Under the hood
ZENCore is a system that works on both hard and software, modelling analogue and digital synthesisers, and it’s obviously something that Roland thinks of as a big deal, with literally 1000s of instrument sounds and dozens of drum kits available. Sounds can be shared across the Roland platform, on hardware devices like the Jupiter-X and Fantom keyboards, or in the Zenology software plugin. Not only can you, as a user, access your sounds anywhere, so can your collaborators. This kind of overarching sound engine, living both in the cloud and locally, is very forward thinking, and it has a lot going for it. Again, it depends on how you feel about using a system that is primarily focused on browsing and using presets, but there are two types of user who benefit from this – the beginner/casual user, who just wants to jam and get started, and secondly, the professional composer, who needs an easily-accessed library that they can go to and quickly grab a sound with too much messing around. Either way, it’s a potentially powerful system, and we can easily imagine other manufacturers, and DAW builders in particular, embracing this type of workflow.