Next sound demo (with triangle, this time with some reverb):
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Hi highcarb.
Iâm very much looking forward to this. HoweverâŠ
From my perspective, I donât think you are going to get any contact from Roland, or maybe you will never get an ok from them.
They are a large company, so bureaucratic by nature. The only people who could realistically ok your design are the law department. Their time is very expensive, so they are unlikely to be spending it on queries from one man developers, UNLESS there is money being made.
Similarly it seems almost impossible anyone would take the responsibility of saying yes to your design. How senior would that person have to be for that decision to be meaningful? Anyone you can get through to would be cautious and give you a no. Itâs the only meaningful answer, unless you have considerable organisational clout.
Publish and be damned!
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Yes, I guess I just have to go ahead at some pointâŠ
Roland forced Hora modules change the looks of their drum sequencer because it looked too much like a Roland. So he managed to hear from them, but it wasnât a friendly response. I would say itâs best to play it safe and make some changes, just enough. Maybe just change the colors.
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One probably shouldnât talk to anyone who might take offense to their work.
Thereâs a history in fan game design of people working on a project, talking to the publisher, and it only ends up getting them lawyered before the project is done. If the company doesnât know until the work is already out and released, there is a lot less reward (although it still happens) for the publisher to react poorly. These are semi-original works and still often get the stick.
I would imagine itâs worse for hardware clones since they are original work to implement but are still clones of a pre-existing thing. Although maybe itâs not worse because some of these designs are so old the patents have to have expired by now. 
Yes, each filter has had itâs own challenges.
The only thing that Roland may complain about your GUI is the font of âVCO-3340â. Fonts are usually protected and that one definitely looks like the Roland font because of the small squares.
As @Skrylar comments, thereâs a long history of fan-created content/products. In most cases contacting the original IP holder only ends up in protracted discussions and often eventual blocks.
The strange irony is that âcreatorsâ are often very complimentary of new creations built on the shoulders of their original work.
The music I produce joins the dots between dub, disco, house & funk; and Iâm most known for taking music from the past and giving it a contemporary twist. Unofficial bootleg releases has led to official commissions from the likes of Bryan Ferry, Creation Records, and Nile Rodgers.
The moral of the story (if there is any!) is that as long as what youâre doing is personified by love and respect for the original creators; people have a tendency to move beyond any original overly-protective inclinations and on that basis judge your new creation with fresh eyes. The dance music industry is personified by âvariations on a themeâ (for good as well as bad) and the world of synthesis (be it modular or other) is no different.
Looking at Tal Bassline VST which is a copy/paste of the SH101 GUI without the fonts, I think yes, thatâs about it.
Progress: Some more bugs fixed.
Quick test with 3XVCO-3340:
https://www.prospectum.com/temp/vco-3340/vco3340test3.mp3
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FYI
Thanks for the info! I am not surprised. At the moment it seems that what they can do best is recycle their old stuff as profitably as possible and wage a war on the culture and community their products helped create. Quite sad. Imho not a good strategy long termâŠ
The sad truth is that for last twenty-five years Roland ignored the resurgence of analog synthesisers in contemporary music culture. It took the last ten years (or so) of successful boutique providers on the Eururack scene for them to realise that a market exists, Behringer to commoditise the gaps in the market and their biggest competitor at home (Korg) to make them realise that they missed a trick.
As it happens, Iâm a fan of what theyâve done algorithmically with their Boutique range but revisions of their greatest hits with a smart mix of analog and digital hardware (a la Dave Smith/Sequential) would have provided an itch Iâd be very tempted to scratch.
Thank you very much for your detailed reply @highcarbschwabe & for your video presentation @modlfo !
What I had in mind with âSPICE-like simulationâ was not using actual SPICE, but something like this: Combine and simplify the transfer functions of every component into one transfer function of a sub-unit, then combine and simplify those and so forth until you basically arrive at one input-to-output-over-time transfer function for the whole circuit you want to model. Then find an optimized way to solve it numerically.
No idea if that is even possible and my math is definitely too rusty to try it. And that paper about Hilbert Fock space Boson quantum field neural networks had me well intimidated. I probably should take a refreshing book dive before asking any more questionsâŠ
Update:
I created a simple website where the module and future modules are briefly explained.
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Sounds interesting! The question is if such a general simplification algorithm exists and if it is worth the effort to develop it. It might be VERY complex.
The paper was about a generalization of linear time invariant systems (such as filters, amp speakers etc.) to nonlinearities, that is any change to the input signal that can not be described by amplitude and phase changes. Like e.g. distortion (filter drive). Forget about the Boson and neural networks stuff.
But wait: Has anybody ever tried to model a VCF using a neural network? 
Like the Video Game industry and their XYZ Flashback/Classic releases?
Itâs routine practice to file for things you might want to protect, not necessarily manufacture, but that doesnât make it any less privately amusing to read this list of apparel that would be covered under that application: âJackets; sweaters; sport shirts; polo shirts; shirts; overcoats; raincoats; underwear; pajamas; undershirts; Tee-shirts; wind-resistant jackets; swimming costumes; sleep masks; neckties; aprons; socks and stockings; bandanas; headwear; caps as a headwear; hatsâ
RUIN IT ALL. I WANTED TR-808 BOXERS. /pout
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More unimpressed by the respective governments here than anything else. They should have unilaterally rejected any kind of design patent or protections on designs that are already 20+ years old. (Consider that any patents made in 1980âs, when the original machines were released, would be already expired almost two decades ago now.) But then Germany is also the place that claims the local RIAA-derivative (GEMA) owns all music unless proven otherwise, so I guess sensibility isnât a strong suit 
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In many ways Germany is a special country. A showcase of how to be smart and stupid at the same time. Unfortunately, the general tendency is towards more stupidityâŠ