The other thing the XD-5 has going for it is that the factory will still support this unit to the fullest. I had requested the re-set info which they supplied but, also the complete OS and sound reset files with a MIDI loader. Try that with other mfgs which is a hit or miss scenario. Kawai is outstanding!

Lastly, there are a myriad of PDF support documents for this synth. If you are patient and want a different and useful device I would definitely give this synth a hard look given todays prices, you probably would NOT be disappointed.

The synthesis system is pretty cool. cooler than most EL-cheapo drummachines. there are 4 DCO's which play PCM wave forms or drum samples. they are fully edditable in tuning and sofort. there is a DCA with an envelope and a realy and i mean REALY dirty LowPass DCF also with his ENV. you can Amplitude Modulate DCO 1>2 and 3>4 wich is verry cool for those techno and industrial sounds.

on the back you wil find Midi in,out,thru and 8 outputs wich can be verry usefull. on the front there is a big slot for some ram card. pretty useless sinds there is enough room internaly to store your sounds. the user interface is as usable as any synth from the 80's....but it will do.

i find the xd5 an verry obscure synth if you go further than preset play back(wich i hope every body does). the sounds are cool. gritty, bitty, matalic and plastic-jackhammer are some of the languages i can make it speak with little effort. come on dude gotta love that filter.

During the year and a half I spent with it, I learned about its good and bad sides. There are plenty of both but I did feel that the bad ones decisively outweigh the good ones. I liked its versatility - drum modules of such complexity are very rare and anyone who wants to have unique drums in their songs should check it out, especially if you find one for $109, as The Sawblade apparently did. You get up to four samples per patch, two envelope-controlled filters with resonance, a ring modulator, a LFO, and a DCA.

I also liked the internal samples. There are 256 -30 or so cyclic, or looped synth waveforms, while one half of the rest are one-shot drum and percussion samples. The other half are the same samples, just reversed; it would be nice if the processor could take care of this so that more unique samples could be fitted into ROM. The cyclic waveforms are great: they can be layered with drum samples or used on their own - in the event of an emergency you can turn the XD-5 into a multitimbral, 16-voice polyphonic digital synth.

Six individual outputs were another great thing, though I didn't take as much advantage of them as I could've done, and that's because (this marks the beginning of the "bad sides") I found it nearly impossible to programme an "output patch". An output patch tells the XD-5 to which indiviual outputs certain sounds are to be sent, and it is a nightmare to set it up properly even with the manual right next to you. I don't want to turn this review into a panegyric to the RM50, but it's a fact that not only this particular feature but the entire OS is much more transparent and easier to get around. While patch and kit programming on the XD-5 are not as cryptic, they are awkward. The most irritating thing is that whenever you're editing a patch, the patch will respond to any MIDI note number, as if it were a pitched voice. This means that you can't have the sequencer playing your song while you're making adjustments - to see how the edit works in the context of the song, you have to exit the edit mode and switch from single mode to kit mode.

This probably wouldn't bother me as much as it did if the XD-5 would constantly delight me with fantastic drum sounds - but it didn't, really. I'm a fan of the "big" drum sound - heavy kicks, explosive gated snares, bent toms, and the like. What XD-5 delivered most of the time were clear, delicate drum sounds which I liked, sort of, but found no use for in my songs (feel free to contact me at sartre@siol.net to hear them).

I was very happy to find that the Yamaha RM50, the only similar drum synth, as far as I'm aware, solved all these problems for me. I love the sound, programming is a breeze and its MIDI implementation is fantastic. If you're in the market for a drum synth, try to check out both the XD-5 and the RM50. You may find yourself vastly preferring one over the other, as I do, or like them both; they're different enough that they could well complement each other. With both machines selling for less than $200, you could buy yourself a lot of drum programming power for less than most new sample-playback drum machines would cost you - and there's just NO comparison.