Newbie Roland D-50 help

Hi,

I have just purchased a Roland D-50. I've had a look around and i'm having trouble finding patches and how to use them with the D-50.

Any help appreciated.

Sell your D-50 ! If you go google and type "D-50 sounds patches", you'll find no files, no user manual, no software to send sysex files to the D-50 over Midi, no sound card to buy. Nothing, the desert, my friend. Sell it!

And never buy a DX7, you'll have the same problem. Desert, too...

Learn making your own

Thanks Synthwalker, so what would you recommend instead of the D-50?

I'll tell you what it's for, I play guitar in a band and we need some keys on various tracks. Nothing hard just some nice sustained chords. I also write music and it would be handy to have a keyboard/synth that i can play that'll just me a host of sounds including percussion.

Thanks again.

Well, if you don't need a realistic piano sound, but need good atmospheres, pads, strings, organs etc... get a used Korg X5D. It's cheap, it will do its job nicely, it's light and portable. Serves me well.

If you decide to get it, I can provide you sound banks.

Synthwalker is pulling your leg... there are TONS of soundbanks for the D-50, just use Google. Do you have a midi interface for your computer? If not, get one (a USB-MIDI adapter). Hook up the interface between your PC and D-50, and download MIDI-OX (google for it) and use that to download soundbanks into your "D".

Learning to program your own sounds can be quite rewarding though.

But, if you need a realistic piano or other acoustic/percussion sounds, you might want to look at something else, like the aforementioned Korg X5D.

Sorry I couldn't resist...

D-50 is a great synth. OK for sustained chords, analog-like pads, digital textures, basses, organs... but you'll get no percussion kits from it. Also internal memory only holds 64 user patches and you can add 64 Rom patches from expensive and obsolete Rom cards. For that purpose a modern Rompler would be better.

If you need a lot of ready-to-use sounds, easy-to-operate user interface and direct-to-PC USB connection for around $1000, I suggest the new Korg M50.

Good one, you had me there Synthwalker, just shows i know feck all about synths. Got to start somewhere though.

Sounds like the korg may be better for what I need.

Cheers folks

Don't sell the D-50. I use mine as a controller and it has a nice synth action which I need for organ parts. You can easily edit patches to illiminate cheezy verb etc. You can buy the programmer for it and a few of the obsolete cards and you're set. It has great ethnic sounds and I use the strings which there are 3 good ones on there. It's very good with 80's tunes as most of the patches are already there. If you do sell the board you should get around $500 for it.

-MC

There are a few reasons it's considered a classic. The fun is finding those out for yourself. Don't sell it!

I like it so much I bought the rack version as well, so I can double-up stuff (not multi-timbral) or take it out somewhere.

The patch selection on the web is quite extensive. Web search is your friend.