Well i finally got one. Gattobus’s video persuaded me as most of those songs he did with it are my favourites and there very very close. Getting the matte overlay. It took a few years to come round to just how damn powerful this synth is and modern Roland offerings are no longer analogue. The user interface and menus wont phase me. But wow this synth does sound huge.
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So it’s been a couple of weeks since I got my JD-XA and I’m still a bit on the fence. First thing first I think It sounds brilliant on the whole but some of the design choices are annoying. It needs an encoder or jog wheel and I’m not impressed with the architecture of the FX with effectively 4 master FX and only one part FX which doesn’t really lend itself to multitimbral playing via the sequencer. I’m not too bothered my the lack of polyrhythmic options as I’ve got that covered elsewhere but there are some issues with the sequencer that severely limit it in a real world scenario.
No pattern chain or song mode is one of them and when you realise that you can’t just jump between patterns on the fly it makes matters worse. Likewise when I’m clocking it from another source it doesn’t start playback on the beat unless you’ve pressed the play button on the pattern sequencer…and I can’t see a way of saving a patch with play enabled as or won’t let you save while in play mode. So while you can manually switch patterns the sequencer stops playing when you do.
I quite like the analogue element, to my ears it’s got a very Rolandy sound which is a good thing as is the dedicated analogue output. The Supernatural stuff sounds ace as you’d expect especially with some FX applied.
I do think it’s got something of a split personality in that with all those global FX it’s a layering monster but the integration with the sequencer and the whole multitimbral element just doesn’t seem to have been thought through or implemented very well.
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