Triton or XP 30

[Masters Of War]

Is Triton the obvious winer over the XP 30? Or does the XP 30 have some unique quality that the Triton is lacking? I am mainly looking for acoustic/electric piano and organ sounds, everything else is bonus (though I do like bonuses). I have an SQ 80 that has a fair organ sound but the piano is terrible. I've attempted to get a better sound by adjusting filters and such, but synth is somewhat new to me, I got a lot to learn still. So looking for acoustic/electric piano & organ that could be great out of the box or fixed up by a novice to synth. Is it Triton hands down?

 

[Masters Of War]

Anyone with experience with both these boards who can weigh in?

 

[mixmkr]

well, I have an XP50 with 4 expansion boards and an extra board I occasionally put in. At church we have a Triton LE full keyboard with weighted keys, which I am somewhat familiar with.

As far as I think, the piano is best on the Triton and then it ends there. I think the Roland has better organ sounds, orchestral, and just general sounds overall.. and it is a good 10+ years older. The Triton it seems is really genre specific and will be dated in 5+ years, if it isn't already. A lot of "club" kinda beats and most of the patches have some sort of arpeggiatior happening. Yeah, you can turn it off and vary from the presets, but I have always preferred my Roland over many other synths. I think you're basically just comparing Roland to Korg, and a lesser expensive Roland at that...and older too. I might look for an XP80 and some of the cards which should be 1/2 price or less nowadays. Now, the full blown Triton...I maybe missing something.

oh yeah...I'm a guitar player... did I say that??

 

[warble2]

I've owned both previously. Here are my thoughts (YMMV):

I actually traded in my XP-30 for the Triton (classic) because I was "wowed" by the Triton after playing it. In hind sight, probably not the best thing I've done with a gear purchase.

The XP-30 was loaded with great sounds - bread and butter stuff as well as having the orchestral card built-in (I use a couple of these patches on a orchestral card loaded in my XV-3080). Also contained the session card which IMO, has a better piano than the Triton. This is subjective, but I could not find one stock piano on the Triton that I liked. I don't recall exactly, but it seems there was a patch somewhere in the XP-30 called "B3 Filth" or something like that. Really good organ sound I used live. You could always expand the XP-30 with the Keys of the 60's and 70's card (which I use in the XV-3080). Pretty cool organs and other stuff from that era, and really expressive for live playing. I've recorded some of the patches recently form that card as well. Got card off eBay for about $130.

Triton has some cool organs as well as electric pianos (some of which were rich and thick), but to me, it seemed more of a "hit one key and be amazed" synth. I remember using the Triton for stuff like the main synth in Abracadabra, Separate Ways and the little "synth hits" in Footloose.

If you're looking for more of an all-arounder, I'd choose the XP-30.

 

[stealth_prod]

I personally own a triton studio and I love the thing. There are tons of things to do to the already 1000+ sounds on there to make them better. I dont have any experience with the xp 30 so I cant comment on that but as far as the triton goes, I love it. Granted I use this for making hip hop beats because of the sequencer. Good luck.