ROLAND X KORG X YAMAHA X ENSONIQ X kURZWEIL X KAWAI

[Alécio Costa - Brazil]

Hi friends! I would like to start a topic on here that almost every month clients of my studio and musicians ask me for.

Of course every brand has its best and worst, but how my more experienced friends on here would choose and comment gear from every brand.

for example, do you think string sounds are better from ROLAND expansion boards like ORCHESTRAL SRV/SRX series? or from K2600 sounds?

 

In my opinion, I prefer Roland in general. However, when you arrive mastering, sometimes I feel the original sounds were not so bright and factory compressed like those from Korg.

I do not know very much about Kaway, Ensoniq and Kirzweil.

 

For drum and string sounds I prefer Roland stuff. Generraly, acoustic basses I prefer those from Korg. Keyboard guitars I do like the Ensoniq patches.

I know this might sound a little stupid because it depends on the keyboards models, expansion cards, etc.

 

Just wanna see your points of view!!

 

besides, which 10 keyboards would you number as the most important to develop and build the sound of the 80´s - 200´s?

 

I would point in advance D50, M1, some of the JV series

 

Thanks

Nice weekend!

[Synthguy]

That's interesting, I think overall Roland is a little better too. There are a few things that stick out from the other makers.

 

Yamaha has some outstanding sounds on their new synths, like the pianos, orchestral strings, drum sounds, basses - especially some Rickenbacher bass samples! Good effects too.

 

Korg has some sweet filters in their Tritons, tho the multimode filters in the Trinity are more flexible. The synth and percussion waves are wonderful. The compressors in their effects really work well with things like basses and dums. The Concert Piano expansion is also superb. Plus, their guitar patches are fantastic, the distortion effects are terrific. Good effects in general, and the most comprehensive.

 

Ensoniq does have some sounds that just don't exist anywhere else. I have some really nice patches on mine, like some guitars and organs.

 

The sounds on Kurzweil are kind of funny. Raw, with no filtering or processing, some of them don't sound so great, but in patches they come alive. The piano is nice, especially the triple strike piano, and they do cover all the sound bases. The synth engine is the best one in production, especially with KDFX, the ultimate in effects from what I hear.

 

Roland to me is just... sweetness incarnate. Good filters, good effects, good roms, good sounds all around.

[Alécio Costa - Brazil]

This is very subjective but when I play a JV880, XP80 and move to a 01/W, Trinity I feel very umcomfortable with the sound of Korg. However, after mastering, Roland patches do sound to bright, even if you do not compress and hi-shelf eq them. You have to be more careful.

 

THe user interface with Kurzweil to me seems the most difficult of all brands. Maybe I just did not have too many opportunities to play with their stuff, but I was surprised by the strings of their sample collections.

 

But do you think is a big leap moving from a XP80 to a Fantom?

 

I hope Roland continued developing the Series. The S760 was so good, maybe an updated version with more memory slots, polyphony, light piped outs.

 

Man, I have always dreamed of a Roland synth/workstation with at least 8 balanced outputs or even better, a light piped bus out. Is it so difficult to do?

 

Hope to hear from you all

Nice weekend

[burningbusch]

Originally posted by alécio:

But do you think is a big leap moving from a XP80 to a Fantom?

 

I've had Roland JV synths since the JV-80. When I got my first XV series I was able to directly compare it against a JV-1080. It's not just the 24-bit convertors, but Roland also cleaned up their internal processing and improved FXs with the SRV reverbs which are now included. In direct comparisons of the same patches/waveforms, I found that percussion/drums in general had more pop/punch, tuned percussion (xylo, vibes, bells) had smoother high-end with better attacks, synth patches had better high & low end, anything with a lot of high frequency content sounded smoother and was less harsh (even if it seemed brighter, it sounded better). When you re-programmed the patch to included the SRV reverb, the sounds again improved significantly. This was especially noticable with the orchestral ROM patches. Overall, the XV series sounds more like a quality sampler than your average synth. To my ear, the Roland XV and new Kurzweil line are a notch above the rest.

 

The Fantom adds some of the best patch programming that Roland has ever done.

 

Busch.

[Alécio Costa - Brazil]

but I was expecting more from this FANTOM. I imagine XP80 is from 1996 or 1997. Why don´t they do a keyboard like the W30? 8 discrete outputs, sampler, etc?

Seems Fantom is also 64 voice, hope it is not the horrible sequencer from Xp that gets lost all the time;my JW50, which now is a GM toy from 1993 is quite better.

this happens also with 2 Xp60 of friends of mine. I am not bashing at ROLAND on here. I have been one of their biggest partners here in BRazil: DM800 machines, debugged their software, enabled the possibility of recording with multiple machines.

I do love ROLAND much much more than Korg.

[R.S.M]

i find yamaha has a phat sound good for non real instrument sounds

 

korgs have a clean sound almost to polished sounding

 

kurz just awesome

 

roland never turned me on

[Alécio Costa - Brazil]

!!!!!!!!!

what about D50, S760, Juno´s, A90EX?

[Superbobus]

Interesting.

Rolands from the past turn me on. D50, Juno, Jupiter. However I'm not into sampled instruments like horns, orchestral and so on, and that's Roland's highlight at the moment. However, I'm gonna check out a Roland VK-8 this week and I'm very curious.

Some Yamahas from the past didn't turn me on. I never cared too much for the DX7 but there are some funny things in it. It's the Yamahas from this moment that really speak, with excellent pianos and Rhodes, really nice strings and pads and phat leads. Wish programming was easier.

Korg? Baaad pianos! Weak, weak, weak... Their synth type stuff is great, especially bass and weird pads. Korg keys are holding me back from buying it. The keys seem to be not solid at all.

Kurzweil? Warm! And expensive too...

Ensoniq? Never really checked it out.

So my list of important keys from the '80s till now would be:

- Roland Jupiter/Juno

- Yamaha DX7

- Roland D50

- Korg M1

- Roland JD800

- Korg Wavestation

- Nordlead and all other VAs

- Korg Triton

- Yamaha S80

- Yamaha Motif

And probably I forgot some... Oh yeah, Kurz K2000, the original.