The U-110 is a basic rack-mount sound module consisting of acoustic-oriented PCM samples with preset settings, limited flexibility, and boring late eighties sounds. It's nothing to get excited about. It has 2MB of ROM-based sampled sounds, none of which sound great. The U-110 is fairly noisy as well. Its palette of sounds could be grossly expanded with up to four expansion cards, but good luck finding those today!

The U-110's biggest distinction, really, is that it was Roland's first totally digital sample-based synth. At the time, that was a break-through - look at all the realistic sounds you get in a single rack space MIDI module! Nowadays, it's hard to wonder why anybody would want one of these. The U-110 was available in a prototype form as the T-110. But the U-110 was soon replaced by the U-20 keyboard and U-220 module. Astral Projection used a U-110 before they switched to the U-220.

19 VISITOR COMMENTS

Fab

December 4, 2011 @ 3:10 pm

I bought one 50€ with 4 cards
30 € for two more cards
now I have a six outputs expander
cheaper is impossible
the drum sounds are great on the 'rock drums' card
I'm very satisfied of the rythm parts I get with it
one slice one instrument
good fun

Lorentz

October 25, 2011 @ 5:36 pm

I used to have two of these in my rack. I ran them as layered, single channel sound sources, layering up to 6 parts. You can achieve some really sweet sounds. Brass ensembles, String ensembles, weird evolving synth soundscapes, could do it all - with some programming (which is typical Roland, OK when you get used to it). used to call them my M1 killers. Ran them inline through some multi-effects (REX 50 and a QuadraVerb GT) - don't use the onboard chorus, it adds noise.

Spiderman

September 22, 2011 @ 9:14 am

I finally decided to fire up my U110. I plugged the computer into it and only 1 channel will work at a time. Cakewalk has been no help and my D 20 works fine with the tunes. I rebooted the U 110.. no change. I have tried activating the other channels, but still the unit only responds to one channel at a time. Help !!!

Dan logic

September 21, 2011 @ 11:14 am

these are graet machines , if you are into retro sounds , the presets are sweet , nice drum kit , nice jazz sounds , you can pick 1 up in perfect nick for 20£ cant go wrong for that price , ive had mine for a lil while now , got all 25 pcm cards and love it. if u hate this then u are just silly. the only thing this module is made for is love.

kiskadar

August 2, 2011 @ 8:17 am

"Nowadays, it's hard to wonder why anybody would want one of these": the U-110 has four PCM card slots while the U-220/U-20 has only two.

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