Before you all consider plopping out $300 on an expansion board, check out the SC880 64 Voice Synth Module. I have that along with an XP60 and two expansion boards.

It turns out that the majority of the 1,117 sounds were taken from their expansion board sounds. All of the Rhodes, B3 Samples, Strings, Percussion (Classical to TR909) and everything else sounds just like the equivalent sounds on the expansion boards.

This module is no ordinary Sound Canvas as the sounds are true to life (40MB of Waveform ROM!) and the effects are off of the hook. Check this one out, side by side with your JV/XP, this module is very worth while.

The SC880 sounds more like a JV/XP than a Sound Canvas product. It even looks so (1 rack space). It has a patch finder and all of the other things that make the JV2080 and the XP60/80 so easy to use.

Until next time.

The Infamous EPU.

SC880 has been around for a while. Roland Edirol just released a desktop model called SC8850 with more than 1600 sounds and is GM 2 compatible and I think they probably will have an equivalent rack model to replace SC880 soon.

Paul Ip
from Texas

How much does this unit usually retail for? I've been wanting to pick up the drums & bass expansion for my XP60....perhaps this module might be a better idea.

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"Jim, Chekov's got your pants on!"

The SC880 costs $1,995 retail in Australia which is the same price as a more fully feature laden Emu Proteus 2000. I think that this thing sounds great but I wouldn't pay this much money for it. Mabey if it was $600.00 cheaper, I would have looked at one instead of a JV1080 a couple of years ago.

The JV1080 doesn't cost that much more and is much easier to use, it is fully programmable (the SC880 isn't) has an extra 2 outputs at the back and has room for 4 expansion boards. The SC is quite a different beast to the JV and your dedicated programmer wouldn't look at one of these for serious sound editing. It is more a GM sample player with an extra couple of hundred high quality patches.

However, this unit does sound good and if you get one for a bargain price, get it!

Actually, you'f be surprised to know that this particular synth is no normal GM/GS module. It is actually just as programmable as any JV/XP except that you can't change the waveforms of sounds. With that exception, you can mess with any feature imaginable.

This module is actually quite different from the XP/JV series. You don't look at [Patches], you look at [Tones] first. [Patches] resmble Layered performances on the JV/XP. The [Performances] on the SC880 resemble the Single Performances on the JV/XP.

The Proteus may be a better buy because of it's expandability, but it's an E-mu. let's see how long this one stick around for.

The Infamous EPU.