Roland MC-505

All you do is set your tempo, and you're ready to go.
The setup follows the manual precisely, which means,
you can't go wrong!

Enough has been said concerning features already, although,
I would like to say that it has plenty of outputs which
enables me to get great separation of all the musical parts
for recording.

As a lover of old school FUNK and rhythm/blues music, and
also as a FUNK and rhythm/blues artist, musician and composer,
I feel that the sounds are exactly what I've been looking
for! In some cases it may be challenging to obtain the
level of quality I demand for my music from the stock patches.
However, with a little work, the 505 always comes through
for me. And, when it doesn't, it always gives me something
I can live with. Some people may think the sounds are cheesy,
but, in my opinion, it's all about what you're looking for!
Think about it, where else can you find phat analog sounds, a cool,
easy to use sequencer, steep filters, and effects, all wrapped up
in a tight, neat little portable package? Oh, and by the way, the
effects are MASSIVE! You could do a complete reggae dub project
with this piece of gear alone, complete with perfectly timed delays
and other dub effects!

Never lets me down! You can leave this machine on for long periods
of time without it getting hot, unlike a lot of other gear. It just
stays "cool and calm" and in great working condition!

You might wait a minute (while paying long distance phone charges) until
you can get through (Rolands customer support), but, once you do, Roland's
technical support team has always proven to be reliable, knowledgeable
and very polite.

Overall, pound for pound, this is the best value for your home studio dollar.
This unit, along with a VS recorder, will enable a musician (and I emphasize, MUSICIAN)
to produce, record and document any musical notion one may imagine, all
in a short period of time. This unit also increases ones creativity by it's ease
of use. Once you get a pattern going using the onboard real time sequencer,
it's so easy to hear your musical ideas and expand upon them. When I first got
the machine, I got it specifically to record my existing catalogue of
FUNK originals. I found, that as I committed my ideas to the 505, it gave
me new concepts and ideas in return. The hits just keep on coming!

Very easy to use. I took it from the box, plugged in, and started to play with all the knobs and sliders. Really exciting. The manual is easy to understand and very clear. Doesn't include a patch editor, but it is stupid to use a patch editor considering all the knobs and sliders this thing has. The preset sounds are fine, you'll recognize a lot of techno sounds... nice.

64 voice poliphony, 8 track sequencer, lots of effects. FX, Delay and reverb are fully independent from each other, so you can add delay and reverb to the slicer effect (great, and trancey too). It accpets 4mb smartmedia cards to store patches and patterns.

There's a 16 note keyboard... of course that it doesn't serve to play beethoven with it, but it is useful to play the arpeggiator and generate some techno grooves.

The sequencer is very easy to use. You can program patterns and turn on/off the rythm, the bass, the snares, the hihats, and all the other 7 "melody" tracks.... Besides you can use RPS (Realtime Phrase Sequencing) to add rolling snares, basslines, pads, everything.

One thing nobody noticed too is that you can turn off/on in realtime anyone of the 4 tones that form a patch. So you actually can have a 7 track x 4 tones each + Rythm Track x 8 parts = a 36 "track" sequencer !!!

No, there aren't realistic sounds. Piano, trumpets, violins are cheesy. The strong point in this machine are the techno/dance sounds. Drums (808,909,drum and bass,industrial,techno, etc.) and bass (303 emulations, jupiter pads, juno, etc.). The sounds aren't exactly a 303, but with enough work you can make some fabulous patches.

Rememebr, this machine isn't a 303. is a 505, so it sounds different.

This machine includes a curious gadget:a d-beam... it happens to be a infrared beam that allows you to control up to 26 parameters without touching your machine... you just put your hand over it and wave it up and down... It's not the best controller (i would prefer a joystick) but it amazes your friends and people who sees you at gigs...

Completely, it is the base of all my setup. Had 1 crash in a year.

N/A, but Roland uses to have bad support.

If it were stolen... i would cut my veins first, and then once i was recovered, i would buy it again :) This machine is great because it is all at once. With this only thing you could do complete songs. Playing with the filters (High pass, Low pass, PKG, BPF) is a pleasure... I bought myself a carrying case and i take her everywhere. Just plug into an amplifier and you have instant techno-party.

As a synth, is a great machine. The preset sounds are only good enough, but the things that you can make with them are incredible. If you start tweaking the sounds, you can create some really amazing patches. Every sound is in there... you just have to look for it.

Besides, the looks of this machine are fantastic... 13 knobs, 8 mixer sliders, 4 ADSR sliders and almost 30 buttons give you plenty of hands-on control...

I used to have a Korg synth, but it didn't have any knobs, and the programming was hard. The 505 lets you create sounds in a blink, and complete songs in less than hours...

If you're interested in listening to what this machine can do, check
www.mp3.com/orbiter. Almost everything i've done uses this machine.

The sequencer is like all hardware sequencers in that it is a long and frustrating way of programming compared to any software sequencer, including the good old Atari/Cubase combination. I actually rate my old ALESIS MMT8 as a better sequencer than the 505, simply for its intuitive programming. Editing patches is allscrolling and numbers and is a real pain and generally things never do what you imagine they should do. Nothing on this machine comes close to the programability of most other kit available at the moment. The manual is good but the results of following it are quite poor.
The mini mixer is very good and all sequencers should have one.
The D-beam sucks and must be intended as a joke.

The 505 is feature packed and does offer an all in one box of dance tricks. Unfortunately it just does not do them very well compared to what can be acheived with a more conventional set-up.

Totally expression-less cheesy sounds to be confined to bedrooms in suburbia forever. Better with a controller keyboard but still basically poor compared to EMU or WALDORF or YAMAHA. Preset squences are also hideously bad. I will remember not to go to a techno club the next time I go to Japan! (I love techno - but not this garbage)

Its solid enough - but why?

Ill have to give a low mark here on the ground that the people who designed this thing obviously meant well - but really have no idea what the customer really wants.......

I owned a 505 for a year and it definatly had a negative effect on my music - simply due to the time I wasted trying to get it to justify its makers claims. A few good things in it but far to much rubbish also.

This was the first synth I bought- very easy to use if you know nothing about electronic music. Parctical sequencing and easy patch editing. However some presets a bit cheesy.

64 polyphony (occasionaly falters, particulatly on RPS but thats acceptable). Silly little keyboard - BUY A CONTROLLER!! FANTASTIC easy to use sequencer - filters powerful though they must be used appropriately or they can sound vey daft.

No velocity/aftertouch but these can be used on a midi keyboard. Best for techno ot even drum'n'bass I find, although it is very versatile. Delat/Reverb etc are pretty good but be careful where you leave the settings... No realistic instrument sounds but its a techno tool for gods sake.

Very reliable as with all Roland stuff. Would use it on a gig without backup but then if it crashed it wouldn't be that bad anyway-the electronic music wizards would fill in.

Never dealt with them.

I would cry if it were stolen and it would break my heart. It works like the 303 before it but its TONS easier and sounds so much better and does so much more stuff. I use it with Acid Pro and an XP-10 and you can do some mad stuff with it. It gets in the way if you start really deep music with lots of products but by its self or with just a simple sampler it can't be beaten.

I'm still using the original OS which must be version 1.00
Sounds are pretty good if you're into dance/techno. But don't expect to find real anologue sounds...Actually all the presets sound pretty cheasy and most of them are totally useless if you want to start making more complex arrangements.
Editing is a breeze:choose a waveform, tweak it, assign it to a tone and stack up to 4 tones.
My 505 is the first synth I've ever bought so I didn't know anything about editing sounds. After a few weeks of practice,I had totally understood the process,which turns out to be VERY easy.
The manual is absoulutely GREAT especially for people who don't know anything about electronic music. There's a very cool tutorial that takes you through all the features of the box, and the manual gives you very detailed information.

You get 64 voices of polyphony. There's no real keyboard but "chicklets" that look like those of roland's famous boxes (Tb303,tr909)
As a result the pads don't respond to velocity,aftertouch, etc...
Effects are various (flanger, delay, echo,chorus,tetra, vinyl, reversed....), even though only one can be used at a time.
Once again,everything is VERY easy to use if you just take time to read the manual...:o)
You can also improve the memory by buying smart media cards but that's really all. I wish there were expansion boards or cards full of patches available...
All the knobs send MIDI messages so you can record your tweakings very easily.The sequencer can be synced via midi clock messages.
The sequencer absolutely ROCKS: you can record in different modes: real time,step record etc. It's really intuitive and it's soooooo easy to create quickly a pattern!
The only drawbcak is that there is no "linear recording" option that allows you to record without the pattern limitation.

Sounds are all very cheasy so you'd better edit your own patches quickly.
This box is for dance, techno, but NOT for Rap(drums are not very expressive)
Actually the sound engine is quite good but since I've tried the NOrd rack 2, I've to acknowledge that my silver box looks quite old to me.
Moreover, this box was designed to be used as a single instrument.It's not very flexible as soon as you want to use it as part of a more complex setup(for example you can't record 2 or more parts simultaneously in cakewalk)

It's been very reliable so far and I never had to deal with romand's customer service.
But I heard some people had problems with new OS(!) and some crashes were also reported.
Actually it seems that the more sounds you program and save in the box, the more chances you'll get the box will crash or freaze.
Moreover, the box looks very solid and definitely has some charm with all its lights flashing.

As I said,no problems to report.

NOw that I have more experience in electronic music,I don't think this box would be that helpful.
The rythm section is good, the sequencer rocks,but the problem comes from the sounds.Too much crap here...
I consider it as a good learning tool, but once you understand better the basic concepts, it becomes a bit oldfashioned.
I recommend that instrument to beginners(absolutely great as an all in 1 solution) but if you already have some experience in electronic music, go get a more decent synth and a sampler.

Forget the exact os my 505 is running off of, but it is 3.something or other. Comes with quite a few good presets sounds and a TON of excellent preset patterns (but whats the fun of preset patterns, MAKE YOUR OWN). Editing patches is fairly easy, but a nabbed a 505 patch editor (that was made independently by someone going by "noserz") that makes editing patches OH so much easier. The 505 features is capable of a lot, and thusly the the actual manual (it comes with two, a quick start manual and a normal manual) is a hard read at times (I still haven't accessed all the 505 can do), but none the less the machine is pretty easy to figure out.

The features of the 505 are perhaps where it shines out most. It is 64 voice polyphonic and 8 part multi-timbrale. It comes packed with a ton of on board effects (though it's unfortunate because you can't use more than one effect at a time) and all the effects are extremely easy to access and work with on the fly. Though the 505 has a decently sized memory by itself (forget the exact numbers, but you can check Roland for that) you can buy smartmedia memory cards for it as well (allowing for unlimited memory so long as your pocket book is big enough). The on board sequencer is also excellent and reminds me a lot of the Alesis MMT8....in fact, one may argue that it is an MMT8 (but it has no midi "echo" and NO MIDI THRU). On the down side the 505 I've experienced problems when trying to run my Future Retro 777 off the 505 as a slave (goes nuts when ever I use the 505's mute buttons) and have heard of other people have problems with the 505's sequencer when linking it to other gear as well.

I've worked with better synths, but overall the sounds on the 505 aren't that bad. What really hurts are the 505's filters (which are just absolutely terriable)! Don't expect to have this thing give you any sort of analogue sound where it's filters are concerned because you simply aren't going to get them. And in that same refrain, don't even consider using it as an emulator of a 303, 101, Jupiter, etc. (though many of the samples of the vintage synths it contains sound o.k. until you attempt to tweak them)

I've had a couple times where it froze up on me, even more times where it's reaction time started to become sluggish, but overall these occurences have been rare and though I do feel a bit afraid of it messing up every time I've taken it out to play live (which it hasn't yet), I still feel confident enough to take it out.

It's Roland and typical Roland support.

I love this thing and will even go as far to say that it is my favorite instrument. I will also state though that it is far from the greatest synth in the world, far from the greatest drum machine in the world, and is not the greatest sequencer in the world. But considering that it is in fact a sequencer, sound module, and controller all in one little box and that it is capable of doing all it's actions well (it's not the best, but it is GOOD), I can't really complain all that much about it.