I like Zenology, and that’s clearly where their development efforts are focused.
The net result today, from my experience, is that older Roland VSTs that don’t fit neatly into the Zenology/Zen-Core platform may still be available and supported on Roland Cloud, but they results can be mixed. Software and hardware all running a common platform so you can move patches seamlessly across hardware and software. Kind of like what Line 6 is doing with Helix. The idea there is to have a common platform where Zenology (the VSTi) patches will sound exactly the same as those on the hardware synths. Roland is now trying to make a software comeback again, this time centralizing on the Zenology/Zen-Core platform. I haven’t touched it in at least five years, but even then it struck me as dated and unsupported. Sound Canvas, despite being available today through Roland Cloud, is still abandonware from my point of view. They just leave it out there, closer to “abandoneware” then “supported software.” Like a lot of software companies, when they pull back they don’t “delete” the software they previously developed. My experience over the years is Roland has tried to get into and out of the “software” side of the business a number of times, pulled back, gone back in, etc. Roland Sound Canvas VA freezes / Lost Program Changes
