there are versions that will run without the cloud. i'm not sure what the most recent one of them is, and how out of date it is. they probably work better in wine.

anyway the patent should be expired by now, and was when sound canvas VA was released, (2015 is more than 20 years after 1993) so sound canvas va probably does have fallback, and could if it doesn't.

It doesn't and updates stopped a few years ago, so chances are slim. It's a VST2 plugin and Steinberg's licensing forbids any new VST2 host software. That means you're stuck with existing solutions and the best ones are either closed source or in the form of a Windows only driver. Projects like Nuked SC-55 are the way forward, but the choice of license is unfortunate and misguided.

linedef-5 wrote on 2024-05-03, 02:19:

...
It's a VST2 plugin and Steinberg's licensing forbids any new VST2 host software.
...

This is not exactly true. It's true that Steinberg stopped issuing new VST2 licenses for developers and the new VST3 license prohibits distributing new VST2 software (both hosts and plugins).
But it is not true that you cannot make/distribute new VST2 software if you already have a VST2 license from Steinberg (before 2018).
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php? … 76589&start=398

Falcosoft wrote on 2024-05-03, 05:51:

if you already have a VST2 license from Steinberg (before 2018).

Well that's great for you isn't it?

wow. this is a real mess.

you can't make a vst host without a license.

vst3 is dual license, with one of them being gplv3.

Making a single vst3 host or plugin does lock you out of vst2. but as long as you do not have a vst3 license, it seems you can still update vst2 stuff.

I don't know if any of rolands vstis are vst3 yet, but if so, they can't update their vst2 stuff without converting them to vst3.

Steinberg really wants vst2 to die completely, it seems.

kode54 wrote on 2024-05-02, 06:12:

Another advantage of Nuked SC55 over SCVA is portability. I don’t really feel like spinning up a copy of Falcosoft MIDI Player in wine to host a virtual midi port on Linux. Then again, I guess it’s not much more or less overhead than running an instance of the emulator, except I have to use a drm free plugin for it to work under wine. Or is everyone running a full copy of Roland Cloud under wine as well?

Nuked SC-55 also means actually emulating a SC-55 from it's original ROMs where as SCVA is based on the SC-8820 which has a lot of differences such that "accurate" SC-55 playback on it isn't really possible.

DracoNihil wrote on 2024-05-04, 04:51:

kode54 wrote on 2024-05-02, 06:12:

Another advantage of Nuked SC55 over SCVA is portability. I don’t really feel like spinning up a copy of Falcosoft MIDI Player in wine to host a virtual midi port on Linux. Then again, I guess it’s not much more or less overhead than running an instance of the emulator, except I have to use a drm free plugin for it to work under wine. Or is everyone running a full copy of Roland Cloud under wine as well?

Nuked SC-55 also means actually emulating a SC-55 from it's original ROMs where as SCVA is based on the SC-8820 which has a lot of differences such that "accurate" SC-55 playback on it isn't really possible.

Those accuracy concerns are a little overblown. The SCVA emulates the SC-55 about 95-99% fine in actual practice. You'll need to look for small, minuscule differences for quite a while until you find that 5% (as only a small number of game soundtracks are affected, and in extremely minor ways), and even then, you'll only notice if you A/B compare it to real hardware *and* you're *really* listening, or you wrote the music yourself so you're completely familiar with it.

So in *actual practice*, the SCVA is virtually perfect for all intents and purposes. I'd say if you're just playing games, you'll never in a 100 years realise that I swapped out your SC-55 with the SCVA.

Don't get me wrong, the Nuked SC-55 is great, and the SCVA will essentially bitrot away as it's a dead product, apparently.

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-05-03, 21:32:

wow. this is a real mess. […]
Show full quote

wow. this is a real mess.

you can't make a vst host without a license.

vst3 is dual license, with one of them being gplv3.

Making a single vst3 host or plugin does lock you out of vst2. but as long as you do not have a vst3 license, it seems you can still update vst2 stuff.

I don't know if any of rolands vstis are vst3 yet, but if so, they can't update their vst2 stuff without converting them to vst3.

Steinberg really wants vst2 to die completely, it seems.

https://cleveraudio.org/

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-05-04, 07:00:

Those accuracy concerns are a little overblown. The SCVA emulates the SC-55 about 95-99% fine in actual practice. You'll need to […]
Show full quote

DracoNihil wrote on 2024-05-04, 04:51:

kode54 wrote on 2024-05-02, 06:12:

Another advantage of Nuked SC55 over SCVA is portability. I don’t really feel like spinning up a copy of Falcosoft MIDI Player in wine to host a virtual midi port on Linux. Then again, I guess it’s not much more or less overhead than running an instance of the emulator, except I have to use a drm free plugin for it to work under wine. Or is everyone running a full copy of Roland Cloud under wine as well?

Nuked SC-55 also means actually emulating a SC-55 from it's original ROMs where as SCVA is based on the SC-8820 which has a lot of differences such that "accurate" SC-55 playback on it isn't really possible.

Those accuracy concerns are a little overblown. The SCVA emulates the SC-55 about 95-99% fine in actual practice. You'll need to look for small, minuscule differences for quite a while until you find that 5% (as only a small number of game soundtracks are affected, and in extremely minor ways), and even then, you'll only notice if you A/B compare it to real hardware *and* you're *really* listening, or you wrote the music yourself so you're completely familiar with it.

So in *actual practice*, the SCVA is virtually perfect for all intents and purposes. I'd say if you're just playing games, you'll never in a 100 years realise that I swapped out your SC-55 with the SCVA.

Don't get me wrong, the Nuked SC-55 is great, and the SCVA will essentially bitrot away as it's a dead product, apparently.

I'd have to actually check again, but as someone who used a SC-D70 for his 55 for a while, I seem to remember there being quite big differences between them when I went to a mkII. Everything after the 55 and mkII changed how effects work, used much different DAC types (warm versus hifi), and the waveforms used are not the same in each case from memory either. I seem to remember some synth patches sounding very different (#81 "Saw Wave" maybe) and patch 49 "Strings" is quite different too.

Ultimately, it's inaccurate and unhelpful to say "there is no difference", especially if that is aimed at levelling the playing field between a commercial, hard to use product and a fan-made emulator. I don't see any advantage in sending the average person to SCVA.

Spikey wrote on 2024-05-04, 08:17:

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-05-04, 07:00:

Those accuracy concerns are a little overblown. The SCVA emulates the SC-55 about 95-99% fine in actual practice. You'll need to […]
Show full quote

DracoNihil wrote on 2024-05-04, 04:51:

Nuked SC-55 also means actually emulating a SC-55 from it's original ROMs where as SCVA is based on the SC-8820 which has a lot of differences such that "accurate" SC-55 playback on it isn't really possible.

Those accuracy concerns are a little overblown. The SCVA emulates the SC-55 about 95-99% fine in actual practice. You'll need to look for small, minuscule differences for quite a while until you find that 5% (as only a small number of game soundtracks are affected, and in extremely minor ways), and even then, you'll only notice if you A/B compare it to real hardware *and* you're *really* listening, or you wrote the music yourself so you're completely familiar with it.

So in *actual practice*, the SCVA is virtually perfect for all intents and purposes. I'd say if you're just playing games, you'll never in a 100 years realise that I swapped out your SC-55 with the SCVA.

Don't get me wrong, the Nuked SC-55 is great, and the SCVA will essentially bitrot away as it's a dead product, apparently.

I'd have to actually check again, but as someone who used a SC-D70 for his 55 for a while, I seem to remember there being quite big differences between them when I went to a mkII. Everything after the 55 and mkII changed how effects work, used much different DAC types (warm versus hifi), and the waveforms used are not the same in each case from memory either. I seem to remember some synth patches sounding very different (#81 "Saw Wave" maybe) and patch 49 "Strings" is quite different too.

Ultimately, it's inaccurate and unhelpful to say "there is no difference", especially if that is aimed at levelling the playing field between a commercial, hard to use product and a fan-made emulator. I don't see any advantage in sending the average person to SCVA.

Did I send anyone to use anything? 😀 You're saying that, not me 😀 I'm simply stating fact: based on my comparison, the difference between the SCVA in SC-55 mode and a real SC-55 is minuscule, and I fully stand behind that fact. Don't read more into it than what I actually said, mate 😀 Read back what I wrote, carefully, please.

Well, you can check out my recordings here, SCVA vs SC-55 then judge it for yourself instead to rely on unreliable memories.
https://blog.johnnovak.net/2023/03/05/grand-m … -midi-showdown/

You said your opinions are facts, for one thing 😉 But maybe I overread what you were saying.

I agree that SCVA is close. But given that it is inaccurate, designed to emulate a device which itself does not accurately emulate a SC-55, then it should not be held up or conflated with an accurate emulation, regardless of how close in actuality (or one's opinion) the two (SC-55, SCVA) compare.

Prior to Nuked's project, I'd say your point makes a lot more sense, as recommending every retro gamer to buy a Sound Canvas module is simply a non-starter of an idea, and SCVA is "close neough" in that sense. But now that we have nearly 100% accurate emulation, I think it makes a lot more sense to push people that way versus paying for an outdated and by design inaccurate product.

That said, I thought your blog page was quite accurate and well-written, and mostly factual! I was pleased to see the level of detail you went into.

Thanks, glad you liked my article 😀

I'm not trying to be difficult, but with all respect, I think you're putting words into my mouth 😀 I'm not steering anybody anywhere, I was merely reflecting to this statement of another poster, based on my experience and quite thorough research (I spent almost a month recording the materials and writing that article):

Nuked SC-55 also means actually emulating a SC-55 from it's original ROMs where as SCVA is based on the SC-8820 which has a lot of differences such that "accurate" SC-55 playback on it isn't really possible.

Yeah, so I strongly disagree with the "lot of differences" part. I'd say the SCVA is mostly accurate, to the point that regular people will find it difficult to find any difference unless they actively train themselves to hear said differences and know what to listen for exactly. Roland did a very good job emulating the SC-55 in the SC-8820 and consequently in the SCVA. I go into detailed analysis about those differences in my article that I found when comparing 40+ DOS game soundtracks' renditions on the SC-55 vs SCVA. Yeah, those differences bother me a little, but it would be dishonest for me to say "there are a lot of differences". The differences are extremely minor—but yeah, for a "purist" they can be annoying, no doubt.

I'm very happy about Nuked SC-55, of course, and discussing the SCVA might be a moot point. However, I have a compulsion to correct factually wrong statements—I'm annoying like that 😀

I wouldn't really say this is only my "opinion". Opinions are something like "I like this book", or "I did not enjoy that movie". When you do A/B tests, or better, blind A/B/X tests to eliminate expectation bias, and form a viewpoint based on that, that goes beyond mere "opinion" and starts approaching "facts" very quickly (if you have a functional ear 😀) I'd say my hearing is more attuned to small details than that of an average human too because of spending more than 30 years doing music as a hobby.

Having said all that, based on my A/B tests (here we go again 😀), the Nuked SC-55 is basically flawless, and beats the SCVA (if that's what you wanted to hear 😀). Except for the analog stage emulation... Both the SCVA and the Nuked SC55 suffer from some "wimpiness" on bass and transient heavy materials as I explained in my article. But that's not too surprising as they only emulate the digital parts of the box, and the slight analog saturation/distortion part is missing. However, that part is relatively easy to add or fake with some extra saturator stages.

Peace 😀

To me Nuked SC55 is a very significant sonic upgrade over SCVA in SC55 mode. For one the drums in Nuked SC55 have a better defined impact, whereas SCVA in SC55 map mode the drums impact is smoothed over and the cymbals ring out a fractions of a second too long.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-05-04, 07:00:

and the SCVA will essentially bitrot away as it's a dead product, apparently.

Wait, what? Roland doesn't let you buy it anymore?

you can still buy it. $69 for a lifetime license. but you still have to be logged into roland cloud, though it's possible to have a free account which only gives you zenology lite, and then use the 69$ lifetime membership.

having acquired it, it's possible to patch around the cloud issue.

It's going to die because Steinberg wants vst2 to die, and the drm may fail in a newer operating system.

If Roland is aware of the demand, they might be willing to update it to vst3 and/or dxi. People who want this to happen should contact Roland about it i think. 😀

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-05-04, 16:56:

...
If Roland is aware of the demand, they might be willing to update it to vst3 and/or dxi. People who want this to happen should contact Roland about it i think. 😀

Unfortunately VST3 abstracted Midi away so practically it's not posssible to write a low level emulation-like instrument plugin like SC-VA with it.
https://www.un4seen.com/forum/?topic=19769.ms … 39331#msg139331
If you try plugins wtitten with the help of JUCE framework (that can compile into both VST2 and VST3 format) you can notice immediately that classic program change messages do not work with the VST3 version but do work with the VST2 version:
E.g: https://github.com/jpcima/ADLplug/releases

DXi is a dead horse the same way as VST2 is.
IMHO the best alternative would be CLAP (linked above by Rincewind42) but only the future can tell if it will succeed or not.

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-05-04, 12:15:

Yeah, those differences bother me a little, but it would be dishonest for me to say "there are a lot of differences".

As I understand it, the only possible honest statement with respect to the objective, factual quantity of differences is: "you do not know precisely how many differences there are".

Due to subjectivity of individuals with regard to context and scale, "a lot" can mean very different quantities to different people, and still be perfectly valid usage of the term. It does not detract in the slightest from your great analysis and article.

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-05-04, 16:56:

you can still buy it. $69 for a lifetime license. but you still have to be logged into roland cloud, though it's possible to have a free account which only gives you zenology lite, and then use the 69$ lifetime membership.
having acquired it, it's possible to patch around the cloud issue.

Or you can go straight to the cracked version like I've done 😀 Zero conscience issues, I'm never gonna pay for software-as-a-subscription, plus it's a big company, so you're not harming a single solo dev guy.

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-05-04, 16:56:

If Roland is aware of the demand, they might be willing to update it to vst3 and/or dxi. People who want this to happen should contact Roland about it i think. 😀

Highly unlikely, as Roland Cloud seem to be a failed experiment. They are a hardware company and seem to do software in a rather half-assed way. Their target market seem to be quite unhappy about their stuff, plus yeah, subscription model is pure evil. Could be they only lost money on this Roland Cloud experiment, but we're only speculating. But clearly, the money for them is in the hardware.

Bunch of unhappy Roland Cloud customers here, it's a common theme:

https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comment … _cloud_leaving/
https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comment … t_roland_cloud/

zaphod77 wrote on 2024-05-04, 16:56:

It's going to die because Steinberg wants vst2 to die, and the drm may fail in a newer operating system.

Yeah, the cracked version will keep working for a very long time 😀 But then, we'll have a better option in the form in Nuked SC55. Cross-platform compatibility is the bigger issue with the cracked 32-bit Windows VST2 DLL.

In reality, there are plenty of old VST2 plugins that were abandoned 10-15 years ago and are still useful, many of them 32-bit, so audio devs will always find a way to keep those old plugins running. Existing free VST2 hosts like SAVIHost won't suddenly die either, so that's good news. The most likely scenario is that it will live on like the Yamaha S-YXG50 in a "liberated" form, and Roland won't care the same way as Yamaha doesn't care about their dead products.

Shreddoc wrote on 2024-05-04, 22:10:

Due to subjectivity of individuals with regard to context and scale, "a lot" can mean very different quantities to different people, and still be perfectly valid usage of the term. It does not detract in the slightest from your great analysis and article.

Thanks man, and I'll upload all those MIDI files rendered via the Nuked SC55 at some point. Then people can compare and draw their own conclusions.

Falcosoft wrote on 2024-05-04, 18:42:

IMHO the best alternative would be CLAP (linked above by Rincewind42) but only the future can tell if it will succeed or not.

It has a healthy adoption rate, but not overwhelming so far. I think the biggest roadblock is that only REAPER, Bitwig and FL Studio have implemented CLAP support out of the bigger hosts so far. Which is curious, it's not that hard to add support.
https://clapdb.tech/

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-05-05, 00:05:

Highly unlikely, as Roland Cloud seem to be a failed experiment.

🤣. they are making money hand over fist. they continually update it with zen core sounds packs every week. its not going anywhere. its there unified distribution point for everything now.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2024-05-05, 04:57:

Rincewind42 wrote on 2024-05-05, 00:05:

Highly unlikely, as Roland Cloud seem to be a failed experiment.

🤣. they are making money hand over fist. they continually update it with zen core sounds packs every week. its not going anywhere. its there unified distribution point for everything now.

Not quite.

They might be releasing sound packs, alright, but overall, the bulk of their money is still coming from physical musical instrument sales. Roland Cloud is listed under "Creation-related Products & Services" in this financial report, and that category accounted for about 13% of their total profit for that quarter. It's unclear whether that 13% is Roland Cloud exclusively, but I think not.

The physical instrument sales are declining at an alarming rate, tough. Hopefully they won't just disappear in 5-10 years, such an iconic company. Or maybe they will be just bought up. Overall, they are in the red, they're losing money.

Source: 2023 Q1 Roland Financial Results Highlights
https://ir.roland.com/en/ir/library/result/ma … Q1_FY2023_E.pdf