itabuna and magoo apparently never got past scrolling from patch A11 to patch A15... they'll hear if they get to patch A32, particularly if they tweak it just a _teensy_ bit, that the SH-32 can put an Oberheim to shame in fat, rich symphonic strings sound. Specifically on that patch, I traded in the second osc SAW waveform for a SQUARE, put it down an octave, turned on the sub-osc and BLAM! you could score a movie with that sound. And that's before doing anything with the efx, which are outstanding.

The sound is _not_ sampled waveforms, the waves when stripped bare by bachelors are every bit as interesting as on the JP8K. Unlike almost every Roland synth in the past 6 years, a bunch of default patches here even dare to showcase _without_ efx and even _without_ efx and _filter_ turned on... and they still sound great!

The hard sync is as hard a sound as you could wish.

You can do weedy, knife-honed-sharp, fatter than blubber, or all of them together in one patch. The choice is yours.

And none of this is even _touching_ on the fact that the arpeggiator patterns -- all 128 of 'em (64 for patches, 64 for drums), are completely _editable_, something you can't say even for the RS7000; the chord forms are completely _editable_ so you can make up your own. All the performances (which really don't showcase what putting 4 voices together can do, unfortunately -- in my opinion) are completely _editable_. You can use the arpeggiator to either step or slice the filter, for some really amazing results. Imagine combining the cool Slicer effect (with 38 rhythm choices) with the arpeggiator set to FLT2, LFO1 chopping the sound on filter, amp, by setting it to S&H, LFO2 modulating the whole thing and mod-panning it all with a slow sine -- and almost none of it (except for the chosen Slicer pattern) _canned-programmed_ and you can't even begin to imagine what you can do with all that for "interesting" sound. :)

With hard sync, which cross-modulates OSC2 with OSC1, set that to any of the efx with bpm sync, set bpm sync on, adjust waveform and pitch for OSC1 and you get about a zillion more cool new hard sounds right there.

What's cooler than all of the above, though, is that what I've just described above is easier to play with, real-time, with great result, than dirt. Just makes the whole process, as one poster in this thread suggests, fun.

I'm givin' it a 5 out of 5, with 5 being top quality and 1 being junk.

I do not use this in clubs, neither do I have the inclination to write music for drugged out people who do not know the different between VA and Analog. But please, do wake up and realise that even the average straightedge listener to electronic music doesn't care about what box we use to write with. The handful that DO care aren't going to judge a song entirely by that box either, but by it's usage in combination with other gear, how it is pharsed, mixed down, and how well/poorly it connects with its audience.