Roland Ships RS-50 Keyboard

RS-50 (Click for a close-up)

Roland is now shipping the RS-50 Synthesizer. This keyboard boasts hundreds of new CD-quality sounds that can be called up via simple Direct Access Buttons, plus cool performance features including a D Beam Controller, arpeggiator and chord memory.

The RS-50 is full of new sounds. And not just new Patches, but an entirely new set of waveforms sampled at 44.1kHz. New Direct Access buttons let users call up sounds by category, while bundled editor software makes it easy to dive in and program new sounds.

The RS-50 also features Roland's D Beam Controller for controlling functions like pitch and filter cutoff - or even Roland's Active Expression feature - using an infrared beam of light.

Connections to the RS-50 include stereo 1/4-inch outputs, a stereo Headphone jack, Hold and Control Pedal jacks and MIDI In and Out.