Roland JV-2080 users

[Ildon]

Hey Ildon, thanks for that. Mitsuda is one of my favorite composers - I knew he did Xenosaga but I never heard the instruments he used. I wonder if he used tons of addon boards for the JV2080?

He and Yoshitaka Hirota pack their JVs with tons of expansions, I'm sure. I know he has the Orch I and II boards, and I know he has the world, session and asian boards, and maybe the vocal board, 'cause I can hear them. Not sure about others, though.

About the soundtrack itself.. Yes, underwheming would be a good way to describe it. A few great tracks but a large number of mediocre ones. But really, it would have been almost impossible to match Xenogears score.

Yeah, after Chrono Cross and Xenogears he sort of went downhill. He was f*cking amazing back in the day, though, wasn't he? Even Chrono Trigger had a pretty slick soundtrack. Mitsuda was one of the reasons I started making music in the first place.

[james0tucson]

what editing software do you guys use if any for deep editing?

For the XV5080 I use a combination of Sounddiver (mostly for librarian duties), and Roland's own XVEdit which is pretty good apart from the frustrating lack of +/- increment keys for stepping through waveforms, plus of course the front panel...

Soundtower's XV-5080 editor is what made the synth usable for me. Same is true for my Waldorf XT. I had these synths and was completely frustrated with both of them, until I got the Soundtower tools.

[Jeremy_NSL]

Hey Ildon, thanks for that. Mitsuda is one of my favorite composers - I knew he did Xenosaga but I never heard the instruments he used. I wonder if he used tons of addon boards for the JV2080?

He and Yoshitaka Hirota pack their JVs with tons of expansions, I'm sure. I know he has the Orch I and II boards, and I know he has the world, session and asian boards, and maybe the vocal board, 'cause I can hear them. Not sure about others, though.

Do the XVs or the Fantom XR include these sounds or we still need to buy these ancient, expensive cards?

Yeah, after Chrono Cross and Xenogears he sort of went downhill. He was f*cking amazing back in the day, though, wasn't he? Even Chrono Trigger had a pretty slick soundtrack. Mitsuda was one of the reasons I started making music in the first place.

The last part I agreed with. Chrono Trigger was inspirational - but Xenogears set it off music-making for me. Actually, even aside from the music its my favorite video game of all time (its a shame about disk 2 though!!)

I'm not sure about going downhill after those games though. I love the soundtracks to Shadow Hearts 1 and 2, and a little-known game called Tsugunai has a quite excellent score by him. Perhaps not up to previous levels, but then what composer can reach their peak twice? To take a rock analogy, Pink Floyd couldn't ever reach Dark Side of the Moon again. Neither could Led Zep reach LZ II.

[beej]

Do the XVs or the Fantom XR include these sounds or we still need to buy these ancient, expensive cards?

No. Which is why these machines still have expansion slots to plug in those ancient, expensive cards.

[Jeremy_NSL]

Ok then: to my understanding the SRX cards are compilations of JV cards?

[Ildon]

Ok then: to my understanding the SRX cards are compilations of JV cards?

Yep, basically.

[beej]

New stuff in the main, stereo waveforms and higher quality than the original JV expansion cards, plus a bank of patches using those new waveforms.

[james0tucson]

Do the XVs or the Fantom XR include these sounds or we still need to buy these ancient, expensive cards?

You'd need to buy the ancient, expensive cards.

I found both Orch I and Orch II to be worth having. There's a "Complete Orchestra" SRX card that has all that content, but I found these two cards relatively cheaply and they complement each other nicely.

I hated the original Piano SRX card. In fact, I've never heard one piano on any XV synth that I liked, but there's a new SRX piano, maybe they fixed it. The pianos don't "sound bad", but they have serious velocity problems that make them unrealistic from the player's perspective, which makes them useless to me.

The SRX "world" card is excellent.

SRX cards are insanely priced, but the market bears them. I don't intend to buy any more, but I do find, as mainly a live player, that the one-box solution is well worth having. The expansion cards made it a pretty expensive synth -- and my purpose for chiming in on the thread was to try to warn folks, don't buy a Roland XV unless you really know that a Roland XV is the synth you want, and part of the reason for that is, you really need to budget for expansion cards, or else it's almost not worth buying in the first place ... and another part of that reason is, many people find Roland configuration to be a bitch to work with, myself included, and I've been using them for years and years.

But, the people using XV's really love them. I sure don't intend to part with mine!

[DevonB]

I hated the original Piano SRX card. In fact, I've never heard one piano on any XV synth that I liked, but there's a new SRX piano, maybe they fixed it. The pianos don't "sound bad", but they have serious velocity problems that make them unrealistic from the player's perspective, which makes them useless to me.

The piano in the Fantom XR going through a weighted 88 key keybed sounded pretty darn good. Not perfect, but very passible.

Devon

[james0tucson]

I hated the original Piano SRX card. In fact, I've never heard one piano on any XV synth that I liked, but there's a new SRX piano, maybe they fixed it. The pianos don't "sound bad", but they have serious velocity problems that make them unrealistic from the player's perspective, which makes them useless to me.

The piano in the Fantom XR going through a weighted 88 key keybed sounded pretty darn good. Not perfect, but very passible.

Devon

I don't mean to say Fantom and XV keyboards are *bad*, but they do have attributes that make them unacceptably unrealistic to a classical/romantic player from a performance point of view. On the other hand, they tend to mix very well.

I am by no means the only player who has this opinion.

[beej]

It was only the other day I noticed the new Piano SRX board, and it confused me a little. Roland imply that the new one is better (well, they would, eh?), although it seems to have a range of samples as opposed to the original SRX piano card which has only 1 piano multisample.

It's difficult to tell much from the audio demos other than the general sound character. I'd kind of like a decent piano in there for live playing...

[james0tucson]

It's difficult to tell much from the audio demos other than the general sound character. I'd kind of like a decent piano in there for live playing...

The real problems had more to do with velocity switching than with the sounds.

There are way to fix it with clever adjustments to the patches, that's what people in the XV community did. I still find it too jarring to actually play. It's hard to explain what the problem is. But many who try to play the instrument report the same problem, which will be quite obvious if you try it.

XV and Fantom keyboards (and rack modules) are very good, high quality instruments, if pricey. The piano thing is really my only problem, and I just end up not bothering to use the XV for piano.

[dxl]

this thread is about xv? or jv? or fanton?

[kmonkey]

JV i think....at least...

[DevonB]

I don't mean to say Fantom and XV keyboards are *bad*, but they do have attributes that make them unacceptably unrealistic to a classical/romantic player from a performance point of view. On the other hand, they tend to mix very well.

I am by no means the only player who has this opinion.

Here's the 'classical' improv piece I wrote with the Fantom XR while I had it that shows the full range that I mentioend earlier. First pass, no additional effects, etc.

Her Song

It's not a Yammy C7, but I think works quite well. Could it be better? Sure. If I added on some subtle effects, it could be better. I didn't have any real issues with the velocity curves with the weighted keyboard (Yamaha P60.)

Devon