JV Cards -- FX or Vocal

Hi, welcome to this thread.

Thanks

I got a JV-880 for a good price and it only has 1 slot for a JV card.

I've listened to Paolo's demos for the FX card and they sound great.

I've tried to find demos of the Vocal card, to no avail.

I'm looking for something other than Dance, Hip Hop, Orchestral, Country , etc.

I've narrowed my choice down to 2, the FX or the Vocal. I have no frame of reference on this card and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with both or either.

Oh, and please no snail tracks.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation

Oh, and the World card would otherwise be a good suggestion but I have the Proteus 3 so I have shofars up my

also have the 880 and i would prefer the vintage but since you already have decided that these 2 fit your needs better i would say the fx one since the vocals can become dated...

Yeah, I looked at the Vintage card but I'm looking for something a little different.

"Dated" vocals can sound great ala Depeche Mode. But, I also like sound effects. Explosions, twisting metal, sirens, rain & thunder (ala Stan), all that stuff. Spectrasonics (the collobarators on the board) also have CDs so I could (maybe) get similar sounds on CD.

Ok, now I'm leaning FX . . .

Edit -- How do I delete the pink frownthingy

I was interested in getting the Vocal card but then i found out what i suspected (based on experience with Roland's expansion cards) from reading waveform content of Vocal's card. You have a total of 4-5 useful samples. All others are either one shots, or classic "Roland's variation on theme" where they just apply different EQ on the same sample, so difference is 1%. This was later confirmed to me by one user (can't find the post, search is down).

Special FX card is nice, but not as good as original Distorted Reality CD from Eric Pershing. Problem with this card is that most samples of these effects aren't looped - so if you plan any sound design using special effects samples, forget it - you can play them once and that's it. There are some looped ones, though.

In short:

I owned all JV and Super JV synthesizers. Based on 15 years JV experience my advice is that you get a Vintage Expansion. This is exactly the type of board that all pre-SuperJV series require. This is what is missing on JV-80, JV-880, JV-90 and JV-1000. Later with Super-JV some waveforms were taken from Vintage card and put into them - such as some great D-50 waveforms.

Vintage card also included two fantastic choirs sounds (my favorite) really the best sounding choir sources in music history, the VP-330 aka "Vangelis Choir" and the massive Mellotron choir - think of that Kraftwerk choir sound in Radioactivity, or New Order's Blue Monday choir. Both choirs are raw and they require a little bit of filtering, resonance, chorus and a good bath in reverb.

Note: Actually Kraftwerk used Orchestron disc choir and New Order Emulator I Gregorian Disk - however they are both close sounding to Mellotron - it is "that type of sound".

I own following SR-JV-80 cards:

Vintage

Special FX

World

Techno *

Session *

Orchestral *

* these are included in XP-30

http://www.nathansheldon.com/xp-80/expansion-board-demos.html

http://www.planet-groove.com/roland/expansion.html

The FX card does add some unusual waveforms and nicely programmed presets, but I tend to agree with Don: the waveforms really sound depleted compared to the Spectrasonics original CD-R series (from the demo I've heard).

If your aim is to revamp an aging JV-80, the SR-JV80-09

i also have the super jv with 4 cards but NOT the vintage one...really bad...

Thanks Poum. I'll check those links.

Thanks Don. Great info.

Vocal card is great for what it is, but as Don said, it's really limited in scope. You get one absolutely huge "Large Choir" velocity switched and in stereo, and a gorgeous stereo Gregorian choir, but not much else that's worth anything. Both these are worth it to me though.

SRJV boards are actively traded on the internet, and since they aren't made anymore keep going up in value. If you get one and don't take to it, chances are you won't be out any money.

If it were me I'd put Session in it because it's a big upgrade of bread and butter sounds for that box. But Vintage is a great one too. It all depends on where your focus is. 60s-70s is really out of the question because it's so expensive. You might as well just get an XV-2020 or 5050 and SRX-07.