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This is the only piece of equipment I've had. I use it in conjunction with a PC/soundcard setup. I purchased this module back in 97/98. At the time it was basically the cheapest thing you could buy at a cut down price of £299 ($550) from £499 ($975).
Being my only piece of equipment, for a long time I was very frustrated at what I believed were its limitations (no knobs, just two outputs and uninteresting sounds). Its true that on the surface the sounds are very digital and cold and can seem boring. They are very much the standard GM set. Of course if you give anything time you can begin to appreciate its qualities and get a hell of a lot out of it - its your state of mind.
Editing sounds through 05R/W is slow so it takes time to produce interesting results. However with patience you can start to create your own special warm sounds. Overall editing is probably too slow and so can put you off frequent editing. The best thing to do as a result is probably to create a whole bunch of sounds that you plan on having long term use for. However the 05R/W does come with a PC editor though which can speed up things. The thing I don't like about the 05R/W is that it doesn't have any free space to write sounds onto instead you write them onto the A Bank which is where a lot of the more interesting sounds are in the first place. Its not the end of the world as it gives you 99 slots though.
The 05R/W comes with a huge amount of drums. It has a huge range of kicks, snares and cymbals. The general output for the drum sounds especially the kicks in my experience is a bit weak but with the appropriate manipulation you can achieve the right mix. However with the couple of hundred odd drum sounds in this module (including some okayish 808, 909 and good general electro/funky drums) this to my mind makes this a good piece of equipment.
The 05R/W comes with some 40 odd effects, Dist, Overdrive, Wah, Flanger, Phaser, Choruses, Reverbs etc etc. The effects have a huge range of capabilities but again its a slowish business editing them due to lack of knobs. You can basically apply globally 2 effects per sound and vary the strength on each sound too. For general music making purposes the best effect to use is the Hall effect (the default and no1 effect) or other reverbs. The Hall FX is the best though as it adds instant warmth to any sound when applied. Of course you have to be careful not to drown every sound in the Hall effect otherwise the mix begins to sound muddy.
The 05R/W comes with 16 midi channels, panning and IMO a great bend range. The huge bend range is invaliable as it is great for pitchshifting drums and also being able to change the tone of a drum pattern suddenly from light to heavy drums or whatever u want to do.
In my experience the 05R/W is great for making electro funk cheese thats where it sounds work best for me. Of course you can do anything from techno, house to drum n' bass but you'll have to push the machine more to get the best results. However in essence you can make a damn decent track with this machine in any style if you've got the patience and imagination. If you want more instant, lush, funky and warm sounds then this probably isn't the thing for you though.
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