roland JV-1010

THE SOUNDS ARE AWESOME- I already own 2 Jv-1080's filled with, the orchestral, bass&drums, vintage, keyboards of the 60s&70s, hiphop and techno expansion boards. I bought this more as a sound expander to these modules than anything else. The stock JV sounds are mostly great. Check out the bank E sounds- some of the sythe effects and pads are to die for! The session sounds as previously mentioned are great. I find the drum sounds much less useable than those in my Korg synthes (TR Rack, Triton). This of course is just a matter of taste obviously! The session drumkits are quite good however and so are some of the kits on the expansion boards (check out my reviews on their pages). I can't stand the stock acoustic pianos however and please Roland, stop redoing all the old D50 sounds! Most of us are sick of them. I must say however, that overall the sounds of this unit are great for most styles of music and they sit very well together in a multi timbral peeformance.

NOTE- I NO LONGER BUY PIECES OF GEAR WITH EXTERNAL POWER SUPPLIES- NO MATTER HOW GOOD THEY SOUND!!!!!!! Some of you might think that I am a complet and utter dickhead uttering such a remark but I really mean it. If my half rack space MOTU Micro Express MIDI interface can use an internal power supply, why can't the Roland JV1010? Now that I got that off my chest, I never had a problem with this unit.

I wouldn't buy it again- I actually sold mine, not because I hated it's sounds (I love them) but because I resented having to have it constantly hooked up to a computer to use it properly. I know that this is to make the unit cheaper but Roland could have made it a full rack space with an inbuilt power supply, LCD display with at least 4 outputs (only 2 outputs on such a multi-timbral device stinks). Also whilst they were at it, they could have given us at least a couple of more expansion slots (obviouly with more space on a full rack space unit). If you are using it with your PC and MAC then I feel that this is a very viable alternative to the much more expensive Jv1080 or 2080. However, I wouldn't bother looking at it if you only want to use it on it's own- you are better off hunting down a 2nd hand JV1080 or XP50. As for myself, I co-own a midi based studio with a number of Korg and Roland pieces. I think that Korg and Roland sounds compliment each other very nicely- they are quite different to each other. I contacted Roland as I wanted the JV1010 to power up with the last selected patch or performance (like the JV1080 can do). Sadly it doesn't allow you to do this and this was probably the last straw before I sold it. Please don't let my ranting put anyone off this unit however because if used as I described above (with PC or MAC) and Soundiver, it is a killer sounding module (even if it has got an external power supply! Have I already mentioned how much I hate them??????) My rating is using it without a computer.