17 thoughts on “Roland GAIA SH-01 Demo

  1. I wasn't impressed with the original GAIA sound demos – but this makes me reconsider it, because it does a credible job of capturing a wide variety of classic synth sounds.

  2. Ouch! This is embarrassing? Why…is SweetWater so stuck in the past? And I'm over 50? I would like to hear some more sophisticated & modern applications-DubStep Wobbles-Drum & Bass-DownTempo synced parameter pad type sounds etc etc…:-)

  3. The design of the synth lends itself to the use of it to make "so 2000 and 8 so 2000 and late" as the Black Eyed Peas put it. Roland never had a clue how to look around at what kids are doing with musical equipment. Witness Roland seemed never to have any clue about the whole TB-303 movement and never capitalized on it. They still are incapable of creating buzz or anything. So Sweetwater comes up at least with something here to push these white doorstops. I don't fault Sweetwater at all.

  4. Some nice patches, but the filter does not sound so nice to my ears and when it comes to simulating e-pianos and organs I have the distinct feeling the old AN1x still beats the pants of this new synth. Not very interesting.

  5. agreed about the stuck part – not agreed about dubstep which i despise, but to each his own.. btw the synth sounded anemic and fairly weak to me in recreating these real analog patches – i dont doubt the gaia has its own strengths, but i dont think its in emulation

  6. The Gaia most certainly does NOT sound like an 01W – that’s hysterical to even put those two in the same sentence (yes, I still have an 01W that I only just turned on to see if that was even remotely possible – the 01W should sound so good). I never understood the SH-201 hate – true, it’s built, physically, like c@@p, but sounds decent in a mix. I know… To each his own, but not everything sounds great out of the box, and I’ve gotten great mileage out of the GAIA after spending a little time to program it against the real pieces I’m trying to emulate, It isn’t 100%, but can get pretty darn close to many. I do think it’s a bit expensive at $600 – I bought mine at $349 and have been very very happy. anemic… No. sounds terrific in a mix and thru a PA (Live, I use it alongside an Ultranova, MINIAK, Jd-XI, R3, and MicroX – I keep all the real analog at home, these days, but I can pretty much run the gamut with those and SMART programming). the GAIA’s 3 independent voices allow for some wild complexity – it’s only failure is the same as many other VAs – non independent capacitor driven (whether virtual or otherwise) envelopes…. It’ll never beat the real things — but judging off YouTube demos will often let you down.

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