Roland discontinues the Concerto sample playback engine VST plugin and offers the entire Concerto instrument collection for FREE via Roland Cloud.
Concerto is a powerful sample playback engine powered by the Roland Cloud platform. The Concerto project is now discontinued, but you can download the plugin and the compatible libraries for free.
All you need to do to access the entire Concerto collection for free is install the Roland Cloud Manager on your computer and log in to your Roland Cloud account (registration is free). Once installed, you can filter the discontinued libraries and install them on your computer, along with the Concerto plugin.
In your DAW, load the Concerto plugin to access the installed sound libraries.
Here’s how Roland describes Concerto:
“Concerto is a full-featured playback engine that powers a variety of sample-based instrument series in the Roland Cloud catalog, including Anthology, FLAVR, Tera, and more. Operating as a virtual instrument plug-in in your DAW, Concerto allows you to open and combine Roland Cloud instruments, control them with global parameters, apply effects processing, and more.”
And here’s the complete list of Roland Concerto sound libraries you can access for free:
- ACOUSTIC-ONE
- ANTHOLOGY 1985 VOL1
- ANTHOLOGY 1985 VOL2
- ANTHOLOGY 1986
- ANTHOLOGY 1987
- ANTHOLOGY 1990
- ANTHOLOGY 1993 VOL1
- ANTHOLOGY 1993 VOL2
- ANTHOLOGY 1993 VOL3
- ANTHOLOGY EP14
- ANTHOLOGY ORCHESTRA VOL1
- ANTHOLOGY ORCHESTRA VOL2
- ANTHOLOGY ORCHESTRA VOL3
- ANTHOLOGY ORCHESTRA VOL4
- BLIPBLOP
- ELECTRODE
- FUNKYFEVER
- GRIT
- RESIN
- ROBOHOP
- SECTOR-7
- SUGAR
- TERA GUITAR
- TERA PIANO
- TRAPPED
The available libraries cover a variety of instruments. The ANTHOLOGY collection features some of the most popular hardware synthesizers from the 80s and 90s. Other libraries like TRAPPED and FUNKYFEVER focus on specific music styles. You’ll also find a selection of deeply sampled acoustic instrument libraries, such as TERA GUITAR and TERA PIANO.
You can access the Concerto sound libraries for free via Roland Cloud Manager.
Since most libraries are multi-gigabyte downloads (the largest one is 2.73 GB in size), it’s good that you can select which ones you want to install. I highly recommend the entire ANTHOLOGY collection if you’re a fan of vintage synthesizer sounds.
The Concerto plugin lets you customize the loaded sounds by changing the pitch, volume, panning, applying filters and modulation, and experimenting with the built-in effects. The plugin features a flanger, chorus, distortion, stereo doubler, and a stereo delay. Each sound library comes with a set of presets that can be customized and saved for later use.
Concerto is available in VST2, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin format for digital audio workstations on Windows and macOS.
Our reader Ok1 pointed out that the installation process for the Concerto plugin is somewhat confusing, so here’s a quick guide. The Concerto plugin is not a separate download. Instead, it is installed automatically with every Concerto library. So, simply install a library using Roland Cloud Manager and the Concerto plugin should be available in your DAW, ready to play the installed sounds.
Download: Roland Cloud / Concerto (download the Roland Cloud Manager and login to your account to install Concerto sound libraries)
More:
59 Comments
Tomislav Zlatic
onMassive thanks to BPB reader JEP1928 for the info about the Roland Concerto freebie.
JEP1928
onThanks, I appreciate it :).
Eric North
onDo you if the concerto libraries can be streamed from an external ssd?
samuel
onwow crazy nice.
before going down the path of multiple downloads, software installs, etc. can somebody tell me if this can be used offline? i always assumed not, just because “cloud” is in the name
Numanoid
onAnd can the samples be put on a separate hard drive ?
GaryG
on@Numanoid – Yeah, it asks for a location when you install. Handily, remembers that for subsequent libraries.
Tony
onNot so handy. I put the first library on my system disk before I realized the total size of all the libraries. There now seems to be no way of changing that. Deinstalling everything doesn’t cause it to ask again. Changing the Concerto install path in the registry didn’t work for me. The option within Concerto to relocate the library does precisely nothing. I have terabytes of spare external disk space, but I can’t install most of this because it ‘remembers’ that initial setting.
GaryG
onIt appears you only need to be online to download the libraries. To check, once installed I turned my wifi off and they all just worked fine. I also uninstalled the Roland Cloud Manager and they all still worked so once you have them, it’s just the VST and the sample libraries you need it appears.
opoil
onRoland Cloud: Do I have to be online to use the instruments?
You have to be online to initially authenticate the instruments, but after that you have thirty days before you need to be online again.
https://www.roland.com/us/support/knowledge_base/4412190938651/
samuel
onbtw, new ikmultimedia mixbox 1.5, now with a free CS version, including 8 modules
Linda
onI can’t seem to get to this even through the cloud. I’m not a member. Does that matter?
Illford
onYes, you need one to access the Roland Cloud Software, no you don’t need to pay.
L C
onDoes anyone know where I can download Concerto? The product page doesn’t feature a download link.
Stephen
onDownload the Roland cloud manager after registering an account. Log in. You’ll find it there.
samuel
ondownload the library installers. it will install concerto when installing the 1st library. took me forever to figure this out
PHoTRoN
onI was about to try that, cool.
L C
onAh, excellent. Thanks.
Stephen
onFor anybody having trouble finding it, make sure that your version of the cloud manager is up to date. Happy music making!
Ok1
onTo Bedroom Producer.
One very important item missing in the announcement on Bedroom Producers is the info on the Concerto Plugin. There appears to be no independent installation of the Concerto plugin, which is the plugin host for each of these free sound libraries/sample sets.
So its really important to point out to your readers, that the Concerto plugin is installed with every library. Furthermore using the Roland Cloud, the install is not automatic. You 1st have to download the free library, to a location on your computer storage, then run the executable from that downloaded copy, which then does two key things, install the Concerto plugin, and also install the samples and presets of the library.
Overall I think this is a wonderful offering from Roland, the question is – how long will this be available for free? Best to download and keep a copy now.
Furthermore the screen estate is huge – ridiculously huge, and there does not seem to be any way to scale it down. I use a 1920 x 1080 laptop screen, yet this is too small resolution for me to see the entire plugin. I wonder why plugins are taking up so much screen real estate nowadays – ridiculous.
Otherwise this should be a great collection of sounds, and the presets I have tried sound interesting, Thanks BPB and Thanks Roland.
Tomislav Zlatic
onHey Ok1, thanks for pointing this out. I will update the article now.
Illford
onIt’s gonna be free forever. Roland is goofy but not enough of an asshole to un discontinue a plugin.
Mike
onMaybe the massive screen-hogging plugins is happening because some devs are so used to 4k that they forget that most people don’t use 4k. Kind of like game developers using super-powered PCs and not optimizing for less powerful hardware despite being able to, or hugely bloating games with uncompressed audio, super-HD textures, micro-transactional cosmetics, etc.
Adam Road
onDoes anyone know if Roland Cloud has improved optimization since its first release? I tried it before but found it was the buggiest, most CPU-hungry piece of trash I ever used in my life! Thanks
Dumb-Dumb
onI’ve installed the VST and one library just fine, but for the life of me I can’t seem to figure out how to set the folder containing the rvr files. I go to options, select the folder on my D: drive, I click save then OK on the prompt to reload, then as soon as I close the options the path gets deleted. Same thing if I remove and add the VST again on my DAW. Can anyone help me?
Andrew Hall
onI saved the installer to my external drive and installed from there. The rvi file appeared in the same folder as the installer.
Kári
onOn Windows you can change this in the Registry, Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Roland Cloud and the key Instrument_Dir: Change it to point to a different place such as E:\Program Files\Roland Cloud\Instruments and move existing downloaded rvr files to the new directory and re-select the instrument/patches from Concerto in your DAW. Windows need a restart for Roland Cloud manager to pick up the changes in Registry.
Kim Christopher Neves
onGreat! This solved the problem… Didn’t even need to restart in windows 10
Davi
onI love the Anthology extensions. I also installed the acoustic drums and free Zenology Lite. The Roland cloud manager is too aggressive tho. Starts up with windows and it lets several background executables running on the background, even when its not running or when the plugins are not in use.
Gery Zenz
onGERYG wrote above: “I also uninstalled the Roland Cloud Manager and they all still worked so once you have them, it’s just the VST and the sample libraries you need it appears.”
JEP1928
onThere is a setting where you can turn off the automatic startup of Roland Cloud Manager, yeah it is CPU and RAM Intensive, Roland never thinks about optimization for low-end devices, it barely managed my computer while downloading some libraries.
Illford
onNgl i’d just recommend you uninstall it then, you keep all the plugins it seems
Numanoid
onI use CC Cleaner to regulate what apps starts at startup. It is easy to turn off Roland Cloud Manager using that.
Michal Ochedowski
onThat’s valuable info, thanks DAVI. Nobody likes the sneaky software.
Andrew Hall
onThank you! They are all worth getting, but the Anthology, Tera Piano and Acoustic One (Drums) are well worth the disk space. Then uninstall Roland Cloud Manager!!!
Alexander Zabazhan
onDoes anyone have problems with running roland cloud manager? (Starting up, please wait…)
Gery Zenz
on1-search for:
Host File Location: Windows/system32/drivers/etc/host
and back up this file(to be save)
2-Give administrator rights to this host file
3-Open the host file with wordpad and delete all 127.0.0.1 entries,
keep only the “127.0.01 localhost” entry
4-Save the updatet file
5-Start Cloud Manager
Alexander Zabazhan
onThanks for the help. Roland cloud manager is now up and running!
Gav
onMake sure you have the latest Roland Cloud Manager. I had to update so i can view and download Concerto.
Numanoid
onPretty good experience with this, the download for all the Anthology series is about 24GB, and it took some time, I guess the Roland server could be hammered at this time? The only thing I didn’t like is that the installer don’t let you choose directory for the VST2 plugin, it just added it to the same as the Waves Shell. it is great that one can stack several instrument channels in the Concerto plugin and play them on the same MIDI channel to create bigger sounds, like in Kontakt and Sample Tank.
Numanoid
onIt appears that the ANTHOLOGY 1985-1993 each contain 64 patches, so 512 patches in total. ANTHOLOGY EP14 has 29 patches, and ANTHOLOGY ORCHESTRA VOL1-4 has 255. So 23.2 GB for 796 patches in total.
JoeHF
onFWIW, in Win10, I had some success putting the Concerto VST2 plugin where I wanted, simply by installing the first library, then getting ahold of the VST2x64 dll from where Roland put it, copying it to where I wanted it, then uninstalling the library. I’m pretty sure it leaves a few bits scattered around in the ProgramData folder and such, and that stuff might be important, but… I bet I could’ve just unarchived one of the giant monolith files a few times, using good old 7-zip, as the Concerto plugin is packaged in each of them, and just copied the VST2 dll over itself, manually–no installers necessary. (That’s actually how I extracted the library files without having to install any of them but possibly the first one.) I don’t remember for sure, but I think for each giant monolithic file there was an exe from which a .tar file was extractable, then, inside the tar file was the .RVR library and Concerto plugin. Anyway, long story short, this whole set of libraries, plugin and all, _might_ be configurable without even having to run even one of the installers (though, ok, you still need Roland Cloud Manager to download the monolithic files, but that can then be uninstalled). In any event, once you do have the Concerto dll open in your DAW/etc, it can be told where various libraries are kept, just by clicking on the silver Options knobby-thing in the bottom left of the UI, right above the Effects Chain section–I just had to edit a text string of comma (or maybe semicolon) delimited paths to include where the giant RVR library files were kept. Hope that helps someone-
Ivo
onStudio one keeps crashing when I open concerto. Anyone experience the same problem ? I don’t have this issue with any other vst3.
Michael Jackson
onTheir newer stuff doesn’t support Windows 7 but this older stuff works great. I have a new free toy to play with!
I uninstall the Roland Cloud Manager and it still works.
Hans A
onNice! Thanks!
Hans A
onConcerto no sound in Cakewalk Bandlab, I’m no expert.. (Installed it as VST3) any tips… In Ableton 11 Lite, np problemas..
I know I had som issues with Kontakt 6, had to change midi to omni..
Steve
onDid you solve this yet?
nine
onworks fine for me in CBB 2022.06 (build034, 64bit)
win10 home
default location for vst3, default location for install of library files, no configuration necessary
Numanoid
onCan’t download Resin, Sugar or Trapped. I have tried the last couple of days but just getting error “The Roland Cloud services aren’t available at the moment”. Anybody else have this problem ?
Numanoid
onManaged to download them today, so I guess the server is open again for business :-)
Linda
onCould you explain how to get these instrument libraries seen on an external hard drive concerning Macintosh since they take up so much space?
Good sounds, but they take up a lot of memory. Many thanks.
Linda
onI can’t get them to install on the external hard drive (RAID is the one I use).
Wing Yee
onI had no problems with the downloads and installations. Make sure to install Zenology Lite and Zenbeat Free (Standalone) they’re also Free. Big Thanks to Tomislav.
Zenology Lite
176 Tones
6 Drum kits
Zenbeats Free
Unlimited (Audio Track, Instrument Track, Drum Track, Send Track, Group Track)
Tomislav Zlatic
onAlways a pleasure! :)
REAPER Fix
onIf you’re using Reaper and you’re unable to save the path of the instruments in the options, run Reaper as administrator and it should work.
Matthew
onI can’t for the life of me figure out how to install the EXZ and SDZ files. Does anyone know, do those belong to Concerto or Zenology? And how are they supposed to be installed?
nine
onwindows or mac?
Steve
onSadly doesn’t support my creaky ageing 2008 Mac Pro with El Capitan:(
mike lawry
onNot free anymore I guess…Doesn’t show up anywhere in the Roland cloud manager so you have no way to download it.
Stevo Iman
onYep, wave of their corporate wand and they’ve removed it everywhere. Can’t download concerto with latest RCM. Making it free after realising Roland Cloud is trash and customers weren’t happy is about the only good thing they’ve done in years… and they screw that up too. Don’t suppose anyone has an OSX download link for concerto?