Understand Zenology : a deeper dive via the creation of a patch ;)

[@christopherfarrell-artist3557]

Merci beaucoup. I have a MC-101 and I am thinking about getting the Zenology Pro. I love your video and it has helped me make up my mind as I was concerned I already have most of the sounds in the MC-101 - after FW 1.80 you can edit the sounds in hardware with the Partial editor, but, having a deep visual sound design in software looks very useful......

[@ZozillaThaGreat]

Salut Christorpher !! To be honest , be absolutly sure to give it a try first , i do find last releases from Roland far from being optimised !!! They're worst than previous versions when it comes to smoothness .... so at one point i even said to myself i should have gone Jupiter X/ XM lol if it had simething like Overbridge and total recall it would have been already here . Under than that , yep Zeno is a beast , the interface isn't that eazy to work with (it's way better in the new version , but not something smooth as modern vst'is .) If you wann soudndesign in Zenology pro , be sure to learn how to make things fast (the small utility option are crucial (eazy copy / paste or partial , editing sevral ones at once ect ..) Sonnically : it's solid as all Roland stuff ..... sad really for the optimisation , i went arturia last december just for that , they do sound less good than roland (jupiter , juno ect ) but it's wayyyyy smoother and fun to use ;) Patiently waiting for next update to see if they do things better .... or i will roll back to old version missing new features . * Now if i understand your usage , it's more to crteate sounds via the plugin and transfert them into the HW , in that case all good !!

[@christopherfarrell-artist3557]

@@ZozillaThaGreat Salut🙂 I haven't bought it yet, I almost bought the 1 yr sub today though. There is a slight niggle in my brain telling me I already have most of the Zenology pro features in the MC-101 as the partials have been unlocked and why pay twice for something. I think you are right about the performance, I use Ableton Live because it came with the Keystep and there are some issues in the DAW, crackling sounds and when I play the 'Shine pad" at a reasonably fast pace it heavily drops out the release and sounds reversed, if I play it slow it's fine. I have tried to recreate the Shine Pad on the MC-101's hardware Zencore engine, and while it doesn't sound exactly the same, it's is close enough and sounds a bit nicer. I don't mind unintuitive interfaces as I like it when it's difficult ( just like my Blofeld menu diving😁). I will do some more research, the primary use would be sound design to import into the MC-101 and use that as a portable module. I really enjoy your videos. Chris

[@ZozillaThaGreat]

Thks Chris for the kind words . To judge the performance need to be sure it is the software and not your system that is not that optimised (by testing alos other software) , keep in mind that cpu hits varies with patches , some are very demenading in ressources dude to the patches itslef and polyphony ...so as a start be sure to set the voices limitation to middle or even hard if to cpu hungry . The other thing is that , watch my video on the cloud , there's a time to go for the sub , and it's when tey offer what they call "play for life " (two times a years ususally , summer and winter) where when you sub , you get to choose a licence of a plugin and you keep for life for the pro , and 2 licences ofr ultimates sub (of one year each) , this is how i bougth my roland arsenall , via ssub to acceess everything and test and then choose the licences ;) If you want a way to create patches and make your sound "more personall" , i do think stuff like the SH4d , gaia (not a fan of the sound but the HW is exellent) or a Jupiter could be exellent choice .... you can also go for analog , the best value for the buck imho being the korg miniogue xd and you can even have a total recall plugin (via a 3rd party dev) to get the plugin and tiotal recall in daw sessionn and manage sounds and plugins (yep you can have speciall plugins in this beast for fx or osc) , beringer deepmind is great too ....those are fast sound maker than can deliver SOLID sounds (no cheap)

[@christopherfarrell-artist3557]

@@ZozillaThaGreat The performance hit is probably my Macbook Air - it's a modest bit of kit that has served me well over the years, it might be showing it's age. I might try the PC imaging workstation which I use for Photoshop and Unity/Unreal5 3D gallery work, the main reason I don't use the PC for music production is because I have found Windows 10/11 too temperamental and I gave up on trying to get things to work together ( I have used windows since 3.11/DOS so I know the systems well ). The Mac just works out of the box with all hardware and software, I just set up an aggregate device and everything talks to each other, so that seems like the obvious choice. Thanks for the tip about the Winter and Summer Zenology offers, I might wait for that as it seems like a better deal. Have fun🙂. Chris

[@ZozillaThaGreat]

Yep i feel you but for your advise , windows works well and is even more optimised than osx at this stage , the problem isn't the os , but integration , if you get a HP workstsation or dell's one or lenovo or a computer made randomly or bougth at walmark lol isn't the same ;) (not saying iyt's your case but perf in that case aren't os linked at all ) The good thing with hw synth / drum machine is that you don't rely on those headache (on mac most of them linked to osx updates / new versions )