Roland JV-80

There's not a lot of information out there about the JV-80, it's basically known as the precursor to the hugely popular Super JV/XP series of Roland ROMplers/workstations (and then XV, which turned into Fantom) and that's about it.  I've had the rack version (JV-880) and one of the keyboard variations (JV-90) for a while now so I thought I'd share some information about these synths and what they're good for.  They are fairly capable synthesizers that are often overlooked as just simple ROMplers.

Origins

Roland's first digital synth, the D-50, was released in 1987.  It was a very good sounding synth that was capable of covering digital and analog type sounds.  They designed a couple other synths with this technology (the MT-32, and D-5, 10, 20, 110) while at the same time they introduced some semi-pro ROMplers (the U series).  These ROMplers were just that, very simple single voice ROM playback instruments with no filter.  Their next step was developing what was to be their top of the line U series, the U-50.  This synth was basically a U series x4 voices plus filters, so now approaching the synthesizing depth of the D-50.  Hearing that the D-50 was still selling quite well, they decided at the last minute to call it the D-70.  Unfortunately it was plagued by unnecessarily complicated interface and poor documentation.

The D-70 not being that successful, they took the technology and experimented with a couple of different directions.

Polysynth Guide

I've attempted to include all the commonly found polysynths of the late-70s to the late-80s.  I didn't bother including anything that was too rare (so no Chroma Polaris, or Korg PS series), early ones that were too rudimentary (so no ARP Omni, or Moog Polymoog), and late era ones that relied heavily on rom samples (so no Korg M1, or Roland D-70).

Semi-Pro
The '80s saw the release of many useful and great sounding semi-pro polysynths.  All of these are MIDI capable and fully programmable synths.  This category contains the best options for small, light, and portable synths.

Part A - This category contains many fine synths.  They're especially good for cheap sounds that work well as blippy arpeggios, chip-tunes, and gritty bass sounds.

• Casio CZ-101
• Casio CZ-1000
• Yamaha DX9
• Yamaha DX21
• Yamaha DX27
• Yamaha DX100
• Yamaha FB-01 (CX5M)
• Roland D-5
• Roland D-10 (D-110)
• Roland D-20
• Korg Poly-800 (EX-800)
• Kawai K-1 (K-1r) - notable in that it has a nice playing keyboard with velocity and aftertouch.

Part B - Similar to Part A but more capable sound generation abilities.

• Casio CZ-3000
• Casio CZ-5000
• Yamaha DX11 (TX81Z, TQ5)
• Roland Alpha Juno (MKS-50) - unlike others here, this is a quite nice sounding analog.
• Korg DW-6000
• Korg DW-8000 (EX-8000)
• Oberheim Matrix 1000

Professional - Many of the synths here were either flagship models or considered very competitive with other synths in this range for their time.  They all have very capable sound generation capabilities and most have velocity and aftertouch keyboards.

Part A - Most in this category are from an era when everything "digital" was hip and hands on controls were disappearing from synthesizers.  They can be rewarding if you are willing to put some effort into learning their interface because they all sound very good.

• Roland JX-3P (MKS-30) - does not have velocity and aftertouch.
• Roland JX-8P
• Roland JX-10 (MKS-70)
• Roland D-50 (D-550)
• Yamaha DX7 (TX7)
• Yamaha DX7II (TX802)
• Yamaha DX5
• Yamaha DX1
• Korg Poly61
• Kawai K-3 (K-3r)
• Sequential Six-Trak
• Sequential Prophet VS
• Oberheim Matrix 6
• Oberheim Matrix 12
• Akai AX80
• Akai AX73
• Ensoniq ESQ-1 (ESQ-M)

Part B - These are among the most highly regarded polysynths and are beloved for both their capable sound generation and intuitive interfaces that assist the creative process.

• Roland Juno 6
• Roland Juno 60
• Roland Juno 106
• Roland Jupiter 4
• Roland Jupiter 6
• Korg PolySix
• Korg Mono/Poly
• Korg Trident
• Sequential Prophet 600
• Oberheim OB-8
• Oberheim OB-Xa
• Akai AX60

Classic Greats
For the most part these can do everything the other professional synths can do, and do it best.

• Roland Jupiter 8 (MKS-80)
• Oberheim OB-X
• Sequential Prophet 5
• Moog Memorymoog
• Yamaha CS-80

Roland D Synths

So no one really knows what “Linear Arithmetic Synthesis” is.  Roland never fully explains it, perhaps so it's specs couldn't be easily compared to competing digital synths.  As far as the user is concerned all parameters are like a standard subtractive synth, but underneath I think the sound is being generated by putting sine waves together additively or maybe using FM.  All the filter is doing is individually fading out harmonics as the LPF goes down.  This also might be why the resulting wave is so quiet when the filter is all the way down because it actually continues fading out the fundamental instead of just stopping at a perfect sine wave.

On paper the D-10 (and others with the same sound engine such as the D-20, D-5, and D-110) and the D-50 seem very comparable.  And actually, the MT-32, D-110, and D-550 all use the same tone generator (LA32 on all except pre-'88 D-550s that used a functionally identical older chip) and D/A converter (Burr Brown PCM54) on the output.  But in sound there is no comparison.  The difference is they are all implemented in greatly different ways.  They all have different CPUs and program data, and they all have different analog output circuitry.

In my personal subjective opinion the D-50 is an excellent sounding synth.  It is one of Roland's great pad machines capable of thick massive whooshing wall-of-sound pads.  However, the interface is one of the worst synth interfaces of all time.  You can understand it just fine if you put the time into it, but the tiered menu system creates a painful working situation of constantly backing in and out of menus just to adjust a few parameters.  The whole process becomes extremely masochistic.  If you have access to a software editor it's worth it, otherwise forget it.  The D-10 with the cheap PG-10 programmer is a fairly workable situation.  The sound quality is fairly poor though.  It consistently sounds almost distorted with a metallic ring to all the sounds.  I much prefer the Yamaha 4-Op FM synths, at least you can dress them up with processing to sound pretty good.

Yamaha FB-01 Demo

FB-01 Patches

I've seen a bit of discussion around the web of how to edit patches on the Yamaha FB-01 but not much about the large amount of patches that are already out there. There are many excellent patches that have been around for years (in many cases decades). In my opinion, you'd be hard pressed to come up with some better sounds than many of these.

To upload these to your FB-01 all you need is a simple MIDI SysEx program. For Mac OSX I recommend SysEx Librarian. It makes sending and receiving MIDI SysEx data extremely easy.

So without further ado, I give you all the FB-01 patches (that I am aware of).

DX21 Patches for FB01.zip - First off, this patch collection contains all the DX-21 patches converted for use with FB-01. Many of them are a good deal better than the factory standard patches for the FB-01. I also included a couple DX-100 patches (the few that aren't on the DX-21 and actually worth mentioning), including the original "WildWar" patch.

Tims FB01 Patches.zip - Next we have these really cool patches from Tim's Atari MIDI World. Some very polished and big sounding lead patches and some warbley almost Boards of Canada style analog sounds here.

FB01 Bobby Clark.zip - Next are these very cool patches that have been around for years. Originally created for the DX-21 by Bobby Clark, I have converted them to work with the FB-01. Again, a lot of great lead sounds and some really cool effects type patches.

FB01 Patch Archive.zip - And lastly this massive patch archive of well over 3000 individual patches. Naturally there's a good amount of mediocre material to sift through but there are some gems hidden away. It's broken into three different collections;

• fb01a_0 - this is the largest of them. A lot of heavy techno sounds, maybe an excessive amount actually. But the FB-01 is kind of lacking in that department so they can be useful. There a few more cool things on here, some absolutely killer Hammond B3 patches.
• 1-20 - a decent sized set, these are some more that I converted from DX-21 user patches.
• FB01 - the best of the bunch. I especially like the "ether" and "synvox" patches. I couldn't get the "plucked" and "strings" files to work though.

A note on how I converted the DX-21 patches; I've used an old AtariST program by Martin Tarenskeen that does the necessary formatting of the files as well as adjust the operator levels to roughly the correct scale for the FB-01.

Yamaha 4OP Comparison

Here's a quick comparison of the classic Yamaha 4 operator FM synths. Created as inexpensive alternatives to the 6 OP DX7, when handled with care these synths are capable of some great sounds. First off, naturally, they all have four operators; one being the carrier frequency and the other three the modulating frequencies. Another thing is they all seem to have 8 note polyphony. So looking around a bit, the consensus on the difference in sound between these comes down to; multitimbrality or how many instruments it can play at once, the waveshape of the operators and the bit depth of the digital to analog converter (DAC).

DX-21

Multitimbral: Mono

Waveshape: Sine

DAC Bit Depth: 10 bit

DX-27 / DX-100

Multitimbral: Mono

Waveshape: Sine

DAC Bit Depth: 10 bit

FB-01

Multitimbral: 8 part

Waveshape: Sine and Noise

DAC Bit Depth: 10 bit

TX81Z / DX-11

Multitimbral: 8 part

Waveshape: 8 shapes

DAC Bit Depth: 12 bit

TQ-5

Multitimbral: 8 part

Waveshape: 8 shapes

DAC Bit Depth: 12 bit

So looking at this as a timeline we can see some changes occurred with the FB-01 with the addition of 8 part multitimbrality and the ability to set one of the operators as a noise generator. Then the TX81Z added the ability to change the waveshape outright. The other important thing folks seem to point out on this is the 12 bit DAC on the TX81Z. You might wonder how the bit depth at the input side of the DAC could really make any difference, and honestly I'm not so sure myself, but people claim that it gives the signal more breathing room resulting in a fuller sound. The 10 bit DACs seem to result in a more lo-fi gritty sound (and a really good bass sound). There are camps that swear by either side so it's definitely a personal preference thing.

Addendum: So the FB-01 actually is unique in the way it handles programming the voices. The volume of the operators is controlled on a 0 - 127 scale, all the other 4OP synths use a 0 - 99 scale. I think this is the main reason the stock voices are not up to par with the rest of the Yamaha 4OP synths. Basically the engineers at Yamaha had to relearn the whole system to program the voices; probably not worth it for a product that was supposed to be the cheapest of their synth range. So they probably pushed it through quickly to get something on the market. There are a handful of decent patches on there but most people prefer to program their own for this unit.

For an extremely in depth analysis, check this guy's page: http://www.angelfire.com/in2/yala/2fmsynth.htm

He refers to the FB-01 range as the "CX". I assume what he actually means is the "SFG-01 / SFG-05" which were the sound modules on the CX5M computer. I intend to follow this post up with a more in depth post on the FB-01 explaining the relationship of these units.