Roland Fantom-G6 Review

Mar 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jim Aikin

A KEYBOARD WORKSTATION THAT PACKS SOME SERIOUS MUSCLE

Only the largest manufacturers have the muscle to build a modern workstation keyboard. These keyboards are designed to let you do everything, including multitrack audio recording, without going near a computer. Roland's latest entries, the Fantom-G series, are workstations on steroids. The huge color LCD caught my eye first, but backing it up are a massive patch library, sampling, a feature-rich front panel, and much more.

Three models are available, which differ only in the number of keys: the G6 (61 keys, $2,999), which is the one that I tested; the G7 (76 keys, $3,749); and the G8 (88 keys, $4,299). The G8 features Roland's PHA II “Ivory Feel” keyboard, which supposedly reproduces the surface feel of ivory acoustic piano keys.

A review that discussed every detail of this massive machine would fill the entire magazine. I'll hit the high spots, and you can read details about the built-in sequencer online (see the online bonus material at emusician.com).

Knobs and Sliders and Buttons, Oh My!

The Fantom's physical package is luxurious. The 8.5-inch color LCD (see Fig. 1) is not touch sensitive, but a mouse can be plugged into a rear-panel jack. I had no trouble navigating the graphical user interface without a mouse, which is fortunate because my keyboard rack is not equipped with a mouse pad platform.

To the left of the LCD is a bank of eight sliders and four knobs. These do various things depending on which of the Fantom's three main modes you're in. In Studio and Live modes, the sliders normally are mixer faders, and in Single mode, they're assigned to useful voice parameters, such as filter cutoff and attack time. You can create your own slider-assignment templates.

The 16 pads on the right side have numerous uses, including arpeggiator control, triggering percussion and MIDI phrases, and 10-key data entry. The pads have to be smacked firmly; when using them for data entry, I found that I could press lightly and feel a pad's sensor connect, but no data was entered.

In the upper left corner is Roland's D Beam infrared sensing controller. The D Beam can be used to transmit Control Change data to the synth, play a theremin-like monophonic Solo Synth, or trigger a sample when you wave your hand over it. Live performers will appreciate the D Beam, but I found the Solo Synth hard to control. Its sound can be tweaked heavily, but in general the tone is not analog enough to appeal to me. It sounds digital both because of aliasing and because the motion sensing is noticeably stepped, not smooth.

Around back are some noteworthy luxury features. In addition to stereo line-level audio inputs for recording, the Fantom has a combo XLR/guitar input with a level knob and phantom power. The three USB jacks let you connect a mouse, connect to your computer, and plug in a storage device all at once. The storage jack is also used for updating the OS; just download the OS to your computer, copy it to a USB flash drive, and load it into the unit from the drive. You can't load a new OS into the synth directly from a computer.

Tone Palette

I like the sound of the Fantom-G a lot, and with twice the waveform capacity of Roland's previous flagship workstation, all of the types of sounds I use are well represented, from synth basses, leads, and pads to snappy drum kits. So many of the sounds are of high quality that I'm not going to bother listing favorites. In Single mode, finding patches in the preset library of more than 1,650 items is easy thanks to the category-based list. You can add considerably more sounds by plugging in up to two Roland ARX expansion boards.

The Fantom-G sounds feature Roland's SuperNatural modeling technology, which is designed to enable subtle, organic tonal changes and playing nuances. The voicing parameters are deep, but longtime Roland users will find few surprises. Each Patch comprises four Tones, and each Tone has its own filter, envelope generators, a pair of LFOs, and so on. The voice architecture uses Roland's familiar scheme for pairing Tones in Structures, allowing dual filtering, ring modulation, and so forth.

A step generator is available as an LFO “waveform.” This can be used for stepped filter patterns or to gate the oscillator tone, thereby producing rhythm patterns. Pattern length is constrained to 16, 32, or 64 steps.

None of the Hammond organ Patches have authentic Hammond percussion (an attack transient) because the Fantom's Mono/Poly switch is at the Patch level rather than being at the level of single Tones within the Patch. Some other workstations produce this type of sound more effectively.

The 512 Live mode presets include some beautiful layered tones, gig splits, 8-way menus for quick selection of various leads, and so on. The selection is a grab bag, because no category list is provided. The LFO-based step generator is used to create analog-style drum patterns in some of the Live mode layers. The beats sound very old school and primitive, and the Fantom's arpeggiator is too basic to play drum patterns, nor can it run separate arpeggiations on several channels at once. For full-on drum grooves, you'll need to switch to Studio mode (the sequencer) and record your own.