What do music industry professionals think of the Roland Fantom X8?
The Roland Fantom series was one of the three finalists in the prestigious MIPA competition. This competition polls 80 leading magazines from the world of electronic and keyboard music. The list includes Keyboard Magazine, Mix Magazine, Electronic Musician, Future Music and more. The top prize winner was the Korg Oasys. The other runner-up was the Yamaha Motif XS8
.
The Roland Fantom X8 gets its highest ratings for the quality of its sounds. With an expanded memory capability, the people at Roland were able to take highest quality recordings and create the most realistic sounds they have made so far. Reviewer Willie Stearn writes, " incredibly, its piano patch is made up of over 700 separate samples-multisamples for every key and every velocity. Through all the patches there is a wonderful level of musicality. I found all the sounds-from string sections to drum kits-to be fat, rich, and wonderfully expressive."
Electronic Musician had strong praise for the Fantom keyboards' ease-of-use. David Bryce, in his review, describes how he was able to use the unit out-of-the-box while hardly ever needing to referred to the user's manual. That is rare. As the series has evolved to the FantomX8, that ease-of-use remains despite the dramatic advances in capability. In the ease of use category, the Fantom got the highest rating.
Those advances include a new technology to recall something you just played. It's called skip back sampling, and what it means is that the keyboard is always passively recording what you play. If you have just improvised something brilliant, but can't quite remember how it went, this feature will save the day for you.
Another feature that gains praise from professional reviewers is the expanded wave memory. This means that the keyboard has the capability to be a reasonably powerful digital multitrack recorder. "It is blurring the line between a sampler and a full recording studio," says Willie Stearn.
From more than 80 users, the Roland Fantom X8 keyboard synthesizer workstation received five out of five marks across the board. That is a staggering testimony! It is not only recognized as one of the finest pieces of musical creation equipment among professionals, but also among users.
