Today I finally got a chance to check out the Latin board at Manny's Music here in NYC.

What a long way the SRJV series has come. Each board gets better and better in quality. The sound source begins to sound like something that might be twice the price of the JV/XP alone. On one note, this may be of XV quality as well.

In one sentence - This board rocks! The Guitars are probably the board's strong point. There are well over 30 of them. Rather than be genre oriented though, the quality is represented as well.

As with the SRJV10, slide, harmonic and finger noises were also added to make the guitars sound as realistic as possible. Better than the XV guitar? I don't know, but just as good in my opinion. You can slide using aftertouch too. The finger noises really help a lot and there is just plain out a large variety Guitars on this board.

If you were just out to buy a Guitar/Percussion board, the Latin board would be it!

The next strong point? The brass. The brasses are probably the best on any SRJV series board - Period. The solo brasses are great, and you also have techniques like "doit" and "splat". The Brass Fall samples are more warm than what were on previous expansion boards.

What's also great is that Roland took the time to make dual samples such as the waveform "Tpt&Trb". This waveform combines trumpet and Trombone together. What does this mean? More authentic brass sections. You could have a brass section that sounds realistic using just two waveforms (Tpt/Trb, Tuba/Sax for example).

Remember, the internal brass section would combine four non-uniform sounding samples which would result in chaos. On the other hand, the internal bank PRESET E, has great brass section utilizing the internal waves. The programming here is better, although those patches need to use all 4 tones.

The XV could better utilize the samples on this expansion board in ways that us XP and JV owners cannot. They could for example take a Tpt/Trb and Tuba/Sax sample and put them all into one tone. How? Well, because the XV can map two samples to one using a Stereo schematic.

The Brass sections that use four tones sound even better, of course somewhat compromising polyphony in some way. There are also trumpet samples that have lots of vibrato after a non-vibrator attack that gives these trumpets romantic-like feels.

The vocal samples could be considered great or annoying depending on your taste. You might get annoyed by "Sabor!" or "Drlrlrlrlrlr" very quick. Also the loops could be considered a waste of ROM.

The percussion is very could. You could ask for more percussion by the way of drums (no new trap set samples). All we have are auxiliary samples like Timbales, Congas, Bongos, etc.

This could be good as an addition to the Bass & Drum board. The problem with that board is that you get all of these kick, snares and toms, but they still use the internal waves from conga, etc. Combining sets from the B&D and auxiliary percussion from the Latin board could give you a very convincing rhythm set.

There are also some strumming samples and some other stuff on this board like Pianos and Strings, but these all use the internal waves, and you can easily hear that, so I won't comment on them.

I am disappointed that more couldn't be done with those sounds, since the Hip-Hop board breathes new life into the internal piano samples.

If I were on the Roland R&D team, I would've scrapped the Loops and Voice samples and rename this board the "Guitar, Brass and Percussion Board". The Orchestral II board (which has Brass as it's advertised feature) doesn't hold a candle to this board in terms of brass.

Anyway, I would rate this board an 9, with the Bass & Drums being a 10 and Pop being a 3.

The Infamous EPU.

[This message has been edited by epu (edited 12-14-2000).]

No one cares about this?

epu,

Thanks for posting. I'm sure readers will find it helpful.

You raved about the guitars, but really didn't give specifics: are they acoustic, 6 string, 12 string, types of electric, etc?

Chris


[This message has been edited by feefer (edited 12-16-2000).]

Hey Feefer, thanks for looking on. I could have sworn that I said that there were many acoustic guitars in there, but anyhow-

They are all acoustic, but damn good replicas. They are all multisampled, so the higher strings have that tight, pinched-plucked sound. They are great.

You have 6 and 12 strings. There aren't any electrics though. The bass seems to be electric and they also have one acoustic. The sample is so good infact that if you had only one expansion slot and didn't care to get the B&D board, the bass here may suffice (altough I would really recommmend getting the B&D board though).

The B&D + The Latin would make a great percussion compliment.

The Infamous EPU.

The country board also has alot of guitar and drum patches on it- how do they compare to the latin board??????

Hi All! I tried both the Latin and Country boards today- here are my comments/criticism/priases!!

LATIN- The trumpets have WAY TOO MUCH VIBRATO- come on Roland- if we won't this much vibrato we can program it ourselves- it's way overdone. The solo trumpet programs are not bad at all though. As a matter of fact the brass is mainly quite well done and for anyone craving alot of new brass sounds, this is the board for you!!!!! I also quite liked the nylon guitars but really they aren't as good as the guitars on offer in a Stock XV synthe (not JV!). For JV owners, the Latin board is a must if you want better acoustic guitar sounds though. The loops are all a big waste of time. They are gimmicky and really better use could be made of the ROM here!!!!!! Come on Roland how many times will we be able to use these loops- they are chord progressions in popular latin styles that got on my nerves within 2 minutes of hearing them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The accordians are crap as are the salsa pianos- I play accordian and no synthe has ever made a good accordian sound IMHO- it's impossible to effectively mimic bellow action etc from a synthe keyboard!!!!

COUNTRY- the acoustic guitars sorry to say are a bit of a letdown. They are definetly better than those stock guitars in the JV's but not as good as the XV acoustic guitars IMHO. They more or less sound like differently programmed variations of the same few samples. The clean tele patches are not bad in a mix but don't really cut it in a solo situation. As far as I'm concerned- Korg has the electric guitars covered in the Trinity/Triton instruments. As a matter of fact, I even prefer the Triton/Trinity's acoustic guitars also. I found that the loops in the A Guitar samples were too short but again this is just my opinion. The electric basses are VERY USEABLE on this board however- I really enjoyed playing them. The drums are dissapointing and nothing really better than what's already on offer in a stock JV. I loved the banjo's, mandolins (especially the tremelo ones) and the bazouki patches- well done and the only way to go if you really want these kind of patches. Again the accordians were nothing to write home about but better than the ones in the Latin board. Here again, I wish Roland would just can the idea of giving us these useless 'loops' that we can't/don't want to use!!!!!!!! My opinion again obviously.

All in all, as an XV3080 owner, I wouldn't bother with these boards. But if I owned a JV2080 which has room for 8 boards and IMHO hasn't got as good guitar and brass samples/patches as the XV instruments, I would consider these boards. Of the 2 boards, if I could only choose 1, I'd go the latin board because of the brass. But I'm not going to buy neither!

Instead, I'll wait for the 'house' board to come out and fill up my last remaining 'slot' in my XV3080 that way!!!!!

Cheers.

I own XV3080 too, and I am pretty happy with the guitars , pads and some old analog-like sounds....I made a smart choice!!! : )
Besides, I'm waiting for the "house" expension board aswell. Hope we can see it SOON.... that's my first hope in the coming new year.

Yeah that's what I'll seriously be looking at when it comes out! I need to fill that last SR slot in my XV3080!!!!!!

However, I hope Roland have learn't from their crappy Techno expansion board effort!!!!

I think I'm the only one who thought the TECHNO board was really, really good. While the loops were dated (early 90s), I thought the quality of the kits were great. I also thought that the Basses were great too, probably more so than the VINTAGE board. If I had enough slots in my XP60, I would get the TECHNO board.

As for the loops, to me, loops are always a waste of space, but they do give you a clue as to how the inculuded rhythm sets could sound with a bit of effort on your behalf. The vibrato on the trumpets on the LATIN board were actually satisfying to me.

The vibratos do get a bit annoying becuse of the lack of variety and the fact that a real trumpet player can't play every note with the same vibrato, but they do sound damn realistic and are VERY good. Take my word on this, becuase in addition to being a professional pianist, I'm also a professional trumpet player.

The Infamous EPU.

I think the volume level of the patches in the Latin board is a bit lower than the internal preset and other exp board IMHO..

EPU

Ive got the Techno board and, yeah to all those moaners, there are some useful waveforms that ive used in designing new patches, but come on man, the rythmns are crud, you play one of those 909 kicks out of it and compare it to a drumstation kick, its rubbish, the bottom end aint there, it just sounds wrong. Then if you compare it to a real 909 it sounds complete pants. Ok I know some people dont just want the original kicks, but if roland are gonna make a board with "techno" sounds in it, the least they can do is make it sound like their own equipment.