Best keyboard for orchrastra sounds???

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The Roland boxes don't have great orchestral sounds built in, you need the expansion boards, so if you listened to an XV series or Fantom without the boards you didn't hear what it can do.

As I mentioned, I have the SRX-04 Symphonique strings, SRX-06 complete orchestra, and SRX-10 Brass section boards in my 5080 (along with 5 other boards). This adds up to a lot more orchestral samples than what Kurzweil is offering, and the amount of memory is far greater. Just those three cards total 192 megs of sample RAM.

The Kurzweil orchestral samples sound good, but we are talking circa early 90's. They did a great job with what they had at the time, but (shockingly in my opinion) have not updated the library since then. It's still mono for gosh sakes.

This is the frustration that I have: the Roland has more and better sounds in many areas, but the Kurzweil is a far better board for live work when it comes to programming. Things like 1,000 patch slots, no pause between program changes, all the little amenities you can appreciate. But the sounds, good as they are, are old and tired and desperately need to be updated.

So my own approach has been to go with the Roland for the sounds and deal with the other issues as I need to.
 
steve350 said:
ROM 1 = Orchestral ROM Option Card

ROM 2 = Contemporary ROM Option Card

ROM 4 = Vintage Electric Pianos


ROM 3 = Stereo Dynamic(SD) Piano ROM Option Card.

There are about 100 different sounds per ROM
Click to expand...

Ah, I've never seen them numbered like that :) If you dig pianos, run, don't walk to get the Stereo Piano Rom. I have 1,2,&3 - do you really like the Vintage EP ROM?
 
SonicAlbert said:
The Kurzweil orchestral samples sound good, but we are talking circa early 90's. They did a great job with what they had at the time, but (shockingly in my opinion) have not updated the library since then. It's still mono for gosh sakes.
Click to expand...

Have you played with a k2600? Somehow, this stuff has not gotten old for me.
 
I numbered them that way because that's what I purchased them. I did not get #3. I probably should have. Yes, I really like the Vintage EP sounds.
These sounds are defiantly not old to me.
 
fraserhutch said:
Have you played with a k2600? Somehow, this stuff has not gotten old for me.
Click to expand...

Oh yes, many times. Very good stuff, but those ROM's are really quite small, use mono samples in many cases, and the variety is not quite there compared to newer and bigger libs. I wouldn't mind having a K2600R in addition to what I use now, but the 5080 with all the slots filled covers so much territory that I can't imagine not using it.

I do many shows each year, and the sounds are often very different from show to show. I've found the 5080 to be very flexible, and to have a huge library of sounds available for it. I also get hired based partly on the programming I do (and sometimes for the programming itself), and the response I've gotten for my Roland based programming has been very favorable.

I do certainly miss many of the fine features of the K2500/2600 series, and have often pondered whether to add one to my arsenal. There are certain features that the 2500/2600 have that no other synth has. But as much as I like performing on the Kurzweil's, the huge sound libs available to me on the Roland is a very important factor.

I should say that in the past I extensively used Kurzweil synths in my work, both studio and live, so I am a big fan. At one point I owned 7 Kurzweil sound modules! I still use my PRO 1 in my studio.

Believe it or not, the 2600 still uses some samples from the old K1000 series. While the samples are indeed good, this is what I'm talking about regarding updating them. At the least, they should go back to the original recordings and maybe do bigger versions of them in stereo, bigger memory versions that have more detail as far as articulations and layers. Those ROM blocks are really very small. The keyboards are great, and the OS is brilliant. They just need to overhaul some of the outdated aspects of the hardware.
 
I have to say that I will probably not use 50% of the sounds on these ROMs. They are small in size. The Orchestral, Vintage EP and Contemporary ROMs only have 100 sounds. The SD Piano and Live mode only have 9 sounds. However, these sounds are really good. Some of the patches are 32 layers.

The Organ sounds are fantastic. The Hammond B3 is right on the money. I can't say enough about the Kurzweil DSP functions that are part of this keyboards. The O.S. is exceptional. You can adjust, tweak, just about anything thing you want. I will probably never learn all that it offers.
 
You made a good choice! The XV-88 is a great keyboard.
 
I agree, good choice. I have the old original expansion (JV series) boards on the XV board you mentioned..... they are pretty good. Enjoy it!
 
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