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Sample CD-ROM library in Roland S-770 and compatible format
Drumscapes Volume 1 is a collection of drum samples, including single hits and full grooves, formatted on CD-ROM for the Roland S-770 and compatible samplers and sample players.
From the CD-ROM’s booklet: “Drumscapes are direct to digital, live recordings of fully produced studio drum tracks. In addition, each song track includes every individual drum and cymbal hit for digital sampling.”
The recording quality is extremely good: the sounds are very punchy, full-bodied, and the drum patterns are tight and perfectly looped. The single hits also are recorded very well, so it’s easy to create your own drum kits, picking and choosing from the different volumes.
The vibe here is for the most part on the acoustic side of rock/pop, with the occasional venture into hip-hop or Motown – These samples are really good and if you play any of the styles listed here below, you will not be disappointed.
The styles included are: Rhythm & Blues Hip Hop/Rap Adult Contemporary/Light Jazz Ballad Medium Rock Fast Heavy Rock Power Ballad Fast Shuffle Slow Shuffle Pop/Country Ballad Fast Techno Rock Medium Techno Rock Uptempo Funk Slow Motown and as a bonus there’s also a full set of percussion samples. In order to use these CD-ROM you will need a SCSI CD-ROM drive connected to your S-series sampler or XV-5080. Keep in mind that certain sound data will need 32MB of memory, supported only by the S-760. The S-770 and 750 have less.
The Equinox is Generalmusic’s last effort (so far) in the world of pure synthesizers (they do keep producing professional accompaniment keyboards, and to tell the truth, nowadays the difference between the two is blurring more and more).
The Equinox starts pretty much where their previous synthesizer, the incredible-sounding S-series, left off. This machine is absolutely full of features: here’s a concise list of what’s available (from the manual:
• An immense database (16 Mb samples) with over 1000 preset Sounds and user memory locations to store more than 2000 new sounds. 112 Performance memories and a Groove machine featuring over 1000 user-programmable Grooves. • Unique Drawbar mode for instant access to vintage electronic organ sounds using the 8 panel sliders as drawbars with key-click, percussion, overdrive, etc..
• 250.000 event, 16 track sequencer with advanced song editing facilities. • Advanced Sound editing facilities with 64 note polyphony,128 digital filters with resonance, up to 6 oscillators per voice, 3 Lfos and up to 21 independent Envelopes with 10 segment resolution. • Sample Translator to create user-samples and load new samples of the most popular formats (Wav (PC), Aiff (Mac), Akai™, Kurzwail™, Smp, Snd. Future os versions will allow loading of Roland™, Ensoniq™ and Emu™ samples. • Full MIDI implementation – The Equinox is the perfect Master Controller for advanced MIDI set-ups (32 MIDI Channel control, 16 programmable Midi Zones, 8 programmable Sliders, 2 programmable Wheels, 3 assignable Pedals). • Flash-ROM memory which allows the instrument’s memory to be instantly upgraded by simply inserting a special floppy disk in the drive. • The Equinox can be fitted with optional memory (8 Mb backed Sample RAM and up to 32 Mb SIMMs), an internal Hard Disk (2 Gigabytes) and a SCSI port (compatible with CD-ROM, Zip™, Jaz™ external hard drives).
As you see, there’s a lot to this instrument!
What strikes me most about this synth is that it can definitely sound analog (just like its predecessor did). While it’s purely sample-based, there’s something about the way the sounds come across, that make it sound warm, not digital. The quality effects also help a lot in producing some of the best sounds on board.
This is definitely a strong contender to the other workstations that came out at the same time, like the Korg Triton, Yamaha EX5, and Roland original Fantom. For some reasons it wasn’t popular enough, apparently due to the first OS that could have been better. By the time the OS was improved, other workstations had come out and this ended in the forgotten back of the music store – until now! 🙂
Hit a button, and the Equinox becomes a full-fledged Hammond!!! Besides the sliders/drawbars, there are controls for click, percussion and Leslie speed. You can also save your own organ creations, of course. Very realistic 🙂
Drum Kits
Several great-sounding drums on the Equinox. Here are a few examples.
Grooves
A great feature on the Equinox is that you can create and assign full grooves to each single key. Here are a few examples of what is possible to achieve:
Misc. sounds
Arabic
On the Equinox, you can set a the Tuning Scale in different ways: Equal tempered, Inverse, Mean Tone, Werckmeister, Arabian, and you can make your own. For the Kanoun example, I used the Arabian scale to give it a more realistic vibe.
The DR-550 MkII is the upgraded version of the venerable, original DR-550. A big difference from the original model is the fact that the base ROM has been almost doubled and now features 91 drum sounds. The machine works at 16-bit and is fairly clean and punchy. Many of its sounds remind of its bigger sister, the Roland R-8.
Useful features include “tone color”, that allows you to modify the basic filter frequencies of each sample, and “decay”, that obviously lengthens or shortens the sample.
There are 64 preset patterns on board, and 64 more slots for your own creations. Also, as in other drum machines in the DR-series, you can chain patterns to forms songs – In the DR-550 MkII, up to 8 songs consisting of up to 160 measures each.
A big improvement from the previous 220-series is the inclusion of a basic MIDI IN port, which allows the unit to be synchronized to a sequencer, or another drum machine. There’s no MIDI OUT though, so in order to save your created patterns, you have to resort to the old-fashioned way of storing to cassette tape, using the tape interface.
BOSS DR-550 MkII audio demos
There are seven factory demo songs programmed in ROM, that show off the capabilities of this machine:
Boss DR-550 MkII Drum Samples (44.1MHz, stereo .wav)
