I'm sure they think they're doing something innovative. Roland is kind of like a car company. You're never going to see a modern, large-scale car company make a modern reproduction of a classic car. As much fun as it is to drive a loud mid-70s muscle car around, the technology in modern vehicles is so beyond that - and the mindset at Roland is that even though they're probably capable of doing something like what Korg did with the MS-20, that's moving backwards and recreating what they actually saw to be a failure. That their analog drum machines helped spawn electronic music was a fluke - their engineers were trying their hardest to make realistic sounding drums. As soon as cheap sampler chips came along, they jumped on that wagon and never looked back. If they're able to genuinely model analog circuitry in their old drum machines in such a way that they can print a chip and plug that in, they'll spend the time to do that instead of revisiting clunky old resistors and transistors. They're probably more than happy to let Korg cash in on what they see as a backwards looking fad.Originally Posted by wizfan
Whereas Korg have seen the kind of tinkering that people do with old stuff, and encourage them to do that with the new stuff. They release schematics for their analog equipment, and they mark solder points where you can add things like CV/Gate control. They engineer the Monotribe so that it almost has MIDI, and if you know a little bit about soldering and have the internet, you can crack it open and add MIDI yourself.
To stretch the analogy, having a Korg is like having a desktop computer, and owning a modern Roland is like having an iPad. You can do cool stuff with both, but it's much easier to get into the guts of one of them, which will ultimately lend you greater insight into the core of what makes these machines what they are. Whether that's an important aspect to your hobby is up to the individual.
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