Vintage Synth Explorer

Roland • XP-50

The XP-50 is not just another synthesizer workstation, it's basically a JV-1080 with a built-in keyboard and a 16-track sequencer! It is a digital synthesizer using sampled ROM waveforms. Superb sound quality capable of emulating most any instrument imaginable plus totally fat analog synth type sounds and loads of percussion! It has 64 voices of polyphony and is 16-part multitimbral. The XP-50 makes a great beginner's pro-quality workstation.

It has 8MB of sounds and it also offers a lot of expandability with 4 expansion slots and 2 data card memory slots. You can get up to 42MB of sounds by adding any of the popular SR-JV80 expansion cards suited for Techno, World Instruments, Orchestral or Synthesizers. There's also plenty of multi-effects, reverbs, choruses and filters for creative flexibility, motion control and extensive MIDI implementation.

Some of the features the XP-50 brings (to the JV-1080) are a standard 61-note keyboard with velocity and aftertouch. The MRC-PRO 16-track sequencer which features 60,000 note capacity and can hold 100 patterns and 1 song. Several recording features (loop, step, realtime), quantization and editing features are available too. A built-in 3.5 inch disk drive facilitates storage of your sequences and MIDI data. With a 'bang for your buck' value the XP-50 still makes a great keyboard alternative to the JV-1080. That means you get some of Roland's best sounds in a performance workstation that is as affordable as 'pro-quality' can get (beyond which come the XP-60 and XP-80 mega-synths). It has been used by The Cure.

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Evan Long

Posted 110 days ago

I've used the XP-50 for almost fifteen years. I had heard Rolands had a bad reputation for being difficult to navigate menu-wise but personally, I didn't have much of a problem. That said, I generally didn't get into modifying sounds too much; this was more of a songwriting station for me. Some of the sounds are excellent (especially strings) and I've downloaded some excellent user patches from the web, some of which produced patches I never suspected could come from this unit. As a songwriting station, it was excellent, with an abundance of voices and sixteen easy to use tracks. I didn't get into the expansion cards but did use the included Dance presets (came on a special floppy), which gave the instrument new dimensions. Overall, there's something about the sound which leaves me wanting more but I'll definitely hang on to it because it is so versatile and listenable, though perhaps not knock-your-socks off amazing.

mike

Posted 660 days ago

I like soo much this synth !!! It sounds very clean and bright. Powerful sound. Great electric pianos, great pads, great acoustic instruments, great strings. You can "personalise" it with the SR-JV80 expansion boards. My XP50 is full expanded with 4 SR-JV80 expansion boards. That allows a lot of waveforms ( 80 Mbytes in 16 bit linear format ) and a lot of patches, giving a great ranging of sounds. It has a decent keyboard and a decent sequencer,and very good effects processors.The XP 50 still play in this days as a great synth. I still use it in my band for live performances.It's a great Roland's machine and has a place in the synthesizer's history.

brano

Posted 663 days ago

I own this synth and I love it very much :D
I use it as a synth for live playing, as a masterkeyboard and also as a sound module with computer for playing MIDI sequences. Need to say, that XP50 sounds for me better then most virtual instruments especially when playing strings and pads, piano and bass sounds are nice too.

Editing is little boring, but you can edit sounds on PC with freeware program ChangeIt!, and it is another story...

Keyboard action is very light, but it was one of inportant reason for me to buy this one, I like it this way.

If you need universal workstation and you find it for good price and in good condition, I can only recommend to buy it.

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