Hi,

From what i've heard is it true the EM55 has 20 mb in their 3500 voices..

How much does the g1000 have ?

Are the EM55 voices better than G1000 voices ?

Please help....i am planning to buy an EM55 but i need to know...

Also, does the EM 55 have a 16 track sequencer?

One more question.

Is it possible to adjust the volume of the bass,drums,accompainent of the em55 ?

The EM55 has 20 megabytes of wave ROM according to their web site, but don't forget, there are 3500 voices. It also has a 16 track sequencer. Go to www.rolandus.com, select EM55, specs * brochures. I own a Roland EM20 and enjoy it, but I found the EM55 to have a greater quantity of the same voices, a real disappointment. I don't know anything about the G1000. Make sure you listen carefully before buying the EM55. Personally, I will wait for their next attempt. Hey Roland, if your listening, think QUALITY, not quantity, what a waste of 20 megs of wave ROM.

Rolandfan,

I don't know much about the EM55, but I do own a G1000, and it is an excellent-sounding keyboard to my ears. I believe it has 24 MB of sound ROM for its 1600 odd sounds. The VA- series has 48 MB ROM for about 3500 sounds, and I guess it sounds a bit better. The fact that EM55 has only 20 MB for the same number of sounds tells me that they probably use shorter-length samples than either the VA or G1000. If I were you, I'd try to listen to the instrument very carefully, and not rush to make a buying decision.

In my experience, the newer sound sets contain some (fairly few) sounds that are better than before, but the rest of the sounds are very similar to their predecessors, even if they may be resampled.

A word of caution - with Roland, more sounds does not mean better sounds. What they do is they arrange sounds in the banks (one for SC55=E70, one for SC88=G800, one for SC880=G1000) for backward compatibility, so that a style from, say, G800, based on the older sound set, would play correctly on a newer G1000, EM or VA instrument. They organize the new sounds into the next sound bank (which you use by default) by groups (e.g. piano, guitars, strings, brass, winds, etc.), and intersperse unrelated sounds into those banks, so you may find a Oboe3 sound in the Piano group. I often find it difficult to find the sound I want in my 1600 sound set. You may have even more trouble with the 3500 sound set, especially since the EM55 has a smaller screen than the G1000.

I don't know about the EM55 sequencer or part volume adjustments - on G1000 there is a 16 track sequencer, and it is fairly easy to adjust part volumes.

REgards,
Alex

Thanks Guys. I am going to my music store next week...gonna try the EM 55 and EM 2000 out...You've been a great help I am from South Africa btw .

I have found out that the Roland VA 3 has just 8mb for its 3500 + sounds..... yikes!!

I've played the EM-55 in a music store a few months ago.
But I was very dissapointed.
I have never played or heard the G-1000.
Even though you are a "Roland fan", I would
seriously consider a Yamaha PSR-1000/2000, or a Ketron XD9.
If you just want to have better sounds, you could check the Roland XV-2020, or XV-5050 out.
I think they sound awesome, and they are GM too so you can connect them to your keyboard and use the sounds of the XV.
you can go to www.rolandus.com or www.rolandmusik.de to listen to some demos.

Greetz,
Marcel

I doubt the VA-3 has 8 mg wave ROM. It's probably 20megs similar to EM55, and VA5. VA7 and VA76 have 48megs. Would love to hear the VA7. My EM20 has 8megs wave ROM (330 voices) similar to PSR550 with 713 voices.

I think it's safe to assume the VA-3 would sound as good if not better than the EM-55. Being a part of the VA family alone I think places it a few steps above too.. YOu get a way better looking keyboard with the VA-3 plus huge touch screen.. Starkeeper, how does the EM-20 sound compared to the 550? I do know the PSR-540 had 6 megs so I wonder if they were close to the same..

Squeak

Squeak,
IMO the Piano is way better then the PSR540/PSR550 (better then PSR2000), better: breath sax, vibraphone, orchestral, horns, guitars,pan flute. Strings are about the same, but EM20 has no symphony strings. Yamaha has better organs especially because of the DSP's. No DSP on EM20. Sweet flute on PSR550 is totally awesome, Roland is crap,it's not a flute. PSR540 is close to PSR550, but still would like to upgrade to get the Sweet flute.

Squeak,
The PSR550 is double the price of an EM20, so Roland did a really good job. Of course the PSR550 has all kinds of features like disk drive, importing custom styles, all kinds of handy buttons. The styles are better as well. On the Harmony-Central synth forum one poster said the Yamaha PSR piano sounded like thumb tacks falling on rusted guitar strings. That sounds about right. The piano sounds more like a guitar then a piano.

Hey Yamaha,
How about a "Sweet Piano" voice on your next PSR?
Starkeeper

Starkeeper,
Actually I used to have the PSR-540.. Yes the 540 and 550 are almost identical.. What I like about the 550 is that is looks way better, the screen gives you 3 options of backlight color which is nice because you can adjust it to the lighting your playing in.. My big gripe is the speaker system on both boards.. It ticks me off that Yamaha even bothers to put those tweeters on the keyboard.. They don't even work! Yamaha just put them there for show.... As far as the 550 actually sounding better that the 540, I'm not so sure.. Yamaha claims the 550 has more than twice the mb's of the 540.. If this was true the 550 would have more than 12 mbs.. The 540 was 6 megs. I honestly think the extra megs went to the extra sweet and cool voices.. Plus there are some different guitar sounds that I think used that extra memory, they are folk pick guitars that have the sound of the pick actually plucking the string.. There are 3 of these guitars and they all slighty differ in sound... I agree that a "sweet" or "cool" piano would be a great addition.. One shouldn't have to combine several piano sounds to get a decent "grand" That's what I had to do..

Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 10-23-2002).]

It has been a while since I tried a G1000. From what I remember, my first impression was that the OS was difficult to navigate, but I didn't spend enough time to know for sure. I liked the sounds pretty well though.

I recently demoed a VA76 and an EM55. It seemed to me that the VA76 was easier to understand at first crack than the G1000 had been, and I liked the voices and styles. It's hard to compare the sounds between the two because of the time span involved, but I can say that I liked both when I tried them. In contrast, the EM55 did not seem to have the same quality of sounds or styles. I tried it side by side with the VA76. The PSR550 that was next to both of them sounded a lot better to me than the EM55. Well, that was my impression, for what it may be worth.

Best regards,

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 10-23-2002).]

The EM55 features 116 drum sets incl the V Drums.... question...does that 20mb versus 48mb come into play here too..regarding drum quality..??

Im sure that's the case regarding the drums too.. That memory is to all the sounds.. Wouldn't it be nice if Yamaha set aside a few megs of memory just for the drums alone.. Imagine if they did this on the PSR-2000, or any of their PSR line.. Having 8-16 megs to the regular sounds and say 3 - 4 megs to the drums... Boy that would make a world of difference.. Seriously think about it.. How much memory do you think goes into the Demos on the keyboard??? Who really uses those demos too? If they were smart they'd put the demo songs on floppy and let you load them into the sequencer, and use that extra memory for voices... My old Yamaha synth allowed this.. There were no internal demos on the keyboard.. If you wanted to hear a demo you loaded it off disk, but what was cool is that demo included the entire performance set used to record it.. It gave you all the voices and sounds that were sampled for it, and they weren't just cheesy preset sounds.. The performance set uncluded some killer vocal samples, loops, and other things. Future versions of the 9000 Pro would be a great canidate for this considering it has a sampler. You could then turn around and clear the song and play around with the performance set and make your own cool songs from it.... Jot this one down Yamaha, I think it makes sense.

Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 10-24-2002).]

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 10-24-2002).]