Roland's fascination with Base-8 number system

[Chrisk-K]

Does anyone know why Roland has often used a based-8 number system for their preset numbers? For example, preset A18 is followed by preset A21 (not by A19) on a number of Roland synths.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

It was the same type of base-8 preset system on a Prophet-5 or an OB-Xa. So wasn't Roland specific at all.

[Chrisk-K]

Then, why did they use a base-8 system in the world where the decimal system is the norm? There must be a reason.

[syntonica]

Computers.

Then, try and figure out why Korg went with 100 presets (00-99)!

[zerocrossing]

What about Dave Smith’s obsession with using the name “Prophet” on almost all his synths, no matter how different they are.

[xbow]

Computers and electronic circuits rely on binary logic so multiples of 2 are natural.

Also, hardware design. For example, the JV 90 has buttons to select 4 banks (A-D), goups (1-8) and sounds (0-8).

So you get 64 sounds per bank and 256 in total, which are also multiples of 2.

10 buttons in each row would take up more space / components while being less efficient in terms of circuit design.

[newluc]

They had used it because of the 8 bit (1 byte) architecture of the chips used. At these times memory were very limited

[briefcasemanx]

I think memory was probably organized in chunks of 8 bits because it had to transfer data into CPU registers that were 8 bits. So keeping things in groups of 8 probably made the firmware slightly more computationally efficient and memory management easier to program with fewer chances for bugs. My guess.

[chk071]

What about Dave Smith’s obsession with using the name “Prophet” on almost all his synths, no matter how different they are.

Brand name. I'd be curious how many units of the Take 5 synth he sells, because it's not called "Prophet". I wouldn't be surprised if it's less than the Prophet labelled synths.