SY-300- Flaws and no firmware upgrades

Started by Brak(E)man, March 17, 2018, 11:55:51 AM

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Brak(E)man

Apart from the obvious non hex input there's a couple of things I don't understand why boss left out.
Three osc to pan in stereo but if you want distortion / amp sim , gate , it's in Mono , no othe fx are in mono so why ??
(same in GP10 btw )
LFO can't be set to target pan , or another LFO . Wave ped have only three assigns and not sequencer on/off nor hold.
Sequencer have a depth parameter that should have been called pitch range or something sim. and there should have been a mix/blend parameter

The return is mono , why bother having a fx loop in mono,
Not even combining Thru/Return can be done in stereo
Otherwise a good way to use flow from two sources , but they should be possible to pan.
There's more c'mon Boss firmware upgrade is goooood for your customer base
swimming with a hole in my body

I play Country music too, I'm just not sure which country it's from...

"The only thing worse than a guitar is a guitarist!"
- Lydia Lunch

chrish

The only solution I found to alot of those sy 300 flaws is to purchase two pedals and to pan  one pedal mono out left and one pedal mono out right.

Brak(E)man

Yes but one FX in mono should be easy to make into stereo
The same with the other issues except the fix return which is hardware
The rest are software upgrades
swimming with a hole in my body

I play Country music too, I'm just not sure which country it's from...

"The only thing worse than a guitar is a guitarist!"
- Lydia Lunch

chrish

#3
I remember reading on the forum somewhere that they, the designers, run out of processing power.

So we're not going to get everything I guess.

Thing I don't understand is the hex thing and why it wasn't included on the sy-300.
People say all those additional ad da converters would add to the cost but look what they did with the gp10 for not too much money.

So maybe with the gp10 the processing power went into the hex processing and less was allocated for additional FX added to the fx chain and a less than able alternate tuning code.


Rhcole

The #1 weakness of the SY is poor poly pitch shift integrity. Hex would have been a solution for sure, but that would have required considerably more firepower under the hood.

I think probably 2/3s of my patches use workarounds for the pitch shift issues.
Play through a Superego + sometimes, it's noticeably superior. In fact, the SE+ is my go-to pedal to smooth the jaggies out of my SY pads. It tames them considerably.

Brak(E)man

Quote from: chrish on March 17, 2018, 04:15:18 PM
I remember reading on the forum somewhere that they, the designers, run out of processing power.
...
Maybe that's the case but I rembember something similar about the RC-505 and that unit ended up with a lot done after a firmware upgrade
Quote from: Rhcole on March 18, 2018, 12:53:41 AM
The #1 weakness of the SY is poor poly pitch shift integrity. Hex would have been a solution for sure, but that would have required considerably more firepower under the hood.

I think probably 2/3s of my patches use workarounds for the pitch shift issues.
...
Agreed and they should put their effort into that area first, and it's a shame that one has to hide to pitch flaws.
The other improvements I'm suggesting shouldn't be difficult nor demanding on processing power.

I think that Boss/Roland are making a bad decision not trying to improve their products especially when trying to corner a niche market. It'd be better to be the best if you want new customers.
Which is what they did target with SY-300 but failed.
swimming with a hole in my body

I play Country music too, I'm just not sure which country it's from...

"The only thing worse than a guitar is a guitarist!"
- Lydia Lunch

Babarishka

I found a way to get around the distortion effect/mono problem.  To start:

1) The distortion effect overrides the pan effect in the Osc section, which you already know.

2) The panning in the Osc. mixer overrides both the panning in the Osc. section and also the mono flaw when using the overdrive/distortion effect.

Let's say that you've picked the routing option that is the second from the left.  Osc. 1 is going into channel A.  Even with the distortion effect on for Osc. 1, tweaking the panning control for channel A in the Osc. mixer will give you control of the panning effect.

Osc. 3 is going to channel B.  Again, even with a distortion effect on for Osc. 3, tweaking the pan for channel B in the Osc. mixer will give you a panning effect.

So, you could have, say, Osc. 1 panned hard left, Osc. 3 panned hard right and, with a distortion box in the thru/return, say, panned center, you could have a preset with 3 distortion sounds covering the stereo field.

With the routing option being the second from the left, Osc. 2 is going to channel A in the Osc. mixer the same as Osc. 1.  Even if you don't have a distortion effect on Osc. 2, the pan setting in the Osc. mixer will override the pan setting in the Osc. section for Osc. 2 and be panned the same as Osc. 1.  So, whether you use Osc. 2 is of course your choice but, if you wanted, you could have distortion on Osc. 2 and then have four distorted sounds.  Also note that this get around will not work with the first and last routing options, as they have all three oscillators going to either channel A or channel B.

Finally, just FYI, the synth pan setting in the output mixer overrides the pan settings in the Osc. mixer.

Although I've had the SY-300 for a couple of years, I never noticed that using distortion/od turned the signal into mono until I tried using overdrive on all three oscillators yesterday.  I searched the web to see if anyone noticed this and you were the only I could find.  So, I figured I'd join the forum to answer your question and for anyone else who comes across this flaw. It's not a 100% solution, but it's a decent compromise.  I hope this helps (assuming you still have the unit).

akahige

+1000 !!!!


Updates are really something missing it our time (look kemper, fractal etc... they give always new things and improve their products a lot !!!)

I'm sure the SY-300 can offer so much more and is still relevant between the SY-1 and 1000...

It feels like the SY-300 was totally abandoned by BOSS, I really don't understand their approach, it feels like a company of another age... I'm sure at some point, a company will deliver a SY-300 like unit (or implemant in existing unit, Quad Cortex ?) with modern approach and will kill the boss.