MOTM

I recently had the opportunity to play around with some Roland System 700 modules
and I was quite impressed.  I don't know that they are worth the $$ if you can find
them but there were a number of interesting things about the design and construction
that I thought might be of interest to this group as we look at new module ideas,
etc.

- The modules are *really big*.  The single space modules are about 1.5U wide and
all the main modules are about 7U tall.

- All that space allows for very roomy panels with lots of 1/4" jacks

- The multiple module has 3 sets of multiples with switches to link the sets
together

- Mostly slider pots but a few knobs.  Roland has kinda been more of a "slider"
company than a "knob" company.

- Every module as a CV mixer!  The filters have 4 CV inputs with sliders on each.

- Every processing module (i.e. VCF, VCA) has an audio mixer with 3-5 inputs!  While
there are mixer modules, they aren't needed much.

- LEDs on the signal path!  There are green 'signal present' and red 'overload' LEDs
on the VCF and VCA modules.  I was surprised at how much these helped when patching
and navigating the system.

- There is a good amount of default normalization done behind the panels.  This is
good and bad.  It didn't have as much graphic indication of the normalization as say
an ARP 2600.

- Very solid construction with "built in" cases.  I don't know how roadworthy it
would be but it could handle simple moving quite well again, much like an ARP 2600.

- The oscillators have a wide range (with octave switch) and a switch on one of the
outputs to select the waveform.

- The oscillators seemed very stable but I didn't get to really check out the
scaling.

How did it sound?  I was quite impressed with the filters.  There are 12db multimode
(LP/BP/HP) and 24db lowpass filters.  Both have very wide ranges for frequency and
resonance.  The 24db LPF has VC resonance.  I'd classify them as "smooth" filters;
not quite as aggressive as the MOTM-440 or as "glassy" as the MOTM-420.  I got some
really nice brass tones quickly but you couldn't drive them to overload.

Overall, it was clear that the Roland folks learned a lot from Moog, ARP, and other
modulars that preceeded the 700.  It is quite a massive system when you get all the
"blocks", as they are called, together.  

Eric


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