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Average rating:
3.9 out of 5
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This axe really stands out in its own right as the only member of the XP family (and thus featuring a lot of Roland's new XP series sounds) that doesn't make you pay for a built-in sequencer and all that other workstation crap.
The ONLY complaint I have about this synth is that it doesn't have a data wheel, just two value buttons, so if you spend a lot of time editing patches and performance settings, you end up with sore fingertips (like me).
The biggest advantage this thing has over so much of the competition is the flexibility of the controls. The ability to do filter sweeps and apply LFOs to drum kits just blows me away. Watch all those analog purists drool when you sweep the filter on a pumping 909 sequence!
This puppy WILL damage speakers, however, if used incautiously in this fashion. The basses, esp. SH101 & TB303 samples, are great.
The filters are sweet, as a friend of mind described them. Perhaps one of the most interesting control features, speaking of filters, is the ability to induce random splutterings during a perfomance by setting the modulation lever to "random resonance-cutoff" which just applies a bunch of random values to the filter whenever your finger twitches on the mod stick.
The arpeggiator is fun but not super-useful. Some patterns might be very handy for doing shimmering-ambient-trancey background parts I suppose.
What with the price, I wonder why everybody doesn't have one of these.
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I'm a high school student who's been interested in electronic music for quite
some time. After awhile, I had an urge to compose my own. I wanted a
synthesizer that was cheap and versatile, and with my XP-10, I
couldn't have been more pleased. (I am speaking of course, in the given price
range) My screen DID have a backlight -- probably something Roland later
installed. It's got every sound I could possibly want, and the "acoustic"
sounds are incredible. Using features like dual and x dual, I was able to
create sounds that sound strikinly analog. The arpeggiator is customizable,
versatile and sounds excellent.
With just my xp-10 and a four track mixer, I've been able to make some rather
impressive stuff.
If you don't want to spend too much, and want something with a broad range of
features that's easy to use, the XP-10 is the way to go.
The only problems I find are that the sliders are small the keys are noisy, and
The MOD lever is kind of cheap. They just don't feel as solid as say -- the
korg X5, but features like the arpeggiator and that "fat" roland sound more
than make up for its faults.
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After playing only organs and pianos for years, this was the synthesizer I started out with, and now I swear by it in a live situation. What makes this keyboard excellent is the price and it's sonic versatlilty; the patches cover almost any type of instrument and reproduces them at least decently. It's also excellent for real time performance; i.e. X-dual, the cutoff and resonance sliders, awesome arpeggiator, etc... If your looking to create your own patches like you would on, say, a Jupiter 6, this is not the place to look. Patch editing is severely limited and the few parameters it has are complicated to access and save; I don't hold this against it though; this keyboard was obviously not designed for that function, it's really more for playing presets in a live performance, which it excels at. What I do hold against it is the non-lit display, and the flimsy construction; everytime I take it to a gig, I feel like I have to treat it as though it were constructed of balsa wood. Yet these limitations are really insignificant compared to what it can do. And additionally, being the owner of two analog synths, I can safely say that for a purely digital keyboard, it can be made to sound pretty damn analog with just a little tweaking of the sliders (try the LFO and cheese Saw patches). Overall, a
great value
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Tiz my first synth. I'm happy with it. Paid 600 bucks new. Was looking for something rather cheap, preferably below 800 bucks.
Looked around and fiddled with a lot of synths at the store. Got
to the XP-10 and noticed that it was a bit easier to use than the others.
First thing i noticed was the sounds: the quality was much better that the others.
I flipped through all the instruments and fiddled with the two sliders making weird noises really
loud to annoy all the other customers in the area. Got home and read part of the manual. Some stuff a bit complicated
but I'm gettin' the hang of it. My friend and i seem to have gotten used to this thing pretty quik. bobo happy.
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I have now had my XP10 for about a year an a half, and I am still happy... No, it has no backlit display (I heard the newer ones have, though), and no, it is not as rugged as my good ole DX-7 (and not as heavy either :-), but it does have a bunch of great sounds - especially those beyond the standard Sound Canvas set - and it is straightforward to play with reasonably well- designed performance controls. Kudos to Roland for the bender/modulation lever; it is miles better than most of their earlier attempts (although I personally still prefer wheels...). I haven't used the XP10 much for MIDI stuff, but I suspect that it does OK in this arena too. It is not my favourite solo synth (the DX-7 is, and I still would like to have a Micro Moog or something :-), but as an all-round performance keyboard, it is excellent. Working real-time controls, performance memories and all... And, for the buck, it is probably unbeatable.
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