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Average rating:
3.9 out of 5
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This is a very good synth indeed for the money. Many of the sounds (accoustic and electric piano, some organs, some guitars, some synths) are excellent. Many of the others are very good. It has two very useful assignable real time controllers, and the mod control is also assignable. The manual is very poor and the controls are not especially logical, but the synth is very capable at the low price it can now be found for. Mine was less than a quarter of the lowest price i could find for an xp-30...although i was lucky to find a secondhand unit.
Better sounds than the Yamaha CS1/2X overall, and none of the artificial brightness that afflicts the patches of many of the other cheaper boards.
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I've been a semi-professional guitar player for 30+ years. A few years ago, I hired another guitar player in the band and now do half of our songs on keyboards. So,I freely admit I'm in the novice category compared to some of you keyboard players. I'm not here to bash or sell the XP-10. I don't believe in that. I just say what products do and don't do for me. We play live every weekend and I don't need a synth to make every sound in the world for home projects or programming. I just want a keyboard/synth that sounds like a piano, strings, synth, and organ. The XP-10 does all that for me and sounds great thru our PA system. (jobs are never hard to come by) I especially like the transpose feature! If I had to complain, it would be because of my own keyboard inexperience that makes the manual somewhat complicated. (although I'm learning fast) So for me, it does the job, I'm happy with it, and I didn't have to pay $1000 for it to do that.
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I found the XP-10 to be excellent. That is once it started going down in price. It is a great keyboard to have as a controller. It is very light weight. Arpeggiator can be set to midi. Since the XP-10 has drum sounds in it you can save some room on your sampler and sequence the rock kit or even the omnipresent 808 or 909. I like the fact that it does not have a sequencer. The problem I do have with it is the synth sounds. Don't misunderstand me. The real instuments ,piano, sax, flute, etc. are great. But the sounds like sH101, and TB303 are rather weak. They (the synth sounds) would be ok for a subtle part but if you need to kick ass in a jam, then you will need something extra. There is zero screaching and squealing. But there is bow-wow. To each his own. As far as ease of use goes, well I don't even own one. My freind let me use it and over the course of a weekend I learned all the angles. Now I want one. I will use it as a controller more than anything else. I have not seen controllers this small and light. It is nice to know I have extra drums if I need them. If you are interested in a trade for my (true analog) Yamaha cs-5 I will pay an extra 50 bucks to get your xp-10.
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A great little synth for the price. I've owned one for at least two years. With some programming tricks you can layer more than two patches (basically, just set the parts to the same MIDI channel). I have a splendid pipe organ patch, some great synth leads, and several awesome basses. Sure, they don't compete with some of the analogue modelling units available, but they're not bad. The operating system has/had a few bugs, but nothing serious - more like irritating. If you can't get useable sounds out of this synth, you're a bad programmer (the factory sounds suck, BTW). If you don't believe that it can make some nice sounds, e-mail me and I'll post up some mp3's!
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Just got the new version of this keyboard. It has the backlit display and no bugs as of yet. The sounds are good for a board twice the price, but the price is right for the lack of sequencer and lightness of the casing (I duct-tape the bottom of it to my quikloc stand). The great Roland feel is there along with the preferred pitch/mod setup. I use this for both live and studio. The pianos and organs are solid as well as the drums/percussion and bass. The rest are standard sounds found in orchestra/synth cards for Roland synths, and are good as well. It has a dedicated slider control for realtime filtering which is undeniably useful. Of course, everything sounds better through a separate multi-fx box like an SE-50, if you have one. For the money, this was the best buy I could find. XP-10 is exactly what it's supposed to be, with more and better sounds than necessary in order to sell. I recommend it to new users, live players, and pro's on a limited budget.
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