I have just bought an XP80 and I'm new to all this so please forgive my ignorance (I can't believe the instruction manual is bigger than my telephone directory! Pass the aspirin...). Can you not download patches from various internet sites? Does this not eliminate the need to shell out big bucks for the extra sounds on an expansion board? Or are the expansion board sounds of a far higher quality than can be produced by the keyboard's default capabilities?
M.

Dear MarkyMark,

Congratulations to you, you just did a good deal purchasing the XP80. I use a XP50 with 60's and 70's expansion board in my perfomance equipment and it does a great job for me!
And yes, there are some very good patches available on the net, just check out the different links on synthzone's roland page.
If you are looking for software to exchange sysex-files, I recommend Jürgen Moßgraber's "ChangeIt" to you (available in the same place). Nervertheless, if you are looking for some awesome Hammond B3 emulations, there will be no way beside the 60's and 70's expansion board. But it's worth the money, not kidding!!
Hope that's enough information for the first time and you get what you want,

Armani

Ola! The expansion boards add different waveforms that aren't in your XP. For more info check out http://athena.louisville.edu/~gtcraw01/expbrds.htm . You can also find links to patch banks from my JV/XP page. Later!

Hey. I'm in the same boat. There's a lot to digest. I have an xp60 for thirty day road test. My understanding is that you have a limited amount of space/memory for User Patches (128?). And the xp doesn't read WAV. files (patches); you need a program (available on web) for converting these. I also recommend the 60's 70's xp board.

good luck with the learning curve