hisss
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Finally hit a point where I feel like yeah, this is fun and flexible and a great box to just get baked and make basic channel knockoffs on it.
SH4D recorded straight into reaper over a usb cable and then rendered straight out again without any eq or compression or anything.
11 Likes
What Osc did you use?
Very cool- maybe the drums require a bit more work
Have you also tried the phonograph effect on the chord?
Hello , had this box for a month now , i quite disagree with the sequencer not being on par with elektron one. In fact this is quite different and for some things is superior from the elektron one.
You donāt have chain or song , but apart from this you have probability per note which can be used for subtle chord variations that i canāt do on an elektron sequencer and you have play direction, which i asked in these forums for elektron to update the sequencer but they did not. With random i can put a series of notes that are in a scale and some rest and in random mode the sh-4d is soloing forever ! Also no microtiming is not very important for me because roland has a good swing fonction. Anyway be aware this is not elektron class hardware and the buttons feels fleemsy as fuck , but i like it a lot.
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Nice revirew
Shame for the button - they reflect the low price
Honestly the keys are not that bad IMHU. They are soft and a lot less clicky that the Elektron ones.
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Same, theyāre just vastly different to Elektron, theyāre absolutely fine for what they are.
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Mine finally arrived!
The good:
- Subtractive, Sync, Ring, and FM models: some really nice sounds that I canāt get anywhere near on my Digitone. Also very quick to design sounds that are āclose enoughā to my Moog and AS-1.
- Lots of buttons/knobs. I know the 4D, 3D, Juno, and SH models arenāt actually different from each other, but itās still a neat trick with the faders and buttons having different purposes on each of those models.
- Effects sound really, really good.
- Analog feel and Fat parameters are juicy
The bad
- Wavetables donāt sound that good coming from the land of Peak and Pigments.
- Wayyy too many presets, and many of them share generic names like āKey/Pluck 4ā āKey/Pluck 5ā āKey/Pluck 6ā
Biggest drawback - non endless encoders and saved vs current value indications.
- I really thought this would be less of a big deal, but the choice to do this with Pots instead of endless encoders plus the lack of āsaved valueā indication (without holding EXIT) is really annoying coming from the Elektron world.
- On that note, showing numerical values is so very Roland. It takes my brain so much more effort to interpret āvalue = xxxx / 1024, okay is that a lot or a little?ā rather than simply seeing some kind of graphical fill meter or UI knob a la Elektron. This would be so, so, so easy to achieve with this kind of large screen, and as such I feel like the screen UI is pretty half baked
Overall
- keeper, but iām boxing for a few months until after i finish some more tracks ITB and am ready to prep this yearās liveset. Iāll compose everything on an external sequencer anyway, then just pop SH-4D in to replace the aforementioned synths, when iām ready to build my new case
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To be honest i really dislike the endless encoders- at the end of the day the nord lead which is one of the most enjoyable synth to play did not have endless encoders
you might be right that this just will take time to get used to muscle memory wise:)
ā¦ still, i think it could be made way easier with a more graphical indication of value + saved value, versus this awkward rolandy hold-exit, wiggle knob thingā¦
Yeah i love to see graphical numerical values when i i change a pot
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In the general settings you can change the knob behaviour to catch mode which is slightly less awkward I think, when you move a knob it displays the current value but wont change until you phyiscally pass through the value. It sometimes takes some excessive movement to catch but itās better than the big jumps or pressing an extra button (for me anyway)
3 Likes
Yeah, I switched to Catch last night. Honestly I prefer it, I just didnāt realize that it was an option at first.
Agree, Iāve got no issues with the buttons at all. Sure they arenāt some clacky āpremiumā feel affair, but perfectly fine and not the worst Iāve used in recent years
If they donāt double trigger Iāll be happy 
Shame they arenāt velocity sensitive though.
Yeah, something is just weird with those front panel knobsā¦nothing felt comfortable, actually.
They donāt double trigger, thankfully. Honestly they arenāt too bad. They donāt feel super premium but Iāve definitely used far worse. They are at least average, maybe slightly above. The real test will be how they hold up in a year or two.
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I like the buttons. Fine for inputting notes.
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So, despite my predictions before getting this that I wouldnāt be using the drums at all, they might be my current favorite feature. Particularly for feeding into the Digitakt to then chop up - this gets around the limitations of the 4d sequencer with relatively minimal additional work. The drums sound really good.
Does anyone else find the huge number of synth presets to be a bit exhausting to dig through? Iāve noticed that if Iām looking for a particular sound itās sometimes faster for me to just make it from scratch. This isnāt normally a thing that I notice, but Iām really aware of it when I use the 4d.
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Yeah itās overwhelming. Plus many of them are just like āpad/strings 4ā āpad/strings 5ā āpad/strings 6ā ad nauseum. Properly naming things, even random names, makes them way easier to rememberā¦
Its weird since SH-4D is incredibly deep specwise in some areas and in others itās just clear they cut corners 