A few months ago Roland announced it’s AIRA series of products - a line of creative tools including a drum machine, a voice transformer, a bass synth, and the System-1 synthesizer.  A hardware synth with some pretty interesting internal capabilities. First and foremost – it comes with it’s own analog circuit modeled synth voice. Beyond that it has the capability to become a dedicated 1:1 controller for a new line of virtual synthesizers that Roland will be releasing modeling some of their classic synths… AND the ability to become a host for whatever aforementioned software synthesizer you choose via the System-1′s Plug-Out technology. I’m pretty excited to see if the System-1 will influence other products once it’s released.

Anyway, here’s a better explanation of the System-1 in video form: