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Roland S330 Sampler.. What can You good folks tell me about it..??


hiraga

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The S-330 is Roland's smaller successor of the S-550, and it uses floppies of regular dimensions. Of course, given its age, it uses double-density disks, and formats them as such. I think it can use current high density (1.44 mb) floppies, but I'm NOT sure.

I think Jonathan was referring to the S-10 and its module version (I forgot the model number). They used so-called "quick disks", little fragile things with a kind of cheap feel.

Back to the original question, I used to own both the S-330 and the S-550 (I still have the latter, but it's gathering dust). Here's my experience: Among the 12-bit samplers, the Roland were the "bigger", warmer sounding IMHO. Of course if you want a clean grand piano or crystalline cymbals, you'd better look for a modern sampler, but if your sampling needs are modest or if you're doing lo-fi loop based music, it can still be useful.

 

Pros: Good sound, decent filters and envelopes, good modulation routings, mouse and screen to edit (why aren't more people making samplers with this feature?).

 

Cons: Noisy, limited memory (14 secs at 32 khz!), labyrinthine OS despite the screen and mouse. In particular, making your own disks for live playing is aggravating. If you need to mix patches from different sources (very likely), you're supposed to copy every single "tone" that makes up the patches, then redo the mapping etc.. (a-a-aargh)

 

My advice: If it comes with a lot of sound disks, it's really cheap, and you're going to use it mainly for multitracking OR for sampling original sounds, it could be worth it. But if you need many different high quality sounds and want to play them live, prepare yourself for a few sleepless nights.

 

Hope this helps

 

marino

 

This message has been edited by marino on 03-04-2001 at 08:35 PM

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Thanx both of You!

 

What marino says, is pretty much what I read here; www.sound-on-sound.com/sos/1997_articles/feb97/rolands330.html

 

I'm picking it up, because it's a lofi sampler. I'm only gonna do drums'n'perc on it. No live playing either..

 

There's a software sequencer that can run on the machine, called Director-S, but Roland (Denmark) deosn't have it. Do you know where I can find it?

 

Also, do you think I can pick up those sample floppies anywhere?

 

Again.. thanx!

 

This message has been edited by hiraga on 03-05-2001 at 05:29 AM

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