I'm using Cakewalk as my sequencer, and trying to record from my JV-2080. I'm finding that the midi information is not completely consistent. For example, I've been struggling for about a week now with a track that consists completely of short, continuous 16th notes, and I'm finding that some of the notes end up smearing together or missing by a few ticks. It's not "perfect". I've checked a few things, swapped cables, swapped instruments, and I think I can nail it down to the JV-2080. Am I missing something in the setups that I haven't seen? My computer is a 500Mhz PIII, and I'm connecting out through a USB Midiman Midisport.

Can anyone comment or provide any advice? I can't believe this thing can't handle this kind of continuous midi stream.

Sorry to let you in on this one mate, but I had a JV2080 for a year and a half, and it took me a while to work out it was the 2080 that was causing midi timing problems. Their crap timing is caused by roland using the same processor as the 1080, but making it produce 3 efx's rather than 1, in other words the processor aint fast enough to handle the amount of data. I tried everything with Roland, they took the unit back etc, but got stuff all out of them.

My advice to you is to watch tight envelope settings, lots of lfos and big layered sounds all screw timing up. Oh and dont use too many voices, anything over about 20-30 i found timing got progressively worse. (Seems abit mad forking out for a 64 voice synth doesnt it?!)

Unfortunatly, there is nothing else you can do, I sold mine as i was so cheesed off with it, Ive got a 5080 now, it's too early to say whether this thing has got similar problems, as im not using anywhere near 128 voices, but from what ive heard Roland are now using seperate processors for the effects which means that the synth engine has the same power as the xv3080

My problem is that this is doing this in Patch mode. I'm only using one sticking patch, with 4 tones, and only using reverb, no other effects. And it STILL won't hold steady. I could understand it in Performance mode, but when I lay down tracks to the VS-880, I always use the native patch and print them one at a time.

I did save the patch in question to the user bank and turned off aftertouch and other non-necessary Rx settings, and that helped a little bit. Geez, for a couple grand you'd think this thing should be steady as a rock! Especially one patch at a time!!

I'm curious to know how the XV-5080 does. I'm considering upgrading, but absolutely won't if the midi timing isn't anything but perfect.

I have heard from someone else before that they could notice timing discrepencies even playing anything over 2 notes at the same time! All i can relate to this is that the 2080 never sounded right to me, it seemed to have an uneven feel to it. I think Roland thought that no one would notice, but hey, its so bad sometimes, who wouldnt.

With regards to the 5080, i cant comment too much as Ive only had it a week or so, but i did chuck a very dense sequence at it the other day and it does sound better. However I have noticed 1 thing. Roland have put a "feature" in performance mode called phase lock, which the manual describes as, when you have lots of differerent channels playing at same time midi cant send it fast enough. What it does is delays all parts on the same channel so it can trigger them exactly at the same time. Fair enough! However this isnt all true as I layed up a patch with 8 tones and copyed it to 8 parts in a performance. In theory there should not be a delay because i was only pressing 1 note rather than sending 128 down the wire. But it sloppily triggerer 128 sounds at once, which brings me to think Roland push their hardware right up to the limit, and over to get the specs up.

As I said i am not as bothered as before about this as the 5080 does play much better IMHO, and i bought it knowing about the previous problems, I just couldnt bear to be without that JV/XV sound i suppose!!

Well, I don't know what to do with this. The timing is so off that there's no way I can personally press this. It's noticeable to the point that anyone can hear it. I really like the sounds, but I can't justify this. I'm really disappointed in Roland. With this much activity, and I can't even punch in with accurate timing and not have it heard. Every take there's always something wrong. And in this particular song, one of these is a driving bass line that I'm going to combine with a heavily compressed version of the same track, to add more punch. But if these two tracks aren't synched properly by the JV-2080, it's going to sound even worse!

Is there any kind of firmware upgrade for the JV-2080 that I might have missed?

If I recall, the XV-5080 has all of the patches that the JV-2080 have, plus some. But I don't know if I want to spend that kind of money on the hopes that this will correct the problem.

Roland has been using totally outdated parts for their synths these days. Beware.

RKB,

Can you adjust the sequence start times a few ticks earlier, so that it will seem more on time? Not sure if this will work, but I just thought of it. Very disheartening to hear, as I have a JV-2080 as well. The only good thing is that all my other gear is older, so I don't notice any timing problems.

DanO

Adjusting the sequencer doesn't help, because 90% of the events are right on target, and the other 10% occur randomly. Each take produces different results. I've found this even happens on a snare drum that's playing on 2 and 4!! I might try a shorter midi cable, but I've already switched cables once. I ended up going into the track on my VS-880 and manually moving the events by 1/100 second. What a pain. With a midiman, the midi events should be getting through right on target. Well, a new set of cables is certainly cheaper than an XV-5080!

Well,
Nice to hear there are MIDI timing problems with 2080 ontop of all the rest of the problems I have had.I gave up on useing multiple port interfaces like the Opcode Studio 128x because of bad drivers causing timing problems, and the companies who never upgrade their drivers.I thought this was where all the problems originated from.I think maybe time to hang it up.All this technology just doesn't work!!

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but come-on guys...
There is nothing wrong with the midi timing on the 2080, I recommend you check for problems in the rest of the system (loopback or poor ports) or perhaps the midi stream (ie embedded CCs or Sysex).

I'm running two fully loaded JV-2080s (14x SR-JV80s) plus numerous other Roland synths and samplers on 10 MIDI Ports (160 channels) in a medium-size Project Studio -- I have yet to run into ANY timing problems (unless of course I try to play 64 simultaneous tones on the same measure:beat:tick, but midi will choke on that).

David
* Roland & Cakewalk Resources and Roland Newsgroups: http://www.lilchips.com *