Roland Zenology
The Jupiter X’s ZEN-Core engine arrives in your DAW. Si Truss asks if this generous collection is a Roland Cloud-buster?
Roland have unveiled a significant update to how their Cloud subscription service works, introducing a new three-tiered pricing structure largely modeled around a single new instrument – Zenology. Rather than just offering emulation of a single classic from the brand’s past, as most current Roland Cloud instruments do, the Zenology plugin is an expandable sound engine capable of creating everything from pianos and organs to drums and percussion.
While the plugin itself is new, the tech behind it – Roland’s ZEN-Core engine – first appeared last year, in several instruments including the MC-707 and Jupiter X. Zenology is effectively a straight port of that same sound engine, making use of a mix of PCM samples and virtual analogue synthesis in order to generate sounds.
The Zenology interface is quite simplistic and – to be honest – dated-looking. It’s certainly easy to navigate though, with a straightforward sound browser up top and parameter edit section below. This edit section has controls for polyphony and portamento to the left – the latter being a simple on/off affair – joined by five virtual rotaries for adjusting the cutoff and resonance of a low-pass filter, amp attack and release, and vibrato.
The one variant to this setup comes when working with drum sounds. Here, the controls are replaced by a bank of 16 rotaries, so users can adjust level, pan, attack, decay and release individually for each sound in Zenology’s 16-voice drum kits.
The only other significant element is a multi-effect slot, accessed via a hideable UI panel that sits below the main interface. This allows each sound to be paired with one effect processor, chosen from a list of more than 90 effects, covering multiple types of delay, modulation effects, filters, EQs, compressors and several modeled on vintage gear. While only one effect can be assigned per sound, there are 20+ Combination processors, offering multi-effect options such as an amp sim leading into a delay, or enhancer into chorus. These effects impressed us when we reviewed the ZEN-Core hardware and they’re equally-well equipped here.
Zenology isn’t particularly flashy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. Although it’s essentially little more than a preset player with an effect unit attached, the 3000 patches are generally excellent, leaning heavily on sounds sampled from Roland’s classic synths and drum machines, which hit all the obvious bases – 808 and 909 kits, Juno arps, Jupiter pads, 101 basses, etc. For a convenient and relatively cheap source of bread-and-butter sounds, this has a lot going for it. It can work in tandem with ZEN-Core hardware too, sharing patches to and from compatible instruments.
More interesting is how Roland promise to develop Zenology in coming months. Analog Circuit Behavior models of Roland’s classic machines will be added, with retro-styled interfaces built into the
Zenology UI. A pro version is promised too, which looks to include multi-layered synthesis and complex modulation tools. Coupled with a few more smart choices – like letting users buy Lifetime Keys for their favourite Cloud plugins – it spells a bright future for the Cloud project.