XV-5050 Polyphony Question

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mark4man

mark4man

MoonMix Studios
OK...

After a long (& very disappointing) excursion into the world of software samplers (which is a real excruciatingly long story)…I'm about to take the plunge & hopefully upgrade to the XV-5050 (& could use a bit more help from SonicAlbert, Mikeh; & the rest of the crew.)

Now, I understand the polyphony is 64 voices; & in reading a review on the 5050 in an old edition of S.O.S. magazine, the reviewer states that...with stereo 4-voice per note architecture, those 64 voices can run out rather rapidly.

So, my first question is: say for example I'm playing a stereo piano MIDI track (out of the DAW, thru the 5050 & back into an adjacent audio track)...with full chordings; & embellishments & riffs in between. If I have more than 8 notes overlapping at any given point in time...I run out of voices; & go into a state of voice stealing?

How does that work? The stereo 4-tone architecture is related to layering? Or velocity split points? (or both)? The reviewer from S.O.S. magazine seems to suggest that twice as many voices are used automatically...due to the improved 4 voice architecture (or due to true stereo waveforms...who knows?) The information at the Roland site claims 4 stereo tones "per patch". So if it's true that more polphony is used up automatically...why would Roland manufacture a synth module so limited in voicings, as related to it's own architecture?

I just want to make sure I don't run out of notes on a piano track which has lots going on. And besides that...if I've maxed out the polophony with one patch, that means I can't play other instruments on another channel at the same time, correct?

2nd quick question: Who mfg.'s the D/A converters in the 5050. Is it AKM? If so, are they a typical model (e.g. AK4393)? Is the digital out 16/44.1? 24/96?

Thanks very much,

mark4man
 
I'll try to help if I can.

If the piano patch has a lot of velocity layers, then it will eat up voices pretty quickly. 64 voices divided by 4 stereo layers (8) equals 8. Of course, you are not triggering all those layers at once, so the actual polyphony is much higher. You can also do mono pianos, or one or two layer pianos if you need more polyphony.

When I had my 5050 I really didn't notice a polyphony problem when playing piano parts. It was more noticable on heavily layered strings parts, where I had to do a lot of legato fingerings.
 
Sonic,

Thanks.

Yeah...everything sounds better out of the 5050 (piano, keys, synths, horns, atmospherics, FX, etc.)

Everything except for drums, that is. The drums kinda' rot.

Then I remembered, many of the drum patches on the JV-1010 were from the "Session" series...top-flite stuff.

One of the salesdudes at Guitar Center last nite (when I was picking it up) said he understood that Roland had group packaged several JV-SR80 boards into single SRX boards. If that's true (even if not)...I'd really like to be able to obtain those Session drum patches (& the horns, as well) for the 5050, so I don't have to keep swapping synth modules during recording.

Thanks again,

mark4man
 
They did group many of the old JV boards onto SRX boards. It seems like they could basically fit about 3 1/2 of the JV sounds onto a single SRX board. I'm pretty sure your JV drums are available on an SRX board. They have the information about that at rolandus.com.

Hope you enjoy your new 5050!
 
The SRX-01 has pretty good drums.

Re voice stealing.

There's another way this can happen. Some sequencers send a "note-on" message at (say) volume=127 to begin a new note and another later "note-on" message at volume=0 to halt the note.

This immediately halves your available voices.

You can hear some voice stealing on the XV-5050 - especially on the SRX-02 piano patches that use 4 tones per patch. The older XV-3080 (while lacking the SP/DIF digital output and some COSM sounds and some additional patches) offers 128 voices - you get less voice stealing in big multi-timbral arrangements or performances. The Fantom modules have gone back to 128 voices I note.
 
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Question 2 (& then I'll bug off...I swear),

Since I now own both the JV-1010 & the XV-5050...

...is it possible to transfer a 1010 patch to the 5050?

Reason I ask is...I understand that a patch is primarily made up of parameter settings which tweak ROM waveforms to acheive a specific sound. So...if by chance the 5050 has some of the same drum waveforms as the 1010, why couldn't I transfer the 1010's drum patches to the 5050 via SysEx (or some other method)?

Thanks again,

mark4man
 
I'm not sure about that. It seems simple, and it might be as easy as doing a sysex dump from one unit into the next via the midi connectors. (Make sure to back up the 5050 first!).

However, what I think happened when Roland went to the XV series is that they increased the amount and number of onboard waveforms. This means that many waveforms will be in different positions in memory. So if waveform #125 in the JV series was agogo (just guessing), then waveform #125 in the XV might be something entirely different.

This is what Roland did when they went from the XV series to the Fantom series. The synth architecture is very similar, but the waveforms are in different places, so the patches don't translate. It's actually very annoying, and makes switching to the newer series a real pain because you can't easily transport your programming from the older to the newer synth.
 
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