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The Gaia SH-01's layout is conducive to hands-on tweaking.

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• Review

Synthesizer trends regularly flip-flop between radical innovation and retrogression with each pendulum swing producing a host of hybrids. Roland has had its fair share of winners and losers in this field but with the Gaia SH-01, a virtual analogue synth, it is (at last) looking to produce a hybrid winner with thoroughbred credentials.

Just look at it. No LCD screen, a dedicated knob or fader for every purpose. The Gaia SH-01 is a chip off the old analogue block and, while the synthesis is digital - or 'virtual analogue' if you prefer - it allows for a range of functions that are unavailable in analogue electronics at anything near this price ('street' at just under £500).

With the quality of digital synthesis creeping ever closer to the analogue standard Roland is finally on target to make a synth worthy of the SH badge of honour.

Overview

The black and white design is smart and crisp while the controls and markings blend the Roland analogue synths of the past with a more modern aesthetic. It's worth pointing out that the unit is remarkably lightweight, while the plastic casing seems robust enough for live performance.

Nearly every parameter has its own form of visual feedback, from the slider and knob positions to the backlit buttons, and this makes patch creation and editing as simple and immediate as on any analogue synth. In fact, the layout is so 'left to right' intuitive that the user can get straight into tweaking and playing the second the Gaia is plugged in. No manual flicking and head scratching necessary.

You start on the left with the Tone selection buttons that select and operate the three Tones (effectively three synths, each with its own oscillator, LFO, modulation LFO, filter and amplifier). Tones can be edited singly or together by pressing and holding the appropriate Tone Select buttons. There is also a Tone Copy button to duplicate tone settings to speed up editing and patch creation.

"The layout is so 'left to right' intuitive that you can get straight into tweaking and playing the second the Gaia is plugged in."

After Tone selection come the LFO controls, followed by the OSC (oscillator) section, the Filter controls and ending with the Amp section. The LFO features six waveforms (triangle, sine, sawtooth, square, S&H and random) with a rotary speed knob, a tempo sync button, flashing speed LED and sliders for the LFO assignment: Fade Time, Pitch Depth, Filter Depth and Amp Depth.

The LFO can itself be modulated further by the seemingly invisible Modulation LFO. This extra layer of control comes courtesy of the Modulation lever (ie, the vertical motion of the pitch bender) and, with the help of the SHIFT button has its own waveform and speed and can be assigned to alter any of the LFO parameters.

Speaking of the SHIFT button, if something doesn't have a dedicated control then some combination of this and another control will access it. At a patch level the SHIFT button can access two more controls for each effect (as there are only two control dedicated knobs), oscillator panning, modulation LFO assignments, pitch bend ranges and so on. At a global level the SHIFT button accesses (in combination with other controls) system parameters such as master tuning, velocity sensitivity, D-Beam sensitivity, clock sources, MIDI parameters, etc.