The keyboards that used the LA sound source were the first E series Roland came out with back in 1989-1993 if I remember. They were the E10, E20 and E30. The sounds of these 3 keyboards came from the D10, D50 keyboards.

I owned a Roland E16,E28,E38,E66 but I always felt my friends old E30 sounded better. Only the E10,E20,E30 used LA....after that Roland used GS sound source if I'm not mistaken. The only E series that I felt sounded terrific was the Roland E86. The Roland E30 had only 128 sounds but they were stunning. Hard to find a used one.

Rolandfan says the Roland E-30 had 128 stunning sounds. This bring up a good point, one that Uncle Dave has made in the past. Do we really need 768 xg voices and 256 gm voices etc etc etc? Do we really need 500 styles? Or do we really need 20 truly good styles and 30 really good voices? Give me 20 good styles and the following stunning voices:
Tenor sax
Clarinet
Flute
Trumpet
Muted Trumpet
Growl Sax
Trombone
Soprano Sax
Alto Sax
Accordian
Musett
Harmonica
Some good organs
A few good guitars
Fender Rhodes
Acoustic Piano
DX7 Piano
Some lush strings
Vibes and Marimba
2 or 3 good Pads

I really don't need much of anything else nor do I have the time to search through 768 XG sounds to find one I like.

Maybe I should find a used E-30!

Tom

Great point! I don't even need that many sounds. A few good guitars, electric and acoustic - a great Piano - electric piano - strings - fiddle - a couple of saxes - some brass - good organs and a harmonica. I need two or three of each, not 200.
The problem is, the two or three of each that I need, is probably not the same two or three that you need. So they try to include choices for everybody, even if I am the only one who is really right.
DonM
woops forgot the Smiley
I mean smilie. No that's just wrong.

Tom,
I agree with you. All that wasted wave ROM on sounds I will never use, but not everyone would agree with you. It all depends on what MY favorites are. Some people. like Pilot, use the XG voices extensibly, because they can be tweaked, to his liking. Bluezplayer would use the synth sounds. I would probably never use the harmonica, accordian and musette, but would like more organ voices. UD would use the electric pianos, etc. Ultimately it would be great if we could customize the keyboard to include the voices WE want.
Starkeeper

Just for the record, my old Roland RA90 has the Panel voices + LA sounds. The panel voices can be accessed directly, while the LA sounds can only be accessed thru a midi program change. I always thought that was a poor design decision.

-Michael

This is my opinion of course but I think the more the merrier. But if the Big 3 gives us tons of voices it won't mean a thing if they aren't decent ones needless to say. Although voices are only going to improve is how I look at it. Pretty soon (I'm a visionary ) - the WAV ROM in Keyboards WILL hit the Gigabyte mark along with new technology available to produce and record the Samples, ie., the "Voices".

So instead of having 128 voices we will be looking at possibly 12,000 different Voices that will be head and shoulders above and beyond the best quality Voices we have now in our Boards.

The reason I like the "more is better" is because even though let's say you have an already fantastic B3 Organ Voice you may want a little different shade or 'color' of that Organ sound, so to have a generous variety of Organs can only help and only be a good thing IMO. Same with Drum Kits. Who wants only one good Drum Kit in your Keyboard? All those who raised their hands please see the teacher after class. (Massive amounts of homework are in order)

Different Music genres require
different "sounding" Drum Kits. Even within a specific genre you still need many and varied Drum Kits IMO. I think "128" mind blowing Drum Kits would fit nicely in that Gigabyte of WAV ROM, wouldn't you? Also when you think about it there are thousands and thousands of different and unique sounding Musical Instruments in the world. Not to mention all the varied electronic Synth sounds that are out there. And you never know when one of those unique sounds may be needed in a composition or even during a Gig. If your Keyboard doesn't have that particular voice or sound your up a creek without a paddle unless you could possbily Sample it in somehow.

As it has been said: "Variety is the Spice of Life". Those 30 sounds may keep you happy for a while but I think sooner or later (most likely sooner IMO)- those 30 voices will wear thin and you will become 'bored' IMO especially if your wanting a particular sound and you don't have it!

All those in favor of "muy muchos" Voices raise your hands.

All those who raised their hands will receive an A+ for the semester. And Summer Vacation will start a month earlier than usual.

Same goes for Styles too!

Best regards,
Mike



[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 02-13-2004).]

Mike,

I too used to beleive in "the more the merrier" mantra, until I got my Roland G1000. I do like its sounds and styles a lot; however, it illustrates the downside of having too many sounds. I have a collection of over 1000 styles on my working Zip disk (and more archived on a CD). The instrument has over 1600 sounds, including the VA sounds from the E- series.

The problem is that they are organized extremely counter-intuitively, and are quite difficult to navigate to, especially in realtime performance setting. The sound set is broken up into 16 banks, each containing 8 individual selection. Then you can use variation up/down buttons to select the tone different from the one to which the selection defaults. Some selections have 5-6 variations, while others have several pages (more than 16). The problem I have with it is that although you would expect to select different variations to get different sounds, some tones which are lumped amongs variations have nothing to do with primary selections. For example, the Clarinet selection includes a Fretless (bass) tone among its variation. What do the two have in common? I believe Roland wanted to spread out the tones more evenly among the variation, but the results are extremely poor - press the variation button once too many times (not a difficult thing to do with the small screen and stage/day lighting), and you end up soloing on the bass instead of clarinet. The example I gave is not an exception.
Similar problem with styles (and midi files on disk) - you can select the ones you want, and there are sort facilities, but being able to see only three lines in the scroll window makes it hard to select live.

The moral: plenty of sounds/styles are OK, as long as you can select the one you want with one (or at most two) button pushes, and you don't have to search for things on screen.

Considering the limited number of buttons on the keyboard, there has to be a practical limit to how many sounds/styles the user can select from in a live setting.

In fact, the G1000 is quite good for playing live - it has performance memories which I use to select tones and other settings. It also has a set of Disk Link buttons, which allow you to create a "short list" of 111 styles, which are instantly playable from the disk, with two-three pushes of the button. You do have to watch on screen what is going on as you are pressing buttons, but if you have done the setup ahead of time (tedious, considering the above shortcomings), this is not too bad.

Regards,
Alex

Alex the reason Roland includes the odd patch selections you mentioned, is to have the correct program changes , matching the earlier modules MT 32 and the RA50...

Agreed Alex! When writing my orginal post I was considering adding that the Sound Scheme Configuration (Voice Banks) should be set up in the most simplistic easy to access way. Yamaha has done a great job IMO with the Tyros. My only beef with accessing the Tyros Voices is there is no dedicated button now for the XG Voices. That would have been especially useful when doing real-time Song Re-Voicing of a Midi file or Perfomance and you wanted quick access to an XG voice.

With the Big Three's smarts I think they would be able to basically overcome that obstacle at least in a reasonable acceptable fashion. I don't mind a little searching for a particular Voice as long as the voice I want is actually IN the Keyboard. If the voice you want is there your home free but if it's nowhere to be found on the Keyboard then - You in a heap of trouble boy. At least give us the Voices!! It is a great comfort to know when your Band leader wants you to play a good quality instrument or other sound and you can quickly access it and play it and then see the smile on his face when he says it sounds "extraordinarily good" and will be perfect for the part. If the voice doesn't exist on your Board you will have to hem and haw and explain to him that your Keyboard is not equipped with a good (if at all) rendition of the particular sound he wants. And then instead of a smile you will most likely see a 'frown'. Not a good sight IYKWIM.

But again those 12,000 Voices must be easily accessible or they will become more of a hindrance than a benefit. So I say to Yamaha, Korg, and Roland (and GEM and KETRON) - GIVE US BOTH! Give us the Voices AND the easy accessibility to them.

Best regards,
Mike



[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 02-14-2004).]