34 thoughts on “Roland AIRA System-1M (Unofficial Sneak Preview)”

  1. At least they dropped the pointless keyboard – given the price drop of the keyboard im thinking $399 street on this? It will be interesting to see if the patch points are mod in only or if they go both ways.

      1. Do a handful of 1/8th-inch jacks cost more than a 2-octave keybed and scatter/data wheel assembly or something?

        I wonder how coarse tune is achieved – it was a shift combo with the scatter wheel in the System 1.

        1. A handful of mini jack sockets don’t cost that much. But seeing as how this is a digital synth you have to have A to D and D to A converters behind each one of them and that does end up costing a lot. Not to mention that these will have to run at proper 0-10v or +/-5v t o work properly in a euro rack environment. I’d like to think it’ll be the same price as the current system-1. But it’ll probably be more.

    2. Yeah but they’re making the software extra, it’ll no longer come with sh-101 you will have to pay extra.

      Which is precisely why I think this sucks, as if modular wasn’t expensive enough paying for hardware now you have to pare even more for software for the hardware.

  2. As someone wise once said:
    “I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world
    Life in plastic, it’s fantastic.
    You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.
    Imagination, life is your creation.”

  3. … You know, I just thought of something really cool. What if there was an option to mix/match different “modules” of different Plug-Outs inside the System 1 to make a Franken-synth, kinda like Diva? So you could take the oscillators of the default System 1 synth, run them through the SH-101 filtre, but with the additional VCA envelope of the SH-2.

    Now THAT, plus the modular interface capabilities, would make for a crazy awesome synth. Of course, the hardware might not be able to support this, but if you could mix/match “modules” internally, I might be forced to snag one of these.

    2. i highly suspect many of the interested chatter posts on products from large companies are fake these days. how can anyone really be interested in such products at this stage? who cares if roland is doing this? it will be digital, thus is the same as running any Reactor or Reason program with a controller’s knobs, exactly the same. the chatter is unrealistic, not believable, just fake buzz

  4. I own a few Roland synths, and have for many years, The comical thing about the Aira range is the lack of memories and outputs.This looks great.
    Rack equipment is what we need.

    1. Can’t see the left and right edges of this thing, which makes it hard to understand is it 19″ rack or Eurorack? Considering the fact that it has CV I/O it should be Eurorack…

      1. It seems ridiculous to make something with these dimensions for eurorack, and pretty useless too, as there’s no way those CVs would cover the whole range of sources or outputs. Especially as many Eurorack cases are mean to be fit in 19″ racks anyway, you’d be filling up your 3U and 80hp of a Happy Ending Kit with just a digital roland synth!

        1. In one of the earlier pictures it looks like it’s got ears for a standard 19″ rack as well as top and bottom ears for euro racking. Makes sense. You could just bolt into your rack if you use 19″ rails (without the need for any euro mounting hardware). Or if you use a wider format you can mount it in amongst the rest if your modules.

    1. Filthy, nasty filters are the shining characteristic of the MS-20, IMO, far beyond its modulation capabilities. Having owned a System-1 and an MS-20… there is absolutely no comparison.

      Unless you’re just talking about the semi-modular aspect of the MS-20, in which case… maybe.

  10. Its got to have standard cv on it or whats the point & the other aria line products (apart from the sbx sync box) dont have any cv control at all!! CV over a plug-out synth like the SH-2 is worth it in itself & it’ll have memories, can tell via the alpha-numeric display (memory, midi chan & hopefully values). The other modules that are coming out are a complete mystery, possibly separate analog euro stuff but who knows what they are yet. I like the look of this more than the kybd version as i have enough of them & have a sweet spot in my studio for something like this, i’m excited 🙂

  11. Is Roland finally getting its act together? This interests me much more than the System 1 or the JD-XI. The return of modular Roland gear would be great – even if its not a re-issue of the System 100 or 100m. Now if only the JD-XA lives up to my hopes, then I’ll be happy, and begin looking at Roland again. Better – Korg will have to respond and release something even cooler – like a new ARP 2600?

    1. i hope the JD-XA lives up to my hopes as well. i so very much want Roland to be the company they used to be, on-trend and making synths that people want.

      But i have a feeling they will screw it up, like everything else. For starters its not going to have VCO’s,

  12. they are going to do ACB plug outs for their old modular systems, they will probably also add few modules to control those plug outs thats why the promo picture has them, it will most likely be part digital part analog just like jdxi/jdxa, youll have an option to patch to existing modules

  17. Hopefully it works like an expert sleepers es interface. What if you could use an unlimted number of virtual 100m modules on the software side, using the five system 1 modules’ jacks only to interface with other eurorack?

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