Sound Of Music

Roland's PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) based synths started 1987 with the legendary D-50 and the rack version D-550. 1990 the D-series had sold in over 300 000 instruments! The D-series used only sampled waveforms for the attack of the sounds. After D-50/D-550 came a prototype with PCM sampled sounds was built under the name T-110, but sold as U-110. U-110 was a little bit noisy and was replaced 1989 by U-220 and than the keyboard variant, the U-20. The U-series had no filters. But 1992 filter was added and the MV-30 was born. MV-30 metamorphosed into the JD-800 keyboard synthesizer. Later came the JV-80 and the U-220 was replaced by the JV-880. The JV series appeared in many models. The JV-1080 was an enormous success with a low price and a big sound. It was replaced by the JV-2080 that later was replaced by XV-5080.

There are also many other models in the JV/XV-family, such JV-30, JV-35, JV-50, JV-90, JV1000 etc, as well as a series of Fan tom synthesizers

Roland XV-5080 is a 24 bit, 128 voices, multitimbral, 2HE rack mounted synth module/Sample player XV-5080 has 1083 internal sound, some of them from the JD990 and JV-2080. Through placing up to 8 expansion cards (inside the top of the module) it can be expanded to approximately 3100 sound. The sounds are backward compatible with the JV-2080. The sound architecture is based on samples. And there's an effect processor, based on Roland's SRV-3030 with an open and clear sound. The main part of the patches in the XV-5080 sounds very good. Our favorite sounds of this mighty synthesizer are the strings from the Orchestra card and the B3 from the 60/70s keyboards card.

Except the internal sound the XV-5080 also can act as sample player with unlimited sound. It reads Roland-, Akai-, Wav- and Aiff-format, edit them and add effects. HD, CD, ZIP and Smart Media Card (up to 128Mb) can be accessed via SCSI. There are two memory slots (72pin EDO, non-parity) for up to 128 Mb RAM. Storage for the sample sounds are SCSI-media or the Smart Media Card.

For easy navigation, there are two helpful tools in the XV-5080:

ROLAND XV-5080 MANUAL

• Roland Owner Manuals

OPERATING SYSTEM HISTORY LIST

Here you can find the history list from Roland for the latest OS upgrades for XV-5080

CUBASE SX SCRIPTS

Cubase Scripts allows you to fast and easy have control of all your sounds of XV-5080, and instant find specific patches

It's easy to create custom-made scripts from these scripts below for other settings of expansion cards. Use for instance "Notepad" in Windows. This is the way it works:

The presets are divided in 3 levels:

Patches can normally be changed by all MIDI channels
Performances can normally be changed by MIDI channel 16. Otherwise change that in XV-5080

Copy the desired patch name scripts into C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application data\Steinberg\Cubase SX\Scripts\Patchnames\inactive\Roland or similar path - for instance change Administrator to your Windows log in name. Application data is a hided folder.

These patch scripts are made by Torbjörn"Toby" Frisk, Sound Of Music.

Cubase SX scripts by others to XV-5080 and other synthesizers:

• XV-5080 Cubase SX scripts

If you use Cubase SL/SX 1.05 there's a problem for importing costume made scripts. The solution is simple and you'll find it here (from Steinberg support)

DOWNLOADS

• XV-5080 Logic Environments
• XV Screen saver