound packs - Cinematic Beds I think - that I liked but was not velocity-sensitive.  It took me quite a bit of manual reading, video watching and plain old trial-and-error to figure out the velocity mappings and how to assign aftertouch so I could get some volume swells and filter changes with AT.

 

Some synth heads nerd out over number of LFOs, mod matrixes with 20+ sources to 20+ destinations, etc.  If you're one of those, I can't help much.  I'm more of a "modify an existing preset" kind of user, not a deep sound designer type.

 

If you rely heavily on rompler tones, the usual conventions apply - if you've always been a Yamaha person for this type of sampled instrument, or a Korg person for that type of sample, etc. I'm not sure the samples included in ZenCore will sway you.  The piano samples are usable, but I seem to be more of a Yamaha kind of person when it comes to rompler pianos.   

 

I think ZenCore excels at virtual analog.   I also like a lot of the presets that are hybrid VA/rompler.   

 

I don't think ZenCore includes the acoustic instrument behavior modeling of SuperNATURAL.  The ZenCore rompler sounds seem to be just regular sample-playback, with a modest number of velocity layers and stuff.  Some of Roland's offerings include both ZenCore and SuperNATURAL - of course the prices for those are quite a bit higher than the MC-101's which is bottom-of-the-line ZenCore.

[ElmerJFudd]

Zencore is impossible to define… it’s so inclusive of everything they had, have and will have.  I think it very much sounds like post Y2K Roland.  

[Moonglow]

Yeah, I realize my question was rather broad. The Jupiter-8 and Juno-106 programs sounded great. I seemed to notice the dullness more so when Zen-Core wasn’t trying to be something else, if that makes any sense.

[Tom Williams]

My main problem with Zencore (I have an AX-Edge) is that I am an amateur musician / cheapskate.  I have the $3/month subscription, but have hardly touched it in two years because it only allows you to use the basic editor -- something like 5 parameters.  To get the full editor I would have to pay some $250 per year, last I checked.  Add to that the horrendous uselessness of the Ax-Edge editor, and I become very sad....

[realtrance]

I've grown into a real fan of Zencore, am a member of Roland Cloud, etc. and have a Jupiter Xm (couldn't justify the full-size X in my space and at this point in my life).

 

In a nutshell, Zencore is a compendium and evolution of Roland's core technologies since JV-1080 days (or maybe even JD-800 days, really). It's basically the same architecture, and a library of approximately 4,000 patches, covering the whole history of SR-JV forward, up to the present-day work done for the Axe Edge and the MCs and Zencore keyboards (Jupiter X/Xm, Juno X).

 

I won't bore you with the marketing distinctions between ACB (Analog Circuit Behavior) tech being promoted for the AIRA stuff (System-1 and System-8) vs. the ABM (Analog Behavior Modeling) for Zencore. Suffice to say with the latter Roland have essentially extended their VA tech, past what was on the JD-Xa when it released, so that you have much finer (1024 values vs. 127) control in a number of areas, and a wider variety of filter types to choose from (still wrapped around the typical R for Roland, M for Moog and S for Sequential they've had for their VCFs for years now).

 

It sounds as good as it always has. Roland have a tendency to ship with patches which are pretty complex in their initial design, but also quite conservative, some would say "vanilla," in sonic timbral result. Once you grow familiar with the architecture, though, it's very easy to massage those patches into something you prefer, and the design and control is as subtle as it is on any other synth, just, because of Roland's heavily layered architecture, a bit more work.

 

If you buy an instrument primarily to play, as I recall you do, you may find the core sound a little too vanilla; if it's too late in your life to dig into patch tweaking, that may prove a limitation. But the kinds of tweaks one needs doing are pretty basic, after all; if you're a synthesist, you know how to get where you're going, and the science and psychoacoustics of doing so are no different here than they are on any other synth.

 

Roland Cloud was frustrating for a good long while, primarily because Roland Cloud Manager started off as a pretty amateur piece of software, developed by and under the control of Virtual Sonics up in Seattle, WA. It has improved dramatically the past few years, though, and is far more transparent and less intrusive than it has been.

 

I consider Roland Cloud right up there with Arturia now, and NI, as companies well worth a coupla hundred bucks a year to have access to not only everything that's been done, but the ongoing new work on the way in their online suite offerings. Roland Cloud just released an ACB emulation of the Jupiter-4 that works as a VST on your PC/Mac (I use it now on an M2 Mac Air), and it's absolutely lovely, and as far as I'm concerned, true to the subtleties and overtones of the original (those thinking of ditching their JP-4s for it might pause and have other opinions, as always). It also "plugs out" to the System-8, but not the Zencore synths.

 

Hope that's useful! :)

 

[AnotherScott]

On 8/5/2022 at 4:30 PM, Moonglow said:

where does it excel? Where does it fall short? How do you feel it compares to other Roland engines (e.g., Supernatural)?

 

ZEN-Core seems to basically be a combination of their "rompler" engine and their VA synthesis.

 

For VA Synthesis, it seems to offer everything that the earlier SuperNATURAL Synth did (or close to it), plus a lot more. I haven't really examined VA enough to have much definitive to say about it, except that it sounds good to me. ;-) Really, VA is such a hard thing to quantify. I mean, we all know what a piano or violin should sound like, and can point to ways one brand's emulation of it seems better or worse than another, but how do you even gauge which has the better sound of a "Martian Landscape" or whatever? I think once you get past discussing things like stairstepping and aliasing, what's "better" starts becoming almost entirely subjective. I remember there was a lot of discussion at one point about whether the 7 (?)  "VA" waveforms of SuperNATURAL were indeed algorithmically generated vs. being single cycle PCM. My feeling was, if you can even argue about it, it's already at least darn good, regardless of what tricks they may have employed to achieve the results. Competitively, Yamaha doesn't have VA in a multi-function board, Kurzweil has it but through a very cumbersome interface if you want to do anything with it beyond play a preset. I can't say I really have a sense of how Roland compares here with the VA Korg offers in a Nautilus/Kronos.

 

The PCM rompler side is where I feel ZEN-Core lags. When I'm looking for acoustic stuff (strings, horns, winds, reeds, voices, ethnic instruments, etc.), I'm more likely to find a sound I prefer on a Yamaha, Korg, or Kurzweil. Part of that may be architectural, in that Roland is limited to 4 partials (the velocity layers or alternate articulations that comprise a sound, what Yamaha calls elements, etc.), which is less than any of those other brands (but not as low as Nord, who is still stuck at 1, except for the samples in their piano library). Part of it may be that they are limited to one dedicated effect per sound, whereas those others permit two or more. Part of it may be that so much of their library still comes from the 20+ year old XV-5080 and other old products. Yamaha, Korg, and Kurzweil still use plenty of old sample data as well, but I think Roland has the most significant amount of stuff that goes back quite THAT far. But there are also the variables that always come with samples... the quality of the sampled instrument, the technique of the player, the experience of the engineer, the characteristics of the studio and gear used to capture it. I think this may be what has traditionally given Yamaha their edge, since their resources here are probably unparalleled. Heck, they actually manufacture most of those other instruments in the first place!

 

Where Roland sonically does have something special to offer here, I think, is outside of ZEN-Core... the SuperNATURAL Acoustic tones, which incorporate behavior modeling. It creates some very nicely playable sounds that, even if not always quite as impressive played note-to-note compared to some other brand, can sometimes more effortlessly play in such a way as to give you, in some respects, a more authentic sounding performance. Typically, only arrangers do this kind of thing, and it's nice to see it offered in other kinds of gear. Coincidentally, I also just discussed this a bit in the Genos thread, at https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/182958-no-love-for-genos-here-and-some-personal-ramblings/?do=findComment&comment=2908241

 

[Moonglow]

Thank you realtrance and AnotherScott, that was incredibly informative and helpful. 

[ElmerJFudd]

2 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

 

ZEN-Core seems to basically be a combination of their "rompler" engine and their VA synthesis.

 

For VA Synthesis, it seems to offer everything that the earlier SuperNATURAL Synth did (or close to it), plus a lot more. I haven't really examined VA enough to have much definitive to say about it, except that it sounds good to me. 😉 Really, VA is such a hard thing to quantify. I mean, we all know what a piano or violin should sound like, and can point to ways one brand's emulation of it seems better or worse than another, but how do you even gauge which has the better sound of a "Martian Landscape" or whatever? I think once you get past discussing things like stairstepping and aliasing, what's "better" starts becoming almost entirely subjective. I remember there was a lot of discussion at one point about whether the 7 (?)  "VA" waveforms of SuperNATURAL were indeed algorithmically generated vs. being single cycle PCM. My feeling was, if you can even argue about it, it's already at least darn good, regardless of what tricks they may have employed to achieve the results. Competitively, Yamaha doesn't have VA in a multi-function board, Kurzweil has it but through a very cumbersome interface if you want to do anything with it beyond play a preset. I can't say I really have a sense of how Roland compares here with the VA Korg offers in a Nautilus/Kronos.

 

The PCM rompler side is where I feel ZEN-Core lags. When I'm looking for acoustic stuff (strings, horns, winds, reeds, voices, ethnic instruments, etc.), I'm more likely to find a sound I prefer on a Yamaha, Korg, or Kurzweil. Part of that may be architectural, in that Roland is limited to 4 partials (the velocity layers or alternate articulations that comprise a sound, what Yamaha calls elements, etc.), which is less than any of those other brands (but not as low as Nord, who is still stuck at 1, except for the samples in their piano library). Part of it may be that they are limited to one dedicated effect per sound, whereas those others permit two or more. Part of it may be that so much of their library still comes from the 20+ year old XV-5080 and other old products. Yamaha, Korg, and Kurzweil still use plenty of old sample data as well, but I think Roland has the most significant amount of stuff that goes back quite THAT far. But there are also the variables that always come with samples... the quality of the sampled instrument, the technique of the player, the experience of the engineer, the characteristics of the studio and gear used to capture it. I think this may be what has traditionally given Yamaha their edge, since their resources here are probably unparalleled. Heck, they actually manufacture most of those other instruments in the first place!

 

Where Roland sonically does have something special to offer here, I think, is outside of ZEN-Core... the SuperNATURAL Acoustic tones, which incorporate behavior modeling. It creates some very nicely playable sounds that, even if not always quite as impressive played note-to-note compared to some other brand, can sometimes more effortlessly play in such a way as to give you, in some respects, a more authentic sounding performance. Typically, only arrangers do this kind of thing, and it's nice to see it offered in other kinds of gear. Coincidentally, I also just discussed this a bit in the Genos thread, at https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/182958-no-love-for-genos-here-and-some-personal-ramblings/?do=findComment&comment=2908241

 

I’m curious which architecture is more similar to Roland’s superNatural engine… AWM2 or SCM.  Yamaha seems to be hesitant to make heavy use of modeling acoustic instruments since the VL era.  While Roland has embraced it in products since the V-Piano.  

[AnotherScott]

9 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

I’m curious which architecture is more similar to Roland’s superNatural engine… AWM2 or SCM.  Yamaha seems to be hesitant to make heavy use of modeling acoustic instruments since the VL era.  While Roland has embraced it in products since the V-Piano.  

First, remember there is no Roland SuperNATURAL engine... there are TWO, and they are completely distinct, so discussions have to handle them separately. There's SuperNATURAL Synth and SuperNATURAL Acoustic. Then to complicate things more, the latter is a catch-all phrase for a variety of different kinds of acoustic modeling approaches.

 

The nearest current Yamaha equivalent to Roland's SuperNATURAL Synth would appear to be AN (found in the Reface CS).

 

I'd say the nearest Yamaha equivalent to Roland's SuperNATURAL Acoustic when used for behavior modeling in things like horns and strings (the kind of thing I was discussing earlier) would be Super Articulation (SA, or sometimes referred to as SA1) and Super Articulation 2 (SA 2, or SA2). SA is found in lots of Yamaha arrangers. SA 2 is found only in Genos, and its top-of line (tyros) predecessors (I'm not sure going how far back). But then Roland also uses the SuperNATURAL Acoustic phrase to describe pianos/EPs, which don't exhibit the same kinds of modeled behaviors as those orchestral instruments (e.g. having to do with variations that occur that are relevant to pitch bend, the particular intervals between played notes, etc... things not applicable to piano behavior modeling); instead modeling is used to eliminate perceptible velocity shifts and loops and implement sympathetic resonances (though that part appears to be lessened/absent from the SuperNATURAL pianos in the Fantoms), and I believe the nearest Yamaha equivalent to that is SCM. I didn't discuss that kind of modeling at all in my previous post... I think I tend to forget it because, modeling or not, I've never really cared for the SuperNATURAL pianos/EPs. ;-)

 

Roland also has V-Piano, which originally was distinct from SuperNATURAL Acoustic piano, because the latter was a hybrid of sampling and modeling while V-Piano was pure modeling. But then I read that some of the SuperNATURAL Acoustic pianos in some models (e.g. FP-90) are, themselves, fully modeled. So how and where they're determining which terminology to use is a bit of a mystery to me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[realtrance]

I believe V-Piano, and RD, for Roland, is much more like what Modartt's Pianoteq is -- purely a physical modeling process, developed mathematically, no sampling involved.

 

This is the dilemma with all these keyboards, regardless of manufacture, vs. other techniques now which really require a PC of some sort to support. They simply aren't built with either the CPU performance, RAM or bus bandwidth to handle the same level of sampling and phrase articulation which can now be taken as standard and extensive in PC/Mac-based technologies.

 

The question is really whether the microarticulations and expressiveness and modeling capabilities possible in the latter environment is "necessary" in everyday use, especially for either gigging or the kind of orchestration being done regularly for film, tv and online media.

 

Take Pianoteq as one example. Modartt have released a significant number of incredibly detailed models of pianos, many of them endorsed by the piano manufacturers themselves (Steinway, Bechstein, Bluthner, Petrov). I find this kind of thing fascinating, and invested years ago in "Pianoteq Pro," which essentially gives you access to the complete controls over all of the physical modeling parameters (it ain't cheap, but if you're interested in physical modeling, it's a benchmark, and a source of a serious education therein). The caveat here is that aside from solo performance and recording, you're going to lose the expressiveness and subtlety of all that detail quite quickly, the moment you start to combine the piano with other instruments. Psychoacoustic tells us simply (I know I'm lecturing to the informed here <G>) that the moment you have more complex sounds hitting the ear, all sorts of masking effects start to "distort" the sound being processed by ear and brain, and the result is highly different from hearing sounds distinctly in an environment where there is no "noise."

 

Nevertheless, if you're a pianist, like I am or at least was, trained deeply in the baroque/classical/romantic/modern repertoire, combining Pianoteq with the right keyboard interface is going to give you something you find nowhere else for simulation of playing a real piano.

 

At the other extreme, take Native Instruments' many, wonderful, massive sampled libraries of individual instruments and small ensembles, orchestra sections and percussion. With I think Cremona Quartet and Stradivari Cello and Guarneri Violin, Native Instruments has on offer (sorry if this is sounding like an ad!) some of the most incredible sample-based models of instruments possible now. These also come with an extensive library each of programmed microarticulations and a large variety of expressive phrases, which I suspect are primarily used in high-level professional film scoring at this point (the price for each would certainly suggest so).

 

Again, it's almost a lifetime of mastery needed to really use this level of microarticulative detail in way which does it justice and gives plausibility to any performance of these instruments recorded by someone who is not fully trained on these instruments; but it's an amazing study of the extent to which the practices of instrument playing surrounding each instrument can be captured in software, for those who understand these practices and can make use of them.

 

No keyboard instrument currently available can in itself, with its onboard technologies, compare with the above stuff, though the physically modeled work is much easier to manage with the typical resources available in a keyboard synth, as V-Piano/RD Piano and Yamaha's SA/SA2 work have proven.

 

I'd say, finally, going back to Zen Core: Roland has certainly not ignored the physical modeling aspect of microarticulations and circuit behavior in the history of their work, from the JP-8000, their first prominent effort in this direction, down to the latest ZenCore and AIRA libraries and models. They're much more secretive about the advances they've made and continue to make on these fronts, but I'm sure they haven't been standing still during all these years. There's an expressiveness to their latest synth work and patch design work which is a qualitative step forward in Zen Core from what they've done before. You can hear it most readily, I think, in the ACB models, the separate models of Roland's modeling of their own vintage history in Roland Cloud (available outside Zen Core), and most immediately, say, in the patches made for the Axe Edge, which is like the V-Synth designed most specifically to highlight the microarticulation technologies used to impart greater expressiveness to synth-based instruments.

 

It all remains a very satisfying study to me in my old age, as you can tell! :)

[ElmerJFudd]

I’m certain excellent realism of sample libraries, intended stage use with bands, and the time it takes to develop SCM sounds is why Yamaha focused on AWM2 for the current CP line’s sounds. It would be nice in an update to learn that string and pedal resonance could be handled by the processing and added.  But I’m not holding my breath. 

I agree Zencore’s models of their classic analogues are very good, only coming up short at the finest of detail compared to System-8 in order to bypass polyphony limitations.  That’s where the tech is today, so that’s what we get. 
 

It’s interesting on Kronos, specs are… 

 

“Kronos / X: Intel Atom D510/D525 processor soldered on an Intel D510MO/D525MW motherboard Kronos 2: Intel Atom D2550 processor on an ASRock IMB-140D Plus motherboard”

 

 By dropping all the weight of consumer operating systems Korg is running a full workstation on relatively inexpensive hardware.  We see what is possible on devices like V3 Grand Piano.  
 

Apple is expected to scale up the M2 4x in the 2023 Mac Pro.  I don’t think we’re too far off from MI developers having the processing they need to deliver what Spectrasonics, Uhe, and others are doing on PC/Mac.  

[AnotherScott]

6 hours ago, realtrance said:

I believe V-Piano, and RD, for Roland, is much more like what Modartt's Pianoteq is -- purely a physical modeling process, developed mathematically, no sampling involved.

Yes (and apparently some SuperNATURAL pianos may fall into this category as well, as on the FP-90). And Pianoteq and Roland's modeled pianos share something else in common... a perception by many of their strengths and weaknesses. Pianoteq and Roland's modeled pianos are often lauded for how natural they feel to play (from the right action), but when listening to it as an audience member (e.g. if you listen to a recording of it), the traditionally sampled pianos are often preferred. Modeling may better respond to the player's intent? But if you're not the person playing, you don't know about the intent, you only know how much it does or doesn't sound like a real piano.

 

6 hours ago, realtrance said:

Modartt have released a significant number of incredibly detailed models of pianos, many of them endorsed by the piano manufacturers themselves (Steinway, Bechstein, Bluthner, Petrov).

I'm not sure these are "endorsements" per se. I assume Modartt is paying a license for use of the name. Now, logically, you could say that a company likely would not want to license their name to put on a piece of crap product that would reflect badly on them, so if you look at that implication, from that perspective, they are at least endorsing it enough to say, this is pretty good, we're willing to have our name associated with it. But that doesn't mean, for example, that Steinway necessarily believes that Pianoteq is the absolute best computer implementation of the Steinway sound that there is. They might think Garritan is better, for all we know, but Garritan may not have tried to license the name, or may have found it cost prohibitive, or maybe Pianoteq had already worked out their license agreement and it was exclusive... we don't know the ins and outs, but I'd be hesitant to necessarily read too much into what you see as the "endorsement."

 

6 hours ago, realtrance said:

At the other extreme, take Native Instruments' many, wonderful, massive sampled libraries...These also come with an extensive library each of programmed microarticulations and a large variety of expressive phrases...it's almost a lifetime of mastery needed to really use this level of microarticulative detail in way which does it justice and gives plausibility to any performance of these instruments recorded by someone who is not fully trained on these instruments

The other aspect of this is those "scoring" libraries are not typically ideally suited to live performance. Articulations are carefully controlled by the player, which provides the utmost in detailed control, but can practically turn almost every played line into a 2-hand operation. This differs from what we're talking about in these keyboards, where so much is algorithmically determined as you play, leaving you more free to play full chords and 2-handed parts, as is required for live performance as opposed to multi-tracking a score. There was some good conversation about this at https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/169260-controlling-dynamics-via-modwheel-in-live-playing/#comments -- it's worth reading the whole thing, as it really gets into this stuff as it progresses, and it's where I first learned about this myself! Also check out the related thread I referenced in that thread, except the link there takes you to the wrong starting point, the right one should be https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/169193-possible-future-software-rig-does-it-beat-the-best-hardware/page/4/#comment-2679633

 

6 hours ago, realtrance said:

There's an expressiveness to their latest synth work and patch design work which is a qualitative step forward in Zen Core from what they've done before. You can hear it most readily, I think, in the ACB models

ACB (Analog Circuit Behavior) is not part of ZEN-Core. The modeled VA synths within ZEN-Core are ABM (Analog Behavior Modeling). ACB models the original analog circuitry to produce the relevant sound, ABM models the result, the sound itself. ACB is more accurate, but is more processor intensive, which is also why ABM provides greater polyphony.

 

55 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

I agree Zencore’s models of their classic analogues are very good, only coming up short at the finest of detail compared to System-8 in order to bypass polyphony limitations.

Right... System 8 is ACB.

 

Roland Cloud has both ACB and ABM based emulations available.

[realtrance]

All thoughtful and excellent and informative replies; I've always relied on people here to provide in-depth, reliable and trustworthy info on these things. I try my best to do myself, from my own hobbyist enthusiasm.

 

You're quite right re: sampled piano vs. modeled; modeled for audiences tends to sound too lightweight and thin, compared with the sampled-piano work. The latter may not be as micro-responsive, but they often represent the sonics of the piano, particularly at high and low registers, more accurately from a listening perspective.

 

In any event, as is emphasized by the rejoinders, there are very good reasons all the major keyboard MI manufacturers stick with the approaches they have, and they're not in the least bad, IMHO, and obviously have done the job for decades now, and will continue to do so.  Roland and I suspect Yamaha and Korg as well are all extremely conscientious about the pressures on MIDI and internal bandwidth in the performance aspects of a keyboard, and those factors have to provide constraints on everything else that can be done, including the more niche issues of poly aftertouch, MPE and the like. I'm certainly not one to imagine second-guessing them and complaining about "cheaping out on RAM or CPU" or all the usual online crap; the engineering balance of providing just enough tech to do the job without getting in the way is, in my humble opinion at least, the real challenge of good engineering, not just using the maximum of what's available at its limit with every effort. Roland, Yamaha and Korg all excel at this.

[Tom Williams]

12 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

I'd say the nearest Yamaha equivalent to Roland's SuperNATURAL Acoustic when used for behavior modeling in things like horns and strings (the kind of thing I was discussing earlier) would be Super Articulation (SA, or sometimes referred to as SA1) and Super Articulation 2 (SA 2, or SA2). SA is found in lots of Yamaha arrangers. SA 2 is found only in Genos, and its top-of line (tyros) predecessors (I'm not sure going how far back).

Super-articulation makes more sense to me.  I still greatly miss my AX-Synth's SN violin, which AFAIK cannot be duplicated in ZEN Core nor on Kurzweil.

 

[AnotherScott]

31 minutes ago, Tom Williams said:

I still greatly miss my AX-Synth's SN violin, which AFAIK cannot be duplicated in ZEN Core

 

 

True, but but the SuperNATURAL strings (including, I believe, that violin) are available in Fantom/Fantom-0. These boards are ZEN-Core based, but they also include SuperNATURAL Acoustic tones that (AFAIK) have no relation to ZEN-Core.

[hag01]

Just want to add my opinion:
I had Roland FA-06 for about month and half. Two weeks after I bought it Roland Fantom-0 was released. Eventually I returned it and going to have a Fantom-06 instead for additional 600USD, at some point.
I don't have experience with  ZEN-Core yet, but as far as I know Fantom-0's ZEN-Core includes all the acoustic samples that included in the FA, and more.
So I know and knew before that those samples are from about 20 years ago, and here is what I think about them. The Roland FA has many dated acoustic samples which in my opinion are sub per in today's standard. But it does have few good presets of well sampled strings, brass, saxes, choir which are the most important for what I do along with keyboard instruments(AP, EP, EO, Clavs, etc..). It even has some decent Harpsichord presets which I'm fan of. It has like about three decent church organ presets which I'm also fan of, but this is really not enough because church organs have many configurations and actually I would like to have a full church organ modelling engine like they do for tone-wheel organs, but if not that, then at least like six presets of good sampled different popular pipe organ configurations. OK but this church\pipe organ thing is really a subject for another topic.

But, what I'm trying to say is, that although there are so many bad sounding dated samples in the ZEN-Core, the Fantom-0 still can be a practical instrument, along with the electric organ engine, virtual analog engine, and all other good features for live performance(while the FA's organ engine is also sub-per in my opinion, and that's ruing everything).
The guitar samples mostly are really bad, for example. And all sections of acoustic sound are hit and miss, many awful sound I'd never use, but in the most important sections there are always few good presets. Like, who needs guitar presets, you are going to play in a band, there will be a guitarist there anyway, and if not, I never found a keyboard that can replace a guitar anyway(that doesn't mean that the guitar samples in the FA are not sub-per).
Even the brass and the sax presets I like, don't get me wrong, I'd never try to replace a solo trumpet or solo sax with a keyboard, but I can use some section presets occasionally, for certain usages. Same for strings presets, and solo violin\cello\viola VS string pad...

I know that Fantom-0's ZEN-Core has additional samples and I do hope it has some better acoustic sounds among them, especially in the weak sections of the FA.

About Kurzweil, I had Kurzweil Forte once, while it has some great sounding acoustic sounds, it has some that are really bad, and obviously derived from ancient samples which are older than anything contemporary by Roland. Its strings are awesome, great celesta, ETC, but for example, I didn't find there even one acceptable choir sound, they sound like choir sounds from soundtracks of arcade games from the early 90's, and obviously those samples are as old as those video games.
Judging by my ears, some of the piano samples are also extremely old.

I have Yamaha MODX6, and Yamaha are clearly the kings of acoustic samples and sampling technology in general, among keyboard manufactures.
But I wanted a keyboard with unshaved keys(from their sides), a joystick instead of pair of wheels, virtual analogue engine and tone-wheel organ engine.

I also want great acoustic sounds and FM engine, and pipe organ modelling engine\deep sampled pipe organ, but I don't know a portable keyboard that has all these.
The closest thing is KORG Nautilus, but it is big, heavy, and the keys are about as narrow as the MODX6\7's keys...

[AnotherScott]

17 hours ago, hag01 said:

as far as I know Fantom-0's ZEN-Core includes all the acoustic samples that included in the FA, and more...I do hope it has some better acoustic sounds among them, especially in the weak sections of the FA.

It does have the same XV-5080 sounds, that's "Bank E" on the Fantoms, but then banks A, B, and CMN have a mix of additional acoustic and synth sounds, so there you'll find some other acoustic sounds that were not on the FA. Besides those, Fantom has the same SRX-based expansions as the FA, but you can load more of them simultaneously. Fantom is missing some of the SuperNATURAL Acoustic  tones of the FA, but it has many more SuperNATURAL Acoustic tones that the FA does not have.

 

 

17 hours ago, hag01 said:

About Kurzweil...some of the piano samples are also extremely old.

While Forte has Kurzweil's newest piano samples, yes, they still include their old "triple strike" as well.