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Here are my initial reactions and comments about the SH-32 after a couple days of fairly heavy use: First off, the Roland SH-32 was probably the most fun straight out of the box of any synth I've owned so, the "fun-factor" is a factor. The build quality is good; it has metal casing and the MIDI ports are screwed into the casing - Nice! I had read a review that said the sliders are a little flimsy but, when the sliders are the only way to tweak envelopes you wouldn't want a lot of resistance when trying to nudge them just a hair one way or the other. The slider touch has to walk a fine line between being too light where the slightest bump will change settings and being too resistant where it's difficult to make precise tweaks.
I recently sold my Alpha Juno 1 and I can already tell I won't miss it a bit. (Relative to the SH-32, the Alpha Juno 1 was *a lot* more of a hassle to program, had less features and less of a sound palette and, frankly, IMO the Alpha Junos don't sound very good in the higher ranges.)
The SH-32 presets are generally good and some are awesome; they cover the typical analog range of basses, leads, pads, sweeps, brass, & SFX. I was pleasantly surprised that there were some beautiful pad sounds. I had good results making minor tweaks to some of the weaker presets. As an example, the presets I usually don't like (on any synth) are the short "plinky" type sounds that are probably meant for sequencing or arpeggiating but when I extended the envelopes on some of these types of sounds I was happy with the outcome.
A couple notable presets are B/D 44 and 45 the first is phase pad and the second is an analog string/pad. Although these are common sounds, these in particular are among the best I've heard.
I agree with others that the resonance sounds harsh and metallic above 1/2 - 2/3 of the max. setting (but the sounds I make are usually below that anyway).
IMO the waveforms do sound good and I have made a couple patches from scratch to test the PWM, square and sawtooth waves.
The limitations of using osc. sync. although somewhat of a drag isn't as bad as it might look on paper. The preset leads that use osc. sync. (...and IMO that's the most common application e.g. The Cars, "Let's Go", lead sound.) only need one voice anyway since they are, well, leads. The lack of filter on sync. sounds is mitigated by the inclusion of basic waveforms samples that are apparently sampled without all their higher order harmonics.
The LFOs even have a trapezoid waveform option that I liked (although it might initially seem esoteric) and I'll probably wish that all my synths had that feature now!
I also liked several of the pitched noise waveforms. You can make some cool sounds with them that you can't with white/pink/blue noise.
For those who gig, it's probably safe to say that you'd rather not take your flagship synth out to clubs where you play and I think a synth like the SH-32 would be great for that. It's cheap and easy to carry around and it sounds to me like it "has the sounds".
Rating is about a 4.2 but I'll round up to a 5 to help counterbalance some of the senseless 0's and 1's!
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