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 Roland LAPC1 At a Glance   arrowRoland News(754)   Streaming Video (123)
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Duncan writes:
I could not resist adding my favorite soundcard which I bought for just £25 back in 1994 (although I then ended up paying another £50 for the Midi Interface box).

The LAPC1, which I believe was Rolands first Soundcard, is basically an MT32 module on a card combined with a standard MPU401 MIDI interface.

Good Points
Sound Quality Unlike most soundcards which use FM or wavetable synthesis the LAPC1 actually has a real "Linear Arithmetic" synthesizer on board, similar to the one used in the D50 and other famous Roland synths. Admittedly the sound is synthetic but in a similar way to the best 80s groups and synths. I have spent quite a lot of time trying to find another soundcard which sounds this good. In my opinion the Soundblaster Live which I also have does not compare.
Bad Points
Software Support The LAPC1 is not a General Midi Card, although apparently General Midi was based on the LAPC1 Windows 3.1 has full driver support for the card which works perfectly but Window 95 and 98 ignore it. I tried writing an Instrument Definition File for Win 98 but could not get the same results. I suspect Win 3.1 might actually reprogram some of the instruments to get the correct sounds. As it was I ended up fitting the card in an old Win 3.1 machine so I can occasionally remind myself of how good it sounds.
 

 Roland LAPC1 Specifications:

Digital IOs:
None
Analog IOs:
None
Midi IOs:
Needs interface box
Other IOs:
None
Busses/Subgroups: None
Aux sends: None
FX:
Yes
Software supported:
Win 3.1

 LAPC1 Links


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