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The XP-80 is a powerful device. I've had mine for well over a year and still get amazed by what it can do. There are more expensive keyboards, some with a few superior patches, but for the money this provides a big bang.
This is especially true if you are wanting to use your workstation to do sequencing.
It might take a couple of weeks with the keyboard to come to understand the patch editing, sequencing, & general layout of the device. Once mastered, it is an excellent machine.
Positive Attributes:
*Loaded with a great variety of sounds and can be upgraded with the Roland expansion cards. *Can save all sequnced song settings to a floppy disk. *You can run sequenced songs off of a floppy disk with ease. It provides a chain play for a use in a live set (very cool) that can run off of the floppy or load into the inernal memory. *It has a great arpeggiator and most of the effects are pretty good.
I don't mean to say it is perfect, it is not by any means.
Some of the drum sets are not as good as I would like. The electronic kits are great, but if you are wanting a more live drum kit sound, get the drum & bass expansion card.
I wish that I could purchase an expansion that would have 4 stereo or 8 mono RCA outs. It would be cool if it had a Zip drive. I wish that it had dedicated tone & filter controls similar to the MC-505 on the face. It would be great if it could also have a SCSI in/out and provide basic on board sampling. I wish that you could finish all of the production on a keyboard and save the results as a single stereo wav file. I would like Roland to make a PC/Mac version of their sequencer software.
I look forward to the next generation of this machine.
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