Roland • S-330
The S-50 was Roland's first professional keyboard sampler, and the S-330 is a compact, 1-unit rack-module with all the features of the S-50 and more at an affordable price! Still, by today's standards it would be considered limited and lo-fi. However for its time it was a powerful instrument which can still prove useful for many music applications today. It's easy to use, but pretty much requires an external CRT monitor for large graphic editing.
Editing is a breeze and is quite sophisticated especially when using the external CRT monitor and mouse options (the DT100 digitizing tablet from the S-50 is not compatible here). You get waveform smoothing, auto-looping, tuning, multi-stage envelopes and can quickly adjust loops and samples. New to the S-series were the Time-Variant filters as used by the LAS-type Roland synths. All this means is that the TVFs and TVAs are more digital, more in-depth and more precise. There is also the S553 sequencing software which offers basic drum machine type sequencing via an external CRT monitor like the S-50 and S-550 also offer.
Sample memory here is the same as the S-50, 750k-byte which yields up to 28.8 seconds at 15kHz. Sampler specs are still 30kHz variable sampling rates at a 12-bit resolution. Roland has a vast and nice S-50 compatible sample library of sounds ready to be loaded via the built in 3.5 inch disk drive. Samples of your own can also be saved to disk. The S-330 has room for 32 samples or "tones" and 16 patches in 2 banks. There's also a RC-100 remote programmer with an Alpha Juno type alpha-dial for easier programming access. Double the sample memory to 1.5MB and you get the 2-space rack-mount S-550.
It has single handedly (save VSE) made my s330 a super hero.
After browsing there rescoures I am now in total control on this sample engine.
If anyone has any tips or pointers here as to make these two work together, i'd love to hear them.
It is, you need also the RC-100 - then it works. The chain is DT-100 -> RC-100 -> S-330
and I loaded the sys discs carefully and sequentially there were no crashes. If I worked through the OS haphazzardly I experienced crashes. Very easy to use but also very particular about its operation.
once I created a split this machine rules. A distinct character signature sound