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Roland launches the RD-08, a compact stage piano that comes with built-in speakers, SuperNATURAL and ZEN-Core sound engines, and Roland Cloud expansion support.

Roland has announced the latest addition to its RD stage piano range, the RD-08, and the good news is that it’s the most affordable model yet.

At first glance, this looks like an even more simplified version of the RD-88, which was released in 2020, and promises “no-compromise” sound in a portable package. There are built-in speakers for home and low-volume rehearsal/performance use, and Roland Cloud compatibility means that the RD-08 is expandable with more sounds.

This is an 88-note instrument that uses Roland’s PHA-4 Standard Keyboard tech, which offers a hammer action, Escapement and Ivory Feel. There are three sound generators – SuperNATURAL Piano, SuperNATURAL E Piano and Roland’s ZEN-Core synth engine – and three parts.

The RD-08 offers 100 scenes and more than 3,000 tones, along with a comprehensive roster of effects. Hands-on control comes courtesy of assignable pitchbend and modulation wheels and four control knobs, and there are inputs for a damper pedal and two further assignable pedals.

Other features include the option to favourite sounds, a song player and a metronome, while audio I/O compromises a 1/4-inch headphone jack, stereo 1/4-inch output jacks, a 1/4-inch mic input and a line input minijack, presumably so you can play music through the speakers. There’s no mention of Bluetooth, either for MIDI or audio, but you do get MIDI Out and USB ports.

The Roland Cloud compatibility enables you to install the Acoustic Piano 3, among other expansions (we’re guessing these will come at a cost), and for live performers, there’s also Apple MainStage support.

The RD-08 is available now priced at $1,000. Find out more on the Roland website.

Synthesist Jean-Luc Briançon (Kurtz Mindfields) shared this synth jam, featuring the Heritage Modular Synthesizer, created by Frédéric Rible.

The Heritage Modular synthesizer has been designed to mimic the typical look and feel of an early 1970s modular synthesizer, but with 8-voice polyphony and MIDI MPE support.

The core of the synthesizer is based on Pure Data: a powerful sound engine for the generation and processing of audio signal. The underlying algorithms have been chosen for faithful emulation of analog circuitry characteristics.

A dedicated set of hardware modules has been designed to act as controllers for Pure Data. These modules are populated with knobs, switches, lights and jack sockets, modeled on the classical modular synthesizer. The communication between Pure Data and these hardware modules is done via an I2C bus implemented over a standard 16-pin Eurorack connector.

For more info on the Heritage Modular Synthesizer, see the project website.

Blaukraut has released Charlatan 3, a free virtual analog (VA) synthesizer, for Linux + Windows, with focus on sound quality and usability.

Features:

• Two dual oscillators per voice with custom drawable waveforms, cross-modulation (Phase Mod, linear Frequency Mod, Ring Mod), windowed hard sync and noise generator
• Up to 7 unison voices per oscillator
• Two filters per voice with types: 4-pole ladder LP/HP/BP, Acid LP, 2-pole Sallen-Key LP/HP/BP, Notch and Comb
• Flexible filter routing (serial / parallel / dual)
• Four modulation generators with freely drawable shape where each can operate either as LFO or envelope generator
• Four Modulation transformers (XFORM) allow reshaping any control signal through a user-defined mapping
• Arbitrary routing of modulation signals via Drag’n’Drop
• High-quality master FX section: Distortion, Phaser, Chorus, Reverb, Delay, EQ
• Very low CPU and RAM usage
• Optional internal 2x oversampling
• Preset browser
• Cross-platform support: Windows / Linux / VST3 / CLAP

Charlatan 3 is available now as a free download.