Roland SH-2 Plug-Out (and in)

[zerocrossing]

I couldn't resist buying the SH-2 as a plugin after watching and listening to this Youtube Demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn63scLgJGE

I like my vintage synth emulations and I have the Korg Legacy Collection and Monark, which are great, but this has gone to the top of my list for analog emulations now, as it just has so much character in the sound. I haven't tried the original but I have played Moogs and I own a Mopho and Trax Retrowave R1 to compare.

Definitely recommended if you want to go vintage

Nice demo. Resonance sounds great for a plug-in.

Question: Is there a way to do things like assign velocity and aftertouch to a parameter?

[EvilDragon]

Question: Is there a way to do things like assign velocity and aftertouch to a parameter?

Nope.

[Bubbamusic]

Will it work on XP 32-bit? I heard somewhere that it only runs on 7 and up, but I can't find it anywhere - even Roland site.

[EvilDragon]

If they don't state support for XP, it is likely that it won't work...

[Kaboom75]

It wont even run on Ableton Live running on windows 7- 10.

[Rabid]

Got my System-1 Tuesday and downloaded my free SH-101. After an hour I was firmly regretting the purchase and decided to hold off on trying the SH-2. My issues are all with the System-1. Crappy keyboard, no joystick, limit of 8 patches on the System-1 for the base synth and 8 patches for a single plug-out, oh, and to my ears the built in synth has a crappy, thin, digital sound. I wish they had put all that money they spent on green lights into a proper playable keyboard and pitch bend.

This may be their worst product since the SH-32. (It was so under powered that if you played a chord with layers, the different sounds would come in one at a time over a few seconds.)

[db3]

SH-2 demo now available...
http://www.roland.com/products/sh-2_plug-out/downloads/

Impressed with Roland's analogue modelling

[suthnear]

I've just done an extensive comparison between the SH2 plug-in and an SH-09 I have in the studio (excluding the second oscillator, obviously). It's certainly the best pure analogue emulation I have heard in a plug-in so far. Other than at extreme resonance, I'd be hard pressed to tell this apart from the SH-09.

However, the plug-in itself is less accomplished. The sliders range from 0-255 but step in values of 5 (or so) at a time when you move the control via the mouse. It took me a while to realise that if you clicked and held a control and moved your mouse away from it, you could then move the control in single increments. This is not mentioned in the manual and I discovered it only by accident. And even at this resolution, there is still zipper noise, so they have obviously not implemented parameter smoothing (confirmed by the fact that automating the controls in Live has the same result). It doesn't appear to be possible to set values using the keyboard and the plug-in doesn't respond to MIDI learn or CCs (AFAICT). There is an option to scale the plug-in but this makes the graphics look worse (since the source images were obviously rendered at the minimum zoom level). Pressing the keyboard button doesn't completely remove the keyboard, leaving the top part of the keys still showing. The delay and reverb could definitely have done with a few more controls and why a vintage emulation needs a bit crusher is something only a marketing droid could answer with any conviction. And it would be have been nice if they offered the main types of note-on behaviour rather than just what the synth offered (since they expanded the feature set elsewhere in places).

I am left with the feeling that they deliberately hampered the plug-in because of its need to work in system-1. This notwithstanding, it sounds great and I may very well be replacing my SH-09 in the not too distant future.

[4damind]

How does the SH-2 compare soundwise to FXpansion Strobe2? Not to mention that Strobe2 is polyphonic (Afaik only with the system 1 controller and running the "plugin" on the hardware there is 4x polyphony?)

[davidka]

How does the SH-2 compare soundwise to FXpansion Strobe2? Not to mention that Strobe2 is polyphonic (Afaik only with the system 1 controller and running the "plugin" on the hardware there is 4x polyphony?)

I think Strobe2 is capable of decent recreation of many monosynth sounds from the past.

I'm definitely far from expert, but my attempt in Strobe2 for an SH-2 sound would be the following:
- Set to legato, add a bit of bend
- OSC1 stack to 2, apply a few %s of noise
- Leave filter on 24db (OTA), apply a subtle amount of leakage, then underdrive it
- Set envelopes to EXP
- Raise the volume of VCA by the amount you've lost with underdriving
- Use Bitcrusher at the end to apply a delicate 16bit (44.1khz) and some general dirt
- Add Delay and Reverb

Then start to play a sequence and change cutoff-resonance, OSC tone, envelopes and drive parameters.

[kmonkey]

It wont even run on Ableton Live running on windows 7- 10.

What on earth are you talking about?

Do you refer to the VST3 version not being able to load in Ableton (since ableton does not support VST3) ?

Well that's solved long time ago because Roland released VST2 version. Working perfectly here Ableton - win.

[ENV1]

However, the plug-in itself is less accomplished. The sliders range from 0-255 but step in values of 5 (or so) at a time when you move the control via the mouse.

Use the wheel for 1-step adjustments. (10-step with SHIFT held.)

You only need to hover over a control (any control) and roll.

[db3]

How does the SH-2 compare soundwise to FXpansion Strobe2? Not to mention that Strobe2 is polyphonic (Afaik only with the system 1 controller and running the "plugin" on the hardware there is 4x polyphony?)

The SH2 is limited in what it can do verses Strobe2, but it's still pretty flexible and offers an authentic analogue emulation. To me it's a much nicer sound. If you like the sound of an SH2, you will like the plugin. NB) Roland do need to sort out their GUIs though.

The SH2 plugin is not polyphonic when run as a plugout in System1.