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Roland GAIA SH-01
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Anonymous

«  Simple but very effective »

Published on 05/31/12 at 05:25
The SH01 "Gaia" is a small synthesizer, very light weight, compact, with a 37-note keyboard to touch my faith fairly standard. Polyphony spans 64 channels.

It has built-in 8 banks of 8 presets sounds, WORM, 8 banks of 8 sounds users to store their creations, and 8 slots for recording musical phrases. Moreover, one can add a USB drive that provides 64 additional memory for sounds and 8 additional slots for the musical phrases.

Besides the traditional small Roland joystick to control pitch bend and modulation, there is the famous D-Beam, this invisible beam that can be assigned either to control volume, pitch, and in any parameter Synthesis ( filter, effects, LFOs, etc.). It is possible to connect a pedal (sustain or expression).

From a connectivity point of view, besides the port for the USB cited above, it has MIDI IN / OUT, a pair of audio outputs, a headphone jack and a USB port "Computer"; the latter allows to use the card as SH01 digital audio when using joint in a DAW. I use it without any worries in conjunction Reason 6: The Office of SH01 is perfectly sound card, allowing me to save the SH01 directly in Reason, with a single connection!

On the upper side, it has a mini-jack to process an external audio source. I have attached a small Monotron which, via the internal effects of SH01, takes on another dimension.
Whether to make a complaint is not having a button to "mix" for metering the volume of what comes from the DAW (via USB) compared to what comes out of the HS01, but it is easily circumvented (this is possible for example on UltraNova Novation).

UTILIZATION

Setup is simple: we have everything at hand. It's almost a button = one function. I say "almost" because some second settings are accessed by pressing a "Shift" key. But the key is directly accessible by the many buttons and faders.

The manual is, as always with Roland, remarkable clarity and for its French version, translated well.

SOUNDS

It is, with the HS01, in pure electronic sounds, if you want to imitate the piano, the trumpet or the choirs of the Red Army, this instrument is not for you, if you are looking for a way to quickly create synthetic sounds, as is my case, do not hesitate one second.

The factory sounds are not great, admittedly, but I see an incentive to put his fingers on the buttons, fiddling with faders, in short, to create his own palette. Especially with the storage of sounds on USB stick, there's plenty to see coming ...

The sound structure is simple: a patch consists of one to three "tones", each tone based on an oscillator, filter, LFO and amp. All these people, once assembled, goes through the filter section.

The wave oscillators are basic, but they are all there: sawtooth, square, PMW (with adjustable width), triangle, sine, noise and saw the great which is reminiscent of the "feedback" of JP8000. And louder each wave has three variations.

Side filter is also very compltet: high pass, low pass, band, bell, and "bypass" filter for nothing. And all are accessible by -12 or -24 db / oct The filter has its own ADSR envelope.

The LFO generates triangle waves, sine, sawtooth, square, sample & hold and random. Can be assigned to the modulation filter, pitch, the volume and the panoramic, with or without delay.

There is an additional global LFO applies to the patch and is activated via the wheel pitch bend / modulation.

The effects are simple, but excellent: reverb, delay, phaser, flanger, pitch shifter, distortion, fuzz, bit crusher. Two settings by direct effect, plus two more with the shift key.

OVERALL OPINION

I've had it a month and I am completely happy. I owned an earlier Ultranova whose ergonomics, based submenus, was terrible, the tones were good only embedded in the internal effects, and that the audio via USB was catastrophic - perhaps because of drivers.

I like the ergonomics of SH01 Gaia: it is simple, effective, well thought out, made to sound creation. We can succeed easily and quickly create complex electronic sounds. And even by cutting the internal effects, the HS01 sounds undeniably good.

I left to keep it for a long, long time.