Korg has done an admirable job of bringing some of their classic synthesizers into the digital age such as the MS-20, the M1, and the Polysix. Arturia has done an incredible job of making virtual versions of keyboards from Moog, Roland, Yamaha, Sequential Circuits, and Arp. GeForce has brought back classics like string synths and the Mellotron. Even Yamaha have allowed Native Instruments to improve upon their DX7 with FM7 (which has now been dropped for the more modern-sounding FM8) So why is Roland so afraid to jump into the fray with their own virtual instruments?
I've owned a VariOS and still own a V-Synth. The VariOS had a virtual TB303 and Juno6 that worked pretty well, but I was never a fan of that piece of hardware. They were pushing the envelope on what one could do with technology, but their pitch modification routines were not that dissimilar from what one could do with Acid or Live, so I never relied on it. But the Virtual D-50 is certainly something worth playing, even 25 years after its release.
When the Roland D-50 came out, they started a revolution with what is now sometimes disparagingly referred to as ROMplers, but which they titled Linear Algorithmic Synthesis, or LA for short. Basically they took tiny samples of the attack of a few waveforms, and coupled it with synthesis to finish out the sound, adding reverb and chorus effects to polish the tones and hide imperfections or loop points. Compared to subtractive analog synthesis and the immensely-popular FM synthesis, Roland's LA synthesis allowed much more realistic sounding piano, organ and strings -- although by today's standard it was still pretty crummy. But in 1987, the D-50 was the hottest synth on the planet. OK, it was pushed out of the top spot by Korg's M1, which allowed users to use additional samples on ROM card, but that was just a simple upgrade to which Roland did not adequately respond - until many years later, with the Fantom series.
Roland, I'm asking you now to develop 4 virtual synths for DAWs:
1) My most fervent wish is to see Roland develop a D2 groovebox for the iPad; there's no reason for Korg to have all the attention on the iPad, and the D2 was so cool having the touchpad in the center of the unit where you could speed up, slow down, or even reverse the midi sounds. Of course for a modernized version, musicians should be able to load their own samples.
2) Why not produce a virtual JP-series that includes a vocoder? Roland has had a lot of success making dance-flavored-synths and if they put their head to it, I'm sure they could invent something amazing. They've produced so many DJ sampler products the past decade that it's quite a shame I have to give them any suggestions in the first place.
3) I'd love to see a JV/XP/XV series that operated like SampleTank but allowed folks to load their own patches. Given that Roland made nearly a dozen models that shared essentially the same patch architecture and samples in ROM, there's probably thousands of unheard sounds that were made by JV/XP/XV owners.
4) The D-50 should also be brought out as a virtual instrument, of course. There's no reason why they couldn't do such a thing because Roland already made the VC-1 which means porting it to Windows or OSX wouldn't be completely reinventing the wheel. People still enjoy the D-50's haunting tones, and likely will for another 20 years. It would just be a lot easier to do if Roland sold it to us as software, not as hardware which might fail over time.
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