Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

--- Jonathan El-Bizri <sserendipity@...> wrote:
> Am I the only person who can't stand Roland's D/A converters? Every
> Roland product I've ever heard has exactly the same Roland 'bedroom
> tone'.

>LOL.  Are you sure it's the DACs and not that "32MB when converted to
>16-bit linear" crap?  I don't know what their proprietary wave data
>format is, but it's something less than 16 bit data.  I think they use
>some sort of companding with like 12 bit samples or something, and then
>"emphasize" it after the fact.
>
>All of their synths do this (as is evidenced by the disclamer on ALL of
>their wave data sizes) so that might be what you're hearing.  A good
>test would be to listen to one of their samplers that really do 16-bit
>linear (like the sampling section of the 909, not the synth voices).

Well the VG-8 guitar modellers do it too. Maybe worse than anything else
they've made; it's easier to tell than on a Rompler (when I first heard a
303, I thought it was the source material). So do the V-Drums, though it's
not as bad - again, probably because of the nature of the samples - all
percussion, and less tone. As far as I could tell (which wasn't very much,
considering the audio quality), I could even hear it on the V-Synth demo
posted at H-C. Still looks like a damn nice synth, though.

I think the only piece of Roland gear I've used that I couldn't conclusively
hear it on was the SP-808. It doesn't do any pitch manipulation - it's just
sample playback.

bIz