My first ever synth its good and i agree with Izera it has some funky drum beats and good sounds the D50 is better but this is the great one if you have no money and you wanna something like a D50. if you get a couple of these and some D10s you could have a real blast XD

Martin pretty much summed it up in the last post.
I do like the drum sounds and some of the drum patterns.
Try running any GM drum pattern in to its drum machine via midi and its a total blast from the past, even a modern beat will be transformed in to Duran Duran. LOL.
I think Roland could have beefed up the prests a little because it really does sound like a machine with a lot of potential but the prests at least are a little bit ho hum.
I think in the right hands it would be really good.

I have 2 of these now... One working, one for spares, as CPU's have been known to fail on these. It's great for creating cheesy 80's pop sounds of yesteryear, and has some really interesting sounds. I've yet to touch the programming of it yet, but one thing I will say is, it makes me want to buy a D-50.

It's a cheap and cheerful workstation with some decent usable sounds, and believe me, people GIVE these away!. I paid £25 for the spares one.... but got the working one for free!. My friend has also lined one up for free! Ears to the ground!!!

This synth brings back so many fond memories. This was the first synth that I came in contact with and spent 3 years making all sorts of music from early dance and techno, electronic and the like. It's a great synth and can produce some good sounds with a bit of patience.

from SOS article:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan05/articles/roland.htm

"The same synthesis architecture lay at the heart of the D10 and D20 synths, and their rackmount equivalent, the D110. Again, these employed the limited LA synthesis pioneered by the MT32 so, in comparison to the D50, they sounded uniformly uninspiring."

Lets make it clear here to all those idiot EBAY sellers who HAVE to mention the D-50 in their 'other D series' adverts to boost their resell prices. None of the synths other than th D-50 contained the 'FULL LA' Engine, none sound like the D-50. The D-70 included.