Roland GAIA2 Synthesizer - Sonic LAB First Look

US 3 Oscillator, Wavetable and motional pad 28/09/23

The original GAIA was made for almost 10 years and continued to be popular due to its features and simplicity, right up until it was discontinued last year, making it great for education and beginners.

Now Roland have announced the all new GAIA2. A 22 voice, three oscillator engine, with 2 classic Roland VA oscillators plus a Wavetable oscillator for added timbres. There's also a multi-mode filter (non specific model)

Additionally there's a sequencer, FX and a new X/Y pad (motional pad) which is used for recording modulation functions (draw your own animation/movements up to 20seconds in length) as well as for inputting and navigating parameters.
There's also two LFOs, two envelopes (with fader control).

Effects are MultiFX, Chorus and Reverb or Delay with some parameters available as modulation destinations.

The GAIA2 is also Roland Cloud compatible with the additional Wifi cloud WC1 dongle that connects directly into the back of the GAIA2 and can load from there.
Speaking of the Cloud, it's also possible to load additional User models from the cloud, Jupiter 8, SH101 etc, the SH-101 comes preloaded into the machine. Additional licensees can be part of a Roland Cloud subscription or one-off lifetime licenses.

The GAIA2 is priced at £789 and will be available in stores soon.

http://roland.com/uk

Features:

Newly developed hybrid sound engine with one wavetable oscillator and two virtual analog oscillators
Aluminum panel filled with high-quality knobs and sliders
Freely assignable modulation routings for fast sound creation
Motional Pad for adding real-time movement and expression to sounds
Sequencer with real-time and step-recording options
MFX section with 53 unique effect types
Dedicated Chorus and Delay/Reverb sections with multiple types, including JUNO Chorus effects, Shimmer
Reverb, Modulation Reverb, and more
high-contrast OLED display
USB Type-A port for connecting a USB flash drive or external USB MIDI controller
Class-compliant USB-C port for communicating with music software on computers and mobile devices
USB-C port also supports AIRA Link for communication with Roland AIRA devices