Worried your obviously not realistic shimmer cathedral reverb will get cut off?? LMAO… sorry…
Will this synth give me mega lush sounds like M83? I think he uses a Roland JX-3P and a Prophet.
I guess with a 101 and 106 it has electro and synth funk covered.
Bonus points if it has a really good electric piano and decent clav.
Just a reminder that the 101 and 106 aspects of the synth is the oscillators. They each go through the same (new) type of filter.
Decades of music instrument journalism and forum debates has tried to convince us that the aspect of a synth that gives it its “sound” is its filter.
I’ll leave it up to each their own to decide if this has changed with the release of this synth 
Actually, they are the same oscillators as the other models, just presented like a 101/106 on the screen. They do sound nice though
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So the oscillator waveforms in the 101 and 106 type are identical to the ones in the SH-4D type??? I seriously thought they’d at least differ in the way they were generated, not just mixed!!!
Correct
Edit: they do actually make it clear in the official videos
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Thanks for explaining that. I had not picked up on that.
It doesn’t necessarily do much change what it is capable of, but it does frame the conversation about what this synth is.
It is not a groove box, and especially not with a number of old Roland “machines” to pick from.
It is a fully independent new synth engine, oscillator and filter, that takes inspiration from classic oscillator topologies, like the 106 and 101, but without replicating their actual sound.
So in that sense it has more in common with the System-1 engine (not the plug-outs) than the zen-core smörgåsbord of Jupiter XM, for example.
It confuses some users though, that the bare mention of legacy machine names makes us all think that they are somehow accessible in there. But really it an entire new synth engine?
It is the Zencore engine, but with its own filter design. They’ve basically separated out the key Zencore features such as Sync, FM, Ring Mod and PCM into the different oscillator macros (models) to make it quick and easy (and fun), then added a few more features such as Wavetable and drawable waveshapes. Plus, they added oscillator templates to get you to 101 and Juno sound/behaviour more easily. All of this actually makes it great fun to use and very quick to design your own sounds and get ideas down quickly.
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Is the 4d synth a JX3P or a Prophet? Definitely not, but it is pretty flexible and you can get those kinds of sounds. Where you’ll be lacking is in the effects department. There’s a lot of fx in there, but the reverbs require a lot of tweaking to get them to sound half way decent. You’d want to pair it up with an external delay and something like a Big Sky/Space or even a good reverb plugin.
I played it through Valhalla shimmer (without any pitch /feedback) for a while and it did sound really good. Then again everything does. I couldn’t get much out of the wavetable engine that I liked though. I think there’s definitely some bugs with using the lfo to move through the tables.
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Thanks, that is helpful. I’m probably just looking for close to that sound rather than exact, as I’ve never sat down in front of a prophet or jx3p. If it gives me lush and epic, as well as funky then I’ll likely be very happy.
I have an ms70cdr which has some great reverbs and delays, but with the way I imagine this sh-4d fitting into the setup I’d likely be relying on internal effects. Generally people say the fx on Roland boxes are very good and I don’t mind doing some work to get them dialled in.
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Funky for sure. You’ll probably really enjoy it. The great thing about it is how quickly you can get something running that sounds great. Roland has really come out of their shell here with more knob per function.
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Any tips for usable reverb type/settings?
It’s all up to your personal preference and what you’re trying to do but I kind of liked the quality of the Integra7 reverb for pads and more longer tail stuff. Set the time longer. Mid to high density, low diffusion. And then play around with the HF damp to pull some of the high end out of the feedback. GS is kind of meh to me. SRV2000 can give you more of a low fi vibe.
The Shimmer in the 4d works pretty well if you turn off the pitch feedback with the pitch level adjustments for both. Level 1 and Level 2. Then you get a nice longer tail algorithm that’s nice for atmospherics.
No wrong way to use this stuff. Spice it up to taste.
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Loading up a drum kit preset, is there a quick way to turn off all the sends (reverb, delay etc.) for all sounds within a kit, or do you have to do it manually up to 26 times?
Go to the mixer page (press PATTERN then SOUND button). There you can turn down the send levels for the whole Rhythm part.
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I feel quite bad about this but there’s a part of my brain that is really reluctant to actually learn this machine as it is becuase the patch/sequence memory stuff is so garbage they HAVE to fix it right?
Right?
[padme face]
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Fantastic, appreciate it.
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It is annoying. Did you try my backup template?
I watched about half of the video and put it in my watch later when you’re able to pay attention and actually understand what’s going on folder - very much a me problem rather than a you one!
I’m very curious, how would you expect it to work?
It actually works very similar to the A4, garbage too?