Hello,

I have an XP80, which I love. I have encountered polyphony problems in the Performance Setting.

I have programmed a setting with the following:-

Nice Piano
Cathedral
Synth Strings
One of the electric piano sounds.

As I play in church, I utilise the four controller slides to fade the sounds in and out as I need. However I get slight delays with the piano sound and it sounds bitty.

A synth guy here reckons that the polyphony has been taken up and this is the way the synth treats the sound. I did not understand this as I have allowed only 16 voices per sound which equals 64. Could it have something to do with the tonal structures of each sound? I have never run out of notes in sequencing.

Hi,

It possibly could be polyphony. With sequencing, you typically don't have all of the 64 voices playing at exactly the same point in time. As one note gets released, it frees up polyphony, and so on. With the type of playing you're doing, all of the sounds are playing back together (albeit with some faded out). Even though a sound may have zero volume for the part, it is still using up polyphony. What you can do is set the note priority for each part. You can, to a certain extent control some of the voice stealing in the box.

Also, although Roland in their ads claimed 32-bit RISC processing, the processor is not as fast as it should be IMHO. I own a JV-2080 and I notice midi slop on it (badly :-(). With studio work, I'll record all of the parts that play back from the JV-2080 to audio tracks one at a time.

Had I known this before I bought it (I didn't notice it as I played it in the store), I would not have spent the money. Sound-wise it sounds great and the expansion card capabilities are great. The midi lag on the unit is terrible for today's synths.

HTH
Fernando

Don'f forget that the total number of voices (64) is calculated not just by how many notes you hold down. If your keyboard works like my XP-50 some patches may be constructed from more than 1 voice (up to 4) cutting your polyphony down quite a bit.

The boggest polyphony "offender" has got to be the sustain pedal. If you hold down 5 fingers, while playing a patch that uses 3 tones made up of 3 parts each - that's 9 notes per finger ! ! (45 notes total!)keep the pedal down, and move the chord ONE time and you're OVER already!!!!
Thin out some of the tones when you layer sounds. Take out some of the attack portions of the pianos, cuz they will probably be covered up by the layer anyway. Get rid of londm sustained tails on synth patches too - they never seem to go away fully. Remember this ONE rule: The more tones you layer, the closer you get to that "Farfisa" organ tone. It's true!
K>I>S>S> ( remember? Keep It Simple Stu*** )

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Uncle Dave