Roland RD-150

I only use it as a master controller to send MIDI notes to my sequencer, and it does the job very well. Satisfied!

Price paid

$899

UTILIZATION

Very easy to use. It only has a few buttons on its panel. Plug and control

I never took the RD-150 to any concert but it seems like it would be fine on a stage. The quality is much better than Studiologic's (Fatar) controllers by far.

SOUNDS

Excellent sounds though we arent talking about a synth or a sound module here but a master keyboard. Classic pianos, basses and other basic sounds.

OVERALL OPINION

Love it, its big, does the job.

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: Unknown ( 3-, 2002)

Nothing missing as such, but now the price has fallen I'd be inclined to go with the better specced and sampling XV 5080

Price paid

£1300

UTILIZATION

I have had no problems and I'm not all that techie. The manual is not bad, and being able to search for sounds by genre is useful, as is the considerable number of buttons, allowing you to access each part individually.

I have had no problems, but have not taken it gigging.

SOUNDS

Unexpanded, it is a very good all round palette of sounds. Useful for building up tracks, but none of the sounds really jump out as completely unique however good.

OVERALL OPINION

I would certainly miss not having it around. Currently it is used for the main part of most of my songs, but these parts generally need replacing with real synths and live basses. If it was stolen or broken, I would buy the 5080 to replace it. This series of sound modules is found in many studios, and it's easy to see why - it is a staple for making songs.

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: Unknown ( 5-, 2002)

There are enough features to begin learning how to produce music and gain fundermentals in theory of composition, shame you can load samples onto it like the MC-505 and shame about the sequencer

Price paid

£150 (£300ish?)

UTILIZATION

Definatly the worst thing about this product. At first beginers glance it looks like its got loads of buttons, but as you learn to use it you realise that there isnt enough, theres far to many buttons that have about 5 different functions that you have to use in different combinations, hard to remember them all which makes using it time consuming (using the manuall every 2 minutes). The sequencer is very limeted therefore I now only use this as a sound module with Cubase which it dose very well

SOUNDS

I belive the sounds are of good quality, some say there awfull, but it's how you use them, a bit of effects, EQing and Compresion (as with anything) and there great. the effects are a bit dogy but OK. Better to use plug-ins and external sequencer

OVERALL OPINION

Fair play, It built like a tank, its six years old and all the buttons have been hammerd so many times from just using it and realtime jammin (early days) but there all still working fine, and the jog wheel, must have been turned millions of times

Great to learn fundumentals, shame about utterly crap sequencer, good fun in realtime and superb as a sound module

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: Unknown ( 5-, 2002)

It got a ALOT of samples onboard... and a whole bunch of effects. This module is enough to make some really good music. 64 voices, 16parts, 8 slots for expansion cards (SR-JV-cards).

Price paid

$1000

UTILIZATION

It is pretty easy to use. Add a couple of samples and effects to a patch and save it in the user-bank. Then it's very easy to access it from any sequenser.. most of that work is automatic (You have to setup some stuff on the JV-1080). There are alot of patch-name-lists (+studio module for cubase users) on the net if you want to use the factory patches.. they are very useable (but therefor many uses them).

It feels like it can take some crap without complaining... never tried though..

SOUNDS

It got high quality samples. You can layer samples to make new sounds.. add effects.. play around. It really sounds great. The expansion boards (JV-SR-cards) adds extra samples and patches that mostly sound really nice. I almost only use the sounds as background stuff.. hardly ever any sounds from it for main melodies and stuff.. got other stuff for that. I use this module to build up some more atmosphere to my music.

OVERALL OPINION

It does what you tell it to. Very good midi (alot easier to control than JV-1080.. but some says it's not as tight as the JV-1080.. never noticed any _obvious_ timing-diff.. never used it for drums and stuff like that).. I really recommend this one if you need a good soundsource.. even if i prefer samplers more nowadays.. still got 2 of theese JV's + a bunch of expansion cards (had 8 different cards)

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: Unknown ( 5-, 2002)