hopefully i got lucky. while speaking to a tech at Roland u.s.(sorry don't want this connection to be public),i asked: btw, anyone i can email or write to at the company to make suggestions re os improvements? he said, just tell me Mo, i will write it down as you speak and send it as a memo direct to the product manager. So I gave him a few off the top of my head, namely: make the fade-out longer and less abrupt ..like 8 bars. make the sustain pedal more programmable. at very least add stop/start and a fill to its abilities, because if you use an expression pedal then you lose those functions. reorganize the 4 d-beam buttons so the silly stuff is all on one or two buttons, and there are one or two more control buttons for pro players. and allow the one-touch buttons to be locked down globally after customizing them. their idea was to let you rewrite customized for every style, but that's an enormous number of hours that must be spent doing that and I'm sure that there are many like me that spent hours putting one set of 4 favorite sound setups into the one-touch they would would like to see NOT changed every time they change styles. (ps..Diki, I hope you saw my answer to your badgering me re midi pedals.. that it is a very difficult and problematic project, and Geo.K and his Roland rep agreed was not the way to go).. anyway, I hope maybe the memos direct to the product manager from someone on the inside can help move Roland to more and better os updates. so do you still think writing it all out on your site is advisable as well?

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Miami Mo

Well, Mo, firstly, I believe that posting ideas for new functions, or improving existing one, either here, or at roland-arranger.com, or ANY public forum is STILL the best way to get a suggestion implemented. You see, your ONE comment directly to Roland is, in their minds, just that... ONE comment.

Now if you post your ideas on a forum, and get ten or twenty, or however many, to agree with you, and start asking for those features, too, now that is MANY comments, about the same thing. If I were a product designer, I would probably prioritize the things that the majority of people asked for....

But another thing about using a forum is the ability to search for what others may have posted in the past, that you NOW start to realize you want, and see if this is perhaps a futile quest. You can also get a feel for what Roland CAN, and CAN'T easily change in their OS.

Trust me, Mo, there is probably very little in the way of boneheaded decisions about the OS and controls that I HAVEN'T already posted about, at length, either on the old G70 site (still up, in archive form) or the new one. The E-series and the G70 share a LOT of the same code (it nearly ALL comes from a stripped down G70 OS, basically). Some of them got a lot of support, some didn't. Some got changed by Roland, some didn't.

I think the main thing, for your peace of mind, is to say to yourself, OK, this is the way it IS... If such and such, and this and that DON'T get changed, am I going to be miserable playing this? If you are, GET RID OF IT NOW! If Roland need to do some specific changes (that may have been LONG requested, to no avail) before you will be satisfied, well, you may be in for a long wait.

For instance, I requested changes to the D-Beam two years ago. No luck there. I requested changes to the V-Link button two years ago, now the E-series (but not the G70!) finally get it. I have LONG asked that EVERY controller be allowed to control ANY destination, and do away with the arbitrary list for each, no luck there... And so on and so forth.

Are you going to be happy waiting (if you are lucky) over two years for your 'must-haves'? Several of them seem to be functions from other manufacturers. If you need them, you may very well have to switch. But of course, there is the other side of the coin... Go back to some of your favorites, and some of your favorites from the Roland's OS will now be gone... You just can't win, you know

But basically, if you can say to yourself that, even if not significantly improved, there STILL isn't another arranger you would prefer to play, sound-wise or form factor-wise, well, you just need to calm down, and have a little patience. Or you risk going back to an old arranger, or getting something else new, and going through the same rigmarole with THAT, because, AFAIK, there never has been a 'perfect' arranger. You will find boneheaded OS decisions on just about ANYTHING (best of luck getting Yamaha to change ANYTHING at a user's request! OR come out with a 76 )

In the meantime, roland-arranger's members can help you out with a range of your problems (for instance, we have a program developed by one of our members that can copy OTS settings to as many styles as you want, automatically!) and workarounds for problems you may only be starting to grapple with, that others have faced for a long time, so staying current there is VERY important (IMO), and publicly posting your requests helps focus them, and get much needed support.

Roland arranger R&D have a well-known tacit presence at the site, so posting there is just like handing it directly to a developer, no getting one Roland guy to hand it to another guy, who might eventually, maybe, get it to Italy and the guys that actually program the things! But whether they ARE able to fix your problems, or even want to (they obviously like things the way they designed them!) is, at that point, in the lap of the R&D gods...

Diki, thanks for your detailed reply, and the above is just what the doctor ordered. too much for me to reply back about all the other stuff, so I'll just say I hear you. BUT-- my BIGGEST frustration has been that the OTS has to be rewritten for every style, so PLEASE tell me how to obtain and install the above program.

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Miami Mo