Just for curiosity how much will the Fantom X-7 with the 1GB expansion cost ? Estimates ?

The questions that do arise when I read the text on harmony-central http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM04/Content/Roland/PR/Fantom-X.html


and
"... these 128-note workstations can contain nearly 1GB of wave data when fully expanded. "

" ... The sampling section is also beefed up with capacity for up to 544MB of RAM using optional DIMMs ..."

The first is "ROM sound" and the second is sample RAM, right ?
What sample formats can it load in RAM (if it cannot read popular formats then sample ram is not of much use except for homemade samples but I doubt people need so much sample RAM when not using large commercial high quality sample libraries to be loaded in RAM)

Another question I assume "PC cards" are compact flash cards ? AFAIK they are quite slow, (only 1-2MB/sec transferrate) and probably not adequate to play samples from in real time so I assume some downloading to the faster RAM is needed (correct me if I'm wrong).

cheers,
Benno
http://www.linuxsampler.org

I'm waiting for the X as well. the S is a very intuitive interface, and my favorite thing is those pads can be used as "triggers" for different drum/rhythm loops, which is all the arrangerlike functionality I need. it's very easy to program one's own beats, etc., and if the sound ROM expansion is as good thru and thru as it is on the demo, roland might have themselves a beast here.

banno
At least it sounds good. It's also not built on future promises of what it will or could be.
Terry

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jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

[This message has been edited by trtjazz (edited 03-18-2004).]

Did I hear somewhere that they're making a rack module version for this as well? like $700. I could swear I read that somewhere.

Yes I mentioned that in an earlier post and here it is:
http://www.rolandus.com/products/details.asp?catid=8&subcatid=37&prodid=Fantom%2DXR

Terry

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jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

I just got an update from Music123 by email stating that the Fantom X is now supposed to be in stock by 04-03-2004. So the timeline has been pushed back a couple weeks from the original 03-20-2004.

The Rack Mount version's cost is: $1,345.95
It is available at zZounds.com and is expected to be in by 03-30-04. That is 11 days from now so we'll see. It's arrival may be shoved back to a later date also as ALL these 'in stock' dates are tenative that Roland has given these different online retailers. Roland may be giving these earlier dates to tantalize buyers into anticipating this supposed Monster Keyboard's release. It's working but if it's delayed too long people will lose interest IMO and Roland will have to work that much harder to try and regain people's interest and confidence knowing that potential customers get frustrated with Companies that promise something and then don't make good on it. A good example is Korg's PA80. People waited what seemed like forever for the PA80 to hit the streets from the time Korg announced its release. Yamaha has similar problems delivering products on time on the dates promised. The Mo ES was an exception. I think Mike Martin had a lot to do with that which shows Yamaha is trying to turn that bad statistic around. Of course Mike Martin is just the overseer of Workstations I believe. I haven't the foggiest of who's in charge of Marketing for Yamaha's Arrangers.

The PSR 3000 will be the next test for Yamaha to deliver when promised. We can only hope and pray, right?

Best regards,
Mike

What I get is that they are supposed to hit the stores in about a week. Roland has asked/demanded that they hit all stores at the same time.
Terry

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jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

I got 2 fantom X 76 key models today and 1 88 key model. I love the color display and the interface is a breeze to work with. The new 88 key Ultra Piano voice is great. There are 704 samples in this piano! I only had time to spend an hour with it but I will play with it more tomorrow.


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George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

There is a thing I haven't fully understood from the specs I have read on the Roland site: they say that the Fantom has 64 Mb of ROM waveforms, and they say that the acoustic piano has been sampled note by note and each note has 4 samples, so I wonder: how much of these 64 Mb does that acoustic piano take up? And how many Mb are left for ALL the other waveforms? Not much, I am afraid...

George will give us a good review of this board. Please also tell us if the sounds are very different from its cousin the V Synth ? I wonder how the alto,tenor, and other saxes sound...theres no demo on the net.