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.
I can delete tones but not patches.......Heck can it be done......???
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