Roland XP-30

The XP-30 is easier to use than the XP-50 or XP-60, but still requires the use of Soundiver software to get the most out of editing sounds. The Patch Category is a neat feature. The mod wheel "lever" thing is my least favorite feature.

The manual is not too bad, by Roland standards.

Same specs as the other XPs, but no sequencer. Has a very nice arpeggiator though. Session, Orchestral and Techno expansions are hard wired and it can take two additional SR-JV80 boards. Tons of sounds on this thing.

Four sliders for real time control. Keys are semi-weighted and have a nice feel. Has only a single insert effect, but good quality.

Very lightweight and portable synth with great features and sounds. o

It has all the sounds of the classic JV1080 and JV2080 modules, most of which are still good even today. Add in the built in expansions and there are tons of great sounds. Even the Techno board has some cool synth patches and pads on it.

The only thing really lacking are B3 and Rhodes sounds, and this can be remedied with the "Keyboards of the 60s & 70s" board. I have the 60s\70s and Vintage Synth expansions in my XP-30 and have pretty much any sound I could ever want or need.

If it had a sampler it would be a 10.

Seems pretty sturdy, I treat my gear with care.

I have owned an XP-50 (horrible keys) and XP-60 (too noisy), and soundwise the XP-30 kicks their butts. It has better DACs and does not have the noise issues that the XP-60 had. I do miss the built in sequencer, but sound quality is much more important to me. The XP's sequencer was kind of frustrating to use anyway. I have an EMU MP-7 that is an awesome sequencer. The XP-30 has all of the great JV sounds and when fully expanded, is a monster of a synth. Plus it's so light and portable! A great deal.

Pretty easy to use for standard stuff, the two-line LCS makes more complex sound tweaking a bit complex. But it does the job as a pretty versatile and lightweight gear pretty well.

It is an average piece of gear, and for the price and amount of sounds you get an excellent choice if you're after a good bang for the buck! The keyboard is ok, good for Organs, Synths, a bit less though for Electric Pianos and obviously for a Grand. But overall features are OK, polyphony etc. everything on board. What I am missing a bit is just a simple sequencer to record ideas etc.

The sounds are really great. I bought the Keyboards of the 60s&70s expansion card and the capability of adding two more expansion cards helps a lot to make this beast really a sound monster. The sounds are warm and you can get pretty much everything you want.

Never hat any proble,. Given there are no nobs etc. which could break or so, it is probably one of the most robust keyboards I've ever used. Only the Pitch/MOD STick is a bit of lower quality.

Never had problems.

As a beginners synth but onbly for more advanced players who just want to have every sound imaginable at their fingertipps in a very portable device I definitively recommend the XP-30. It's a pity Roland hasn't yet come up with a decent replacement so the XP-30 still has its stand today.
The Juno-G is soundwise much less flexible and I only consider the Triton LE a similar device, but at twice the price! and it's a Korg - I personally like the ROland sounds!
BTW, just found this nice site on the XP-30: www.johannes-emmerling.de/xp-30 with lots of useful info and downloads (got the manual from there)

I also own the Yamaha S 30 which is in my opinion comparable to the XP 30 in the price range and possibilities.
In the beginning, the Yamaha S 30 is not so easy to use (editing patches) but later on it gets really easy.
With the XP 30 it??s the other way round: Very easy to use at first sight (sliders for attack/decay/release/cutoff/modulations
but editing patches is somewhat a little difficult.
Roland and yamaha have obviously different philosophies
and the man who evented the roland "bender" still lives....

Polyphony 64.
Keyboard action: good, I like it, more than the Yamaha S 30
It??s a good feeling playing piano patches
Expansions are very useful !!!
No onboard sequenzer
Sliders for fast editing are good, but changes are NOT saved !!!
You have to go into the menues :-(

Well, the sounds:

Pianos: Not 1 A but very usefull, especially for live playing.
For records I tend to use the GEM Real Piano.
E- Pianos: Unconvincing, forget about them !
yamahas are much better (S 30, Motif). Or use a Clavia Electro.
Organs: Typical Roland Organ sounds, better than Yamahas (in my opinion), but not perfect. Again: I prefer Clavia Electro or Voce V5
Orchestral Sounds: really good with the built in expansion
Pads/synth sounds: A highlight. Wonderful pads !
I bought this board for the orchstral and vintage synth sounds.
With the synth expansion, you have EVERYTHING ! MOOGS, ROLANDS (of course); MELLOTRONS; OBERHEIMS..... EVERYTHING ! WONDERFUL !!!
Basses: O.K
Guitars: Acustic G. very good.
Brasses: Hmmm.... medium except Trumpet and some others
The sax is somewhat outdated...
Drums: old fashioned
Techno Sounds: a waste to me.
World sounds (expansion): WONDERFUL !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some sounds sound good only in a certain range.

Seems very dependable.

Did not need yet.

Paid ??? 450 used.
It was a good price. Also got the world and synth expansions on Ebay.
It is a very good allround synth.
What is missing: E-Pianos. Perhaps the 60ies, 70ies card could help but for this purpose I have Nord electro and Yamaha S 30.
It is a very musical instrument with lots of sounds.
Especially the orchestral, vintage synthb and world sounds are very good.

I'm giving an update to my review that I posted back in '04.

I still love my XP-30 to death. I love it even more so now than ever before. There was a period where I didn't care for it anymore and I bought a bunch of software to replace it, including Garritan's Personal Orchestra, Edirol's Hyper Canvas, Albino 3, various soundfonts, Edirol's Virtual Sound Canvas, and other things. With the exception of Albino 3, none of it can really compare except for maybe Edirol's Hyper Canvas. Now that I've been around the block, so to speak, and understand a lot more, I have a newfound appreciation for my Roland.

First, let me just say that there isn't a big difference between the Edirol SD/Hyper Canvas sound and the Roland JV/XP sound. They both draw from the same set of samples, except the Edirol SD/Hyper Canvas sounds have been cleaned up a bit. That isn't to say they're better, though. In fact, the new Sound Canvas synths have a very bright, cartoony sound to them while the Roland JV/XP synths have a darker, bigger and more sophisticated sound to them that I like more.

Garritan's Personal Orchestra is something I want to touch on as well. I bought GPO thinking it was going to be a lot better than my Roland. I was wrong. Very wrong. GPO has a lot more samples per instrument (thus you won't run into vibrato going too fast or too slow), but the samples are not sampled as well as the Roland samples. The Roland samples are clearer and more usable, plus there're more of them. The Roland samples are also looped much more smoothly. As far as solo strings go, GPO has a nice set of violin and viola samples with better vibrato, but I still prefer the ones on my Roland. The harpsichord on GPO is also almost as good as the one found on the XP-30. As far as everything else goes, GPO can't compete with Roland in terms of usability or sound quality. I say this after having used both of them pretty extensively.

Roland can't compete with Albino in terms of synthetic sounds. Period. You can still get great synth sounds out of the XP-30, but I prefer Albino for synth leads.

I do a lot of orchestral work on this board. Orchestra is pretty much all I do now, period. The XP-30 fits me like a glove. Once you find a good hall reverb setting and you begin programming your own sounds, you can achieve some wonderful results from just having one or two tones; and by wonderful results, I mean truly breath-taking stuff if you know what you're doing. The only problem I have is that you can very easily run into vibrato issues with some of the sounds. Tricky sequencing and simply using a different sound can help to overcome that problem, though.

I love my XP-30... still. It's a magnificent piece of equipment once you get to know it and learn how to *really* use it. It's definitely my favorite synth, and I'll be using it for a very long time.

As My First synthesizer, I Bought it for the price and the fact that it was recommended by a specialist for a beginner. Well It is fairly easy to use, a but it really a pain to edit patches.

75% of the presets suck, with the exception of pianos, strings, and some ethnic sounds. Other than that, most of the sounds are bad guitars, boring drums, and terrible techno loops, which nobody would use except for maybe the musically-nontalented director of a porno film. The manual is OK.

It has 64 poliphony, which is needed for those loops and big orchestral sections. It has a few effects, like Resolution and cutoff, but they seem to screw up the sound and hurt the ears. and worse, it gets stuck! It can take 2 expansion boards, and memory card.

The reason I give this an 8 is because of the keyboard itself: Great action, and velocity. I would have sold this already had it not made a great controller.

I wish this had a sequencer, as the one I have on Cubase LE sucks. All it's got is this terrible arpeggiator, which is very stiff.

Although there is thousands of sounds on this thing, and they are all fairly realistic, they are all very boring and uninspired.

This works well for a fifteen year old interested in making music, for any style of music can be made on this. Just don't expect anyone coming up to you and telling you, "Wow! Ive Never Heard Anything like That before!"

Because It Is made by Roland, all the synth sounds are based on the Jupiter 8, The Junos, Which have some allright string sounds. However, Don't expect any nice Moog or PPG basses. All the synth basses on this thing are variations on that annoying TB-303.

As I Mentioned before, i am scared to touch the effects, as they just screw up the sound, and require shutting the thing right off.

The Velocity is very good.

This thing i beat the hell out of. It's a well built machine, and it is good enough for a midi controller.

I would definatley gig this without a backup.

Havent dealt with them personally, but I know people who have said that Roland are very helpful.

If this thing were stolen, I could'nt care less. I would go out and buy something else, regardless of the price.

I wish this had a decent sequencer, sampling, and some descent, easy to edit sounds, but then I might as well get a Fantom, a Triton or a Motif.

If you are a guitarist and need some string or organ sounds, this is good. But on its own, Don't expect an article in Keyboard Magazine anytime soon.

I found the XP30 a great keyboard
it was very easy to edit patches
and very user friendly

Great features lots of cool sounds

the sounds were warm and rich and very real

i never had any probs with it

Over all it was worth buying this keyboard
it was my first synth and i have never looked back
It was always reliable and very portable

I've owned an XP-30 now for a little over a year. I bought the XP-30 because my JD-800 finally started to show its age. My JD-800 has been very reliable, but it developed noise in its output that could be heard during quiet passages. I had the choice of having Roland fix my JD-800 (for an unknown amount) or buying a new (but discontinued) XP-30 for $700 CND. $700 CND seemed like a good deal and because the XP-30 has most of the waveforms from the JD-800, I bought the XP-30.

I've written two other reviews on the XP-30 (dispersed between the many other reviews below). My previous reviews were written before I owned an XP-30. BW (another reviewer) disagreed with some of my comments and I must confess that some of what I wrote previously was incorrect. Excepting reasonably sturdy plastic side panels, the XP-30 does have an all metal case. I wrote that the XP-30's case was plastic and this is wrong. Likewise, I will also emphasize that I believe the XP-30 is an amazing value for the money. This didn't really come across in my previous reviews.

I find the XP-30 extremely easy to use. Everything you need to play and program this keyboard is on the front panel. One of the most useful design choices is that the Solo, Portamento, Transpose, Octave Increment, Octave Decrement, Effects, and Arpeggio buttons have all been taken out of buried menus, grouped together, and placed on dedicated buttons. I'd have preferred if these buttons were placed beside the pitch bend lever, but they are still quite accessible on the left side of the front panel. There are a few other odd buttons locations, but you get used to these pretty quickly.

Playing the XP-30 is easy - just take it our of the box, plug it in, and choose a patch. There are so many patch variations for every sound that it is unlikely you'll need to do much programming to get playing. After playing your first time, I recommend that you press the Effects button and turn off the XP-30's three effects processors. This makes the XP-30 sound 100% better. Like all Roland keyboards that have included effects, the XP-30's patches are smothered in reverb, chorus, and other pitch modulation effects. This makes the XP-30 initially sound muddy and distant. Thankfully, once you've pressed the convenient Effects button and disabled all effects, the effects stay off permanently (regardless of how they have been programmed in a patch). Almost every patch sounds immediately bigger, warmer, and more natural with the effects turned off.

Sequencing with the XP-30 is more of a chore. If you've used any of Roland's JV/XP keyboards, this is nothing new. To enable multitimbral mode, you must create a Performance. A Performance is a program with 16 layers. Each layer is assigned its own patch, key ranges, and MIDI channel. There are also inter-layer parameters (such as Pitch Detune) that you can use to create incredibly thick sounds. The XP-30 has a few less dedicated buttons for layer management than some JV/XP synthesizers so it is a bit harder to set up. My first time out of the gate, I had to use the manual to figure out which buttons to shift/press to set up a multitimbral program for sequencing. (This is the way it is folks. If you don't read the manual, you'll likely encounter frustration. Read the manual and you'll be set up with minimal effort.) Once you've set up your first multitimbral program, the process becomes easy. Routing the effects is a similar process - you'll need to read the manual the first time.

I disagree with some other reviewers in that I find the XP-30's manual very detailed and usable. True enough, the manual does condescend a bit, but everything you need to configure and program the XP-30 is included. The documentation even includes exact MIDI byte sequences us programmer types can send to the XP-30 (over MIDI or the serial interface) to control the XP-30 programmatically. You really can't get much more detailed documentation than this. I'

I've covered many of the XP-30's features already and others have covered the ones I didn't in their own reviews. Thus, instead of detailing all features, I'll describe the features I think are key.

Firstly (and most importantly), the XP-30 is well-built, but small and light. I cannot emphasize how important this is. You can pick the XP-30 up with one hand and slip it under your arm. Not having to move a heavy keyboard is such a bonus that it has instantly made the XP-30 my favourite keyboard. The XP-30 is the most portable of any professional, 61 note keyboard I've played. This keyboard is perfect for gigging musicians (of which I am one).

I love the variety of sounds in the XP-30. My only concern here is that I wish many sounds were of higher quality. (More on this in the " Expressiveness/Sounds" section.) The XP-30 includes five expansion board slots (three of which are hard-wired with the included Orchestral, Session, and Techno expansion boards). The inclusion of the Orchestral and Session expansion boards is a fabulous bonus. These expansions make the XP-30 sound much better than JV/XP synthesizers without these boards. It's a shame Roland wasted the third hard-wired slot with the Techno board. The Techno board contains mostly drum loops and very distorted analog synthesizer sounds. The XP-30 (and Techno music producers) would have been much better served had Roland included one of its more generic libraries (such as the Vintage Synthesizer board.) There are two expansion slots you can put your own boards into. My XP-30 currently has the Keyboards of the 60's and 70's board (basically Hammond organ and Fender Rhodes samples) and Super Sound Set (baroque and traditional music sounds plus some good brass samples). Without these extra expansions, I would not be very happy with the sound of the XP-30. Excepting the included expansion boards, the stock waveforms in the XP-30 are quite poor. To gain an appreciation of the sonic capabilities of the XP-30 you really must use patches based on the included expansion boards or patches based on your own expansion boards.

The XP-30 is aimed at budget-minded keyboardists. Despite this, Roland has not reduced the architecture and feature set as it does on many of its inexpensive synthesizers. Excepting a sequencer, the XP-30 is a full-blown JV/XP synthesizer with all features and waveforms left in tact. What this means is that you're getting a professional keyboard at less than half the price most JV/XP users paid. There is truly something to be said for not being an early adopter. With the release of the XP-30 there no reason to buy any other JV/XP synthesizer unless you need the 8 user assignable expansion slots of the JV-2080 or a built in sequencer. Chances are that most people who buy other JV/XP keyboards will buy and install the Orchestral and Session boards that are already included in the XP-30. At current prices, two XP-30's are still cheaper than a single JV-2080 and you get two Orchestral and two Session expansion boards thrown in for free! When you look at it this way, the XP-30 is an unbelievable bargain. My only gripe is that I wish Roland had included a few more user installable expansion slots. As it is, there are a few expansion boards I'd like to have in my XP-30 that I can't because I'm out of slots. With just a few more slots this would not be a problem.

There is a misguided belief that the XP-30 uses cheaper components than previous JV/XP synthesizers. In fact, the opposite is true. The XP-30, because it was released at a later date, contains higher resolution DACs (digital to analog converters). Based on my own tests, the XP-30 exhibits none of the noise and truncated decay problems found in some previous JV/XP models. Thus, if anything, I'd say the XP-30 is the best sounding JV/XP model.

I mentioned this above, but I'll repeat it again here. Before rating the XP-30's sound quality you MUST turn off its three effects processors. It isn't that the effect processors in the XP-30 are inherently bad, it's that Roland drenches all the preset patches with ridiculous amounts of reverb and pitch modulation effects. I have yet to hear any stock JV/XP patch that can't be significantly improved simply by disabling the effects so turn the effects off.

Buying the XP-30 has been a huge lesson for me. Before the XP-30, the only sampling synthesisers I had ever owned and/or used were the Fairlight CMI, Emulator II, and Emulator III. By today's standards, these are poor samplers. ROM waveform synthesizers (like the XP-30) are really just extensions of samplers - they are sample players with built-in sample libraries. In this kind of machine, the bells and whistles (filters, LFOs, envelopes, matrix modulation, etc.) that are essential to a subtractive synthesizer (read "analog synthesizer") are less important. In fact, as I'm finding out, the best samplers are those that have a very simple, high quality signal path with the highest quality samples. Samplers like GigaStudio (a software sampler you can run on your computer) allow for multi-samples that are many megabytes long with no loops. The key to quality sound is to sample many different dynamic levels for their full duration in as many pitches as possible. Thus, ideally, if you're going to make a good Rhodes sample, you sample every note on the keyboard for its full duration at multiple dynamic levels. The approach that Roland and others take is the complete opposite of this. Roland takes as few samples as possible so as to squeeze in more types of instruments. Roland patch programmers then try to get back what they didn't sample by applying traditional synthesizer techniques (such as filtering and modulation). The resulting sound is severely compromised. Understanding this, is key to my approach in rating the XP-30's sound quality.

For the most part, even through there are thousands of patches in the XP-30, most of them are very poor. The reason for this is that the samples behind the patches are poor. You really cannot mask bad samples with synthesizer techniques - Roland (and other manufacturers) try to do this but my ear is rarely fooled. The problems include audible looping, pitch shifts up/down during loops, too few samples spread across the keyboard causing muddy bottom end or tiny/raspy high end, too few samples of dynamic levels causing a lifeless sound, truncated attack segments, truncated decay segments, and timing problems due to samples being overly slowed down or overly sped up. Many of the samples in the XP-30 exhibit one (and often more than one) of these defects.

You'd think after reading this that I don't like the sound of the XP-30. This is not the case. What I find is that out of the thousands of patches provided, I only use a few. The few I use (surprise, surprise...) are the ones that feature the better quality samples. If you play one patch, the XP-30 sounds like garbage. Switch to a different patch (perhaps on one of the expansion boards) and the XP-30 sounds marvellous. What I've come to realize is that the basic electronics of the XP-30 are superb. Feeding a good sample through these electronics produces lots of bottom end, mid warmth, and crystal clear highs. However, most of the built-in samples (those not on the included expansion boards) provide less than stellar results.

While it's a bit tedious, go through the built-in program banks and then proceed to the built-in expansion boards. The first thing you'll notice is that the expansion boards blow the built-in banks away. The expansions provide much better samples than the built-in program banks. Truly, if all I'd ever heard were the default JV-1080 and JV-2080 built-in program banks, I'd never have bought an XP-30. In comparison to my JD-800, the JD

Corporate stability and equipment reliability are big reasons I use Roland gear. I've never had a Roland synthesizer break down. I've owned many keyboards from other manufactures and I can certify from experience that Roland produces some of the most reliable gear in the music business. Excepting Yamaha, Roland is the only manufacturer of keyboard equipment I own that is still in business. The fact that Roland will probably be in business when if I ever do have problems is a great safety net. While I love some of the virtual analog gear on the market presently, like all my true analog keyboards, I really do have to wonder if any of these companies will be in business ten years from now.

I've rated Roland customer support before so I'll summarize as follows: I've had great and not so great support from Roland. At their best, Roland techs have burned ROMs for me and gone out of their way to look up schematics and documentation on out of date models for me. At their worst, Roland has quickly blown me off when they didn't have an immediate answer to my question. In general, I've found Roland to offer pretty good support, but you have to dig underneath the initial person answering the customer service phone. If you make the effort, Roland does have many fine people committed to helping you.

The XP-30 has become my most-used synthesizer because it is reliable, light weight, flexible, and contains great sounding, quiet electronics. With the exception of piano (for which I use a standalone Yamaha P200), I can get all the Hammond organ, Rhodes, brass, strings, woodwind, and analog synthesizer sounds I need from the XP-30. If the XP-30 had a high quality piano sample available (which it doesn't - the internal piano samples and all the samples on the expansion boards are awful), it would be the only keyboard I use. I always use piano so the XP-30 is my "auxiliary" keyboard. Despite the lack of a good piano sound, the XP-30 fills all my other requirements and as such, I find it an amazing keyboard (especially when you consider the price). I highly recommend the XP-30 to those looking for an auxiliary keyboard to augment their piano or to those that don't need a piano sound.

If my XP-30 were lost or stolen, I'd buy it again if I could, otherwise I'd look for a replacement. The XP-30 is definitely worth what I paid for it and then some. Other than the lack of a usable piano sample, this is the most versatile keyboard I've ever owned.

The structure has some strengths and weaknesses. There are so many presets (moreso if you add expansion cards). In order to make that easier, the XP-30 uses "catagories" that allow you to filter patch types. For basic use, it makes sense and has some helpful features to make gigging painless. Editing is basic and they did make some good choices for layout of buttons, and labels. The effects are logically implemented.

I'd say most features are not self-explanatory, but have a certain logic. The manual is very important for understanding how to get around.

For the money, it has a nice feature set. The FX have a decent selection. There are some very nice arpeggiator functions. The ability to add 2 expansion cards is a plus.
I added keyboards of the 60's & 70's and the Orch II. I'm very pleased.

There are 4 assignable sliders that were very well thought-out.

I am used to Ensoniq and Kurzweil gear where the interfaces & editing is WAY more flexible and powerful. But for the dough it's a decent compromise. For basic sounds & performance it's really good.

There are some more specific things that are difficult or impossible: doing more elaborate mapping of keyranges, and multi-channel rigs is more tricky. Enabling and disabling layers with a switch controller is not possible.

The sounds are comprehensive. There is a nice selection of very usable sounds. In some catagories the sounds are weak. The expansion cards I've tried are good (not great).
In my opinion, the memory resources that were devoted to adding lots of techno loops was wasted. Those loops all seem dated to me. It would have been better if that space had been used for single hits & waveforms.

The effects are good, but not great. The reverbs are pretty grainy and not pretty, but usable for basic live gigs. Some of the effects are suprisingly bold. You can make some really messed up stuff!!

The keyboard feel is basically good, but takes some getting used to.

I don't like the Roland-pressure mod wheel thing, but I was able to assign mod wheel
to one of the sliders and that works great.

The power cord is attached, which creates a strain & flex issue that is a concern, but otherwise it's fairly solid.

Anyone who has dealt with the Roland empire knows that customer service is bad. I give a bad rating here in the faint hope that one day Roland may decide to invest in better customer service.

I do appreciate that the Roland website provides fairly comprehensive demos & comparisons of their synths & cards.

If lost, I may get another, but I'd also look at used Kurz or newer Roland stuff.
If you are thinking of buying one, and you know it's in good shape, it's worth a look.

No comeco e bem complicado, pois pra quem vem de um teclado yamaha da linha PSR, parece um bicho de 7 cabecas. Mas aos poucos o cara vai se achando. :)

Polifonia de 64 vozes. Precisa dizer mais?
Efeitos de tudo quanto e tipo, teclas macias e boas de usar, com touch response regulavel.
Ja vem com 3 placas de extens?o on-board e eu tenho mais uma ainda, a expression. Pena que n?o e compativel com GS , so com GM. (Porque isso?)

Os timbres s?o do caralho, Metais perfeitos, pianos muito bons e extras como timbres para musica eletronica profissionais.
Da pra fazer qualquer tipo de som com um brinquedo desses. Do punk ao techno, passando pelo pop e classico.

Da pra confiar no bichinho na boa.
Eu sempre toco com dois teclados, mas dependo basicamente desse Roland. Pena ele ser somente 110 volts.

Sei la, nunca deu problema.
Espero que continue assim.
:)

O teclado e bom pra caralho, so meio complicado no inicio e pesado. Se pudesse ter outro igual, comprava. Melhor aquisicao que eu ja fiz em instrumentos. Junto com o PSR, da pra fazer miseria no palco. Sozinho, da pra gravar um cd so com sons dele.

I'm pretty new to synths, and while some of the presets on this synth sound terrible, most of them sound really good to my ears, especially those on the orchestral "expansion" board.

I don't own the manual and I didn't bother spending the thirty dollars for it because Roland is notorious for having horrible user manuals. In fact, I don't even need the manual; this synth is laid out very well for a piece of equipment that has a screen that's no wider than the width of the average index finger. I often find myself sifting through a lot of menus to get to where I need to be, but the journey is virtually painless. The best part is, all of the features that are most used, such as global effects and the arpeggiator, are instantly accessible with just the push of a button. Selecting a patch is extremely simple, too.

Going deeper into the synth is a totally different story, though. Editing patches is horrific and I haven't even discovered how to make my own patches yet. The synth can easily get confusing with so many different menus, but thankfully they're all pretty easy to get to. It'll take time and experimentation to master this thing, and if you feel you've messed up, the "panic" button gets you out of the menus and resets what you just edited.

All in all, this is probably as good as it's going to get for a synth less than a thousand dollars. Roland generously included the SoundDriver software for this synth, which I've heard makes editing things a breeze, but my synth didn't come with it so it'll take me a while to learn it.

This synth has 64 voices of polyphony, and despite this not being "true" polyphony, as many patches take up about four voices, I've never run out. It does the job quite well.

It baffles me why Roland likes to ruin their sounds by overdoing it on the effects. Once you adjust the reverb and chorus, the XP-30 sounds great!

The modulation wheel is a little stiff, which sometimes causes a problem, but it's nothing serious. I like how it's positioned horizontally.

My favorite part - the octave buttons! You can access the pitch ranges of all the orchestral instruments with this. Great!

I challenge anyone to find better sounds for the price. The sounds of the Yamaha S30, Triton LE and Alesis QS6.2 are by far inferior to the XP-30's. The orchestral instruments are nothing short of outstanding. The great thing is, there's no difference between the sounds on the SR-JV boards and the sounds of the SRX boards; the SRX boards just contain more sounds taken from other SR-JV expansions. In a nutshell, this means the orchestral instruments on the XP-30 are pretty much the same as many professionals use. The synth sounds are really cool and fun to use, especially the synthstrings and pads! I love the sounds on this board when they aren't overdone with effects. It can sound real wet or real clean, depending on what you want. I compose mostly video game music and do a little bit of hip-hop on the side, and this synth suits me just fine. The sounds are versatile and are of superb quality - most of them anyway.

It responds well to velocity and aftertouch, which is really cool.

Well, after owning it for three months and buying it used, it still works perfect. Roland, like so many other synth companies, has a great reputation for having gear that lasts.

I've heard good things and bad things about Roland's customer support, but I can't comment on this because I haven't dealt with them personally.

I got this Roland for 500 dollars and although I've had a love-hate relationship with it (because the often make it sound ew), I really couldn't have asked for anything more. The value of this synth is incredible. I'm more than pleased with my XP-30 now that I've learned how to adjust the effects. Great job Roland, and even at $1,000, the original price of the XP-30, this is a steal.

The keyboard provides enough knobs, bottoms, and sliders to traverse the complex menus with relative ease. It comes with a Sounddiver editor so one can connect the xp to a laptop. The unit is not complex, with multiple outputs and inputs and such. The configuration of the unit is simple yet very versatile. So this unit can be played within a few minutes after opening the box. If you have a Akai or Kurzweil, this unit will be very easy in comparison.

Very small, flat and compact !!!!
Not heavy. Strong outer casing.
I got it because I wanted something small and portable.
My other keyboard is a 88 fully weighted keyboard.
It has a 24 bit, 44 kilohertz DAC. The sound is very clean. Even when I put the volume on max on my Yamaha monitors I do not hear any noise. 64 voice polyphony is just enough for most people. It has 4 possible layers for each voice and may patches use 3 or 4 layers. It comes with 3 expansion cards and is expandable with 2 more. Easily tranposable keys. Patch finder is great for quickly finding a patch. One stereo output. MIDI in, out and thru. Backlit screen. Small but good enough for a non sampling, non sequencer synth. Very good sound tweeking possibilities. It can use a 5v smart media card. they ae very limited in capacity and no longer made. Techno, Sessin Orchestra ROms built into the unit have a few good pianos and organs I like very much. The amount of vocals is only 2. So if you want to make something like Titanic soundtrack I recommend the Vocal ROM and Orchestral II ROM.

Hmm....
I own a few synths and this has now become my favorite synth.
It is the least feature rich synth I have, however I just love the large number of sounds and ease of use.
I have a fully expanded xp-30.
I own Keys of the 60 and 70 and World ROM cards.
Thats like over 1700 patches I think.
The ROM cards are great, only if I had 2 more expansion slots, I would love to instal Orchestral II and Vocal.
The XP-30 came after the other XPs and has a 24 bit DAC as opposed to the 16 bits on the JV-1080 and JV-2080 and some other XPs. So the sound will be cleaner and maybe flatter and maybe this is a bad thing for some people who like the vinyl type sounds. I personally love it. The effects on the unit is enough for basics. It has all the features of the 1080. It will not beat the newer synths or a Kurzweil, but the sounds are very established and of high quuality. I love the Orchestral ROMs, Vocal ROM (though I would have liked more different vocals), and Keys of the 60s and 70s.

I got mine used. The unit works great !

I never tried their c s.

This keyboard is small and easy to use, but definately a pro board.
If only it can accept 8 megs of sample sound it would be GRRREEEAATT !
I love the size and weight.
I love the huge sound library this thing has.
Up to 6 ROM cards ! The first 3 though is preinstalled, sigh... I would have preferred to make my own choices.
I am not into techno so one slot was wasted.

Well, I think the manual is OK. This keyboard is very easy-to-use, because it is light to carry around. The patches are well-organized, but I think is very difficult editing patches. I prefer my Korg to do this. There are a lot of menus in the patch edit; I guess you have to be an expert to do whatever you want in your patch.

Well, being a piano-lover, I have to say I hate the keyboard action. The keys are veeeeery light and sometimes I'm afraid I will broke them by just playing. Polyphony is 64 voices, what is good, but when you use patches that use 4 voices, you are dead. If you use the keyboard for MIDI, sometimes you have to choose well your patches so you don't run out of polyphony. The effects are OK, and unlike my KOrg (N1), it doesn't adds to much to the sound, making the keyboard good for MIDI (you don't lose too much quality in the performance mode, putting the same effects for every sound). But, the keyboard is very expandable, and there are very good expansion boards in the market.

I bought mine because of the sounds. The keyboard is veeeeery versatile, and you can play many styles with this baby. I don't think of any style it will be bad for. The ac. guitar of the "Session" is very good, one of favorites sounds. I don't like the ac. pianos, they are not realistic and have a "metalic" sound, but for some styles (country, rock) it is good. Eletric pianos are good, specially the A-009, MIDIed Grand and the a-030, but there are only a few. Basses are very good (the techno board have some great for eletronic music), brasses are very realistic and versatile; you can copy almost everything made for the real brasses. Strings are very good and you have a great variety, thanks for the "Orchestral" board. Drums are good, but I hate the fact you can only use ONE in the performance/MIDI mode. This REALLY sucks. PAds are beautiful; they don't have the FAT of a VA or an ANalog, but you have many kinds of them; there's a big variety. The two kinds of sounds I think just HORRIBLE: GUITARS AND ORGANS. The sounds are very bad. If you want quality in this two kinds of sounds, buy a KORG. The others kinds of sounds are very good. The reaction to velocity and aftertouch are very good, I just hate the Lighted keys.

No problems. Roland are very good at this. I just think the keyboard would crash in a eventual fall.

No problems, never needed anyway...

If it were lost or stolen I would have to buy another one or a Fanton X. I bought mine new, have for 5 years. I love the keyboard, but I have a Korg (N1) and a Alesis QS plus piano to complete my setup. I love the great variety and quantity of sounds, and hate the keyboard action (but I like the piano-keys, so...). I use my XP-30 together with a MC-50mkII, and it is the perfect keyboard for MIDI. I play some sequences in the XP and plays together with my N1 Korg and QuadraSynth plus piano, and I think I have everything I need. Just wanted a VA and a Hammond simulator...=)

I am into classical and jazz. I own a few other synths.

Pay $400 for it used. More if it comes with expansion cards installed.
This is a old and somewhat basic instrument comapred to todays standard.
Easy to use once the patches are set to the way you like them.
Setting the patch on a little tiny screen without a alpha numeric keyboard and mouse is of course VERY difficult. Otherwise following the logic of the menus is not terribly difficult.
I highly recommend a patch library software for manipulating and storing custom patches. Hook it up to the PC only when modifying the patches then the XP can be liberated from the what I feel is a cumbersome laptop or PC.
The keyboard itself has a fair amount of sliders and such.
It isnt a Roland A90 with tons of bottons and sliders. And those huge monsters will no longer be made considering most people use PCs now and it is very expensive to make controllers like the A90. Besides how many people need 4 pedas and a MIDI wind instrument port.I give it a 10 because for a sample synth it has a lot of adjustable parameters. It isnt a Kuzweil with a ton of programable stuff. But then I think only professionals with strick demands need to tweak a sound that much.

Basic stuff.
The lists are all over the reviews from previous writers.
For today's standard it lacks USB, sample RAM, and digital output.
I believe it uses the old 8 meg ROMs.
Which is not bad at all.
I cannt tell the difference between this and the 64 meg ROMs of today.

I give it a 10 because it was good for its time.
And it is great for the price it can be purchased for now.

Great.
It is amazing how great these little 8 meg ROMS sound.
Nothing can beat the ease and packaging of sound ROMs.
CDs are nice but not as convenient.
These units can be used in live concerts or studios.
With the proper expansion board installed and a little tweeking this unit is very versatile.
I give it a 10 because of the sheer quantity of sounds and those few that may be useful to the individual is of good quality.

Its a Roland.
10.

I have no idea.

I got this unit loaded.
Brand new, with the original box.
This is a bargain.
Only if the the XP-30 came with a digital out !!!!!
It would be great, we wouldnt have to use the on board DA converter.
The keyboard touch is tight, which is what I prefer.
The sound is fat, which I prefer.
The unit is solid.
The feel of the keys and sound is a preference, most muscians prefer the feel and sound of what they are used to.
This unit can be tweeked to acommadate most muscians.
yeah yeah ... onboard effects is not the most powerful.
but this unit's effects does the job.
I have a nice external effects module for live performances or I can simply add effects via software.
For the price, this is the best unit one can buy if one's need is not specialized.
Some keyboards become classics in their field.
Kurzweil for they VAST programming. The A90 as a controller keyboard. The Triton for its versatility. The XP-30 probably will never be remembered for any particular feature but it is one powerful unit for the price.

This unit is rather easy to use out of the box but you really need to consult the manual for some parameters. I've read people complain about the manual and I agree that it isn't the most user-friendly nor well translated one around. However, I've found it quite adequate as quick reference so no complaints there. This was my first Roland unit and I really had no difficulties editing the patches. It tends to get a bit tedious with 2x40 screen and plenty of menus to go through. The bundled software (Sounddiver) is ok but I've never really fancied using it much. Good for storing patches, however.

Poly 64, 16 part multitimbral, velocity and channel aftertouch. Pretty good for a synth in this price range. The keys feel very solid and are extremely responsive. Effects are generally ok for the price with chorus being especially good, imo. No Sequencer, sampler or any other fancy stuff. On the other hand, why not just have a dedicated unit for them. At least I don't want to pay for the stuff I won't be using anyway. Good decision from Roland. 128 User presets won't probably be enough for most of you so you're going to need those fancy 5V sm cards (which are pretty rare at least in Europe as I speak). Luckily you can still sysex them into your computer so it's not _that_ big deal.

XP-30 comes with Session, Orchestral and Techno expansion cards hardwired into the board. At least 2/3 of those are useful for pretty much anybody so I'm not complaining. I've expanded mine with keys of the 60s/70s to round out the selection.

As for the gripes, I'd really have wanted XP-30 to save slider data. The pitch/bend joystick also sucks for modulation since it's basically an on/off -switch. Luckily XP-30 got both sustain and control pedal jacks so it's not a problem (the pedal is handy for controlling rotary effect speed, too). XP-30 got only a single pair of outputs! I'm starting to think this isn't just a way to cut costs. Maybe they're prodding people to invest in their new XV-xxxx series units.

The presets are generally very good even though there are plenty of (in my perspective) useless dance sounds/robo voices/loops.
As far as I'm concerned, Roland has the best instrument patches out of all the "budget" synths. The Orchestral expansion sounds just fabulous even though it's starting to get a tad bit dated. Only brasses seem to be a little weak. Session stereo grands are also rather usable in a mix even though I wouldn't play them solo. Standard electric pianos are so-so but the 60s/70s expansion got some nice Rhodes waveforms. Another patches worthy of note are the acoustic guitars, which sound good and are very usable. Synth stuff, however, is not Roland's forte, imo. There _are_ some good JP8 saws, squares etc but I still had to order Nord Lead 2 for the synth stuff as. In other words, it's possible but don't expect any 'blow my socks off' -sounds from XP-30.

Most patches utilize velocity and aftertouch to a good extent without really going overboard. Effects are also generally adjusted rather carefully even though Roland engineers seemingly tend to go overboard with Reverb and Delay at times. All in all, very good sounds for the price - and you get plenty of them.

XP-30 got a steel cover with plastic ends which _could_ give in if you're unlucky. Other than that, the buttons and keys have taken over two years of beating, coffee baths etc without a failure. The profile is also very slim leaving for few parts to break off. The faders and the pitch/bend stick seem to be the weakest parts as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't punish them too hard. Other than that, I'd certainly gig with this thing without a backup and have done so, too. Just remember to get a flightcase for this thing as with any other instrument and it won't fail you. Also, the OS is _very_ stable. Haven't crashed on me even once not even when dealing with MIDI.

Haven't had the pleasure to deal with them as of yet. No comment.

If lost or stolen I'd certainly consider getting one used. I might also get XP-80 with the appropriate expansion cards but I certainly consider this synth worth every penny, and more. I compared this synth to Alesis QS6.1 and Korg Triton at the time. I went it XP-30 since it offered most features and sounds for the cash at the time, and still does. Certainly recommended as a beginner synth or if you happen to need some good acoustic/orchestral stuff at a very low price. Even if you happen to outgrow the synth engine you can always use it as a controller. I've been playing for about 15 years or so and this is was my second real synth (I was grown up with piano and had Roland FP-x stage pianos before moving on to synths).

I think this is a very intuitive machine. I've seen some folks complain about patch editing, navigation and the manual but come on, even beginners should understand basic concepts: Filters, Envelopes, LFO's, VCA's, Tones/Waves, Mod sources, etc. If you don't know these things, just get a book, or get on the internet. Every synth does the same things, you just have to understand their individual logic of going about it. The function buttons, palette edit and the little mode matrix above the function buttons all make sense. The category feature for patches is also lovely. My only issue is that this thing is so robust but it's hard to get at all the parameters quickly due to the small display area. The workstations and synths on the market these days crush the xp-30 in this respect, with their huge and richly detailed touch screens. No big deal though because the xp-30 holds its own when one takes into account how long it's been out. The only reason I don't rate it higher in Ease of Use is because I haven't been able to get the MIDI implementation going as seamlessly as I would like. I have to refer to the manual a lot as the nitty-gritty MIDI seems to be buried down in several menu levels.

I'm probably going to get an expansion card soon, the 60's and 70's one. Once I get it, I'll feel even more comfortable with the prime position this machine has in my work. I've had it for 2 years and haven't really exploited its full potential. I think for what I do it's hard to outgrow. As for MIDI capabilities, like I said above it has taken some effort to get it going how I want it but with the aftertouch and the sliders, I'm pretty much satisfied (a few knobs that send MIDI data wouldn't hurt but I'm cool). And like others have said, who needs a sequencer for this type of machine? Not me. I haven't fiddled too much with the effects, other than to take something out that I didn't need. That's easy enough to do. I'm not a live player in any respect so the keyboard action is not a factor for me.

I am not a keyboardist like a lot of you. I don't play out. I don't even have any formal training. I'm a sample based composer/producer working mostly in hip-hop, nu-soul and electronic dance music. I have an Ensoniq ASR-X that I use in conjunction with the XP-30. I do all my sequencing, drums and samples on the ASR. I slave the XP-30 to it and use it as a MIDI controller to play bass lines and melodic parts, send MIDI messages to the ASR filters/LFO's/etc. and flesh out my tunes with all the patches I have available in its ROM. It's a good creative idea starter as I'll get a groove going on the ASR and then jam around while flipping through XP-30 patches until I find something that works with the vibe. In this respect, any preset is fair game. I've dug into some of the more esoteric patches (particularly on the techno card) and often found exactly the right pad, bleep, blip or comping element to complete my track. I usually have to do minimal editing to get it to fit right sonically. I know that if I go deeper into the editing of these "weird" sounds I can come up with my own useful and infinite variations. I've had some success recently with getting just a drum track going on the ASR-X and layering all the rest of the parts from XP-30 presets, without even starting with a sample based groove. It helps to use sounds outside of their intended context. The only thing I'm disappointed with are the electric piano sounds. They're so important to my style in fleshing out basic melody parts but if they sound cheesy they don't inspire ideas. Hopefully getting this 60's/70's card will fix that. The brass and woodwinds aren't that hot either. Every time I'm working on something and get a horn craving, I give the XP a shot but always end up sampling. I'd also ask the sound designers at Roland to really get a clue when it comes to "urban" sounds. They're pretty out of touch with the types of timbres used in todays hip-hop/R&B based styles. Oh, and all the loops are stupid and useless (and corny). I don't use the on-board drum sounds either, too clean and stale. I could use the percussion bits to fill in spaces in my beats, but not as primary elements. My score here is based upon the areas that I find lacking that are important to what I do. If I used orchestral stuff more the score would be different. Maybe I will try those since they're so good.

I don't really take mine out of the house but it feels solid and Roland has a good rep for this sort of thing. Still, I'll decline to post a rating based on my lack of personal experience.

Haven't had to call them yet.

I won this from a big music dealer in a contest but around the time I got it, it was retailing for just under $1K. I was about to purchase either the XP-30 or the QS6.1. If I hadn't lucked up, I was leaning towards the Roland anyway and would have paid the market price. Several years after it's release, buying a used one is a steal now because you get so much for a low price. I recommend them often but in my world (hip-hop and the like) only a few people are XP devotees. We're happy devotees though. The expansion options were probably what had me leaning towards the XP. And just the sheer number of patches. I think I can do much more with this thing than I already am. The easy learning curve might have facilitated laziness. This is my first REAL synth (not counting toy yamaha/casio keyboards) and I don't know if and when I'll need another one. If anything, I'd probably increase my available palette of sounds by going with software like Reason. I don't see myself having an entire room of keyboards and modules though. My XP-30/ASR-X team makes a lot happen on their own. If there were anything I wish it could do, that would be sending MIDI messages from the function buttons. It would really help with jamming as I could solo and mute sequencer tracks from the face of the XP-30. Maybe it can do that already but I haven't found that part in the manual yet. Small complaint.

Not too hard if you read the manual. User interface is logical.

This synth has tons of features. ITs great to have the storage card too however the type of card it uses is an obsolete older type 5v smartmedia card. Regular readily available 3.3v smartmedia will not work at all, so you have to hunt down the 5v cards NOW before they are gone forever. You can still find them on eBay but probably not for too much longer. That is the only place to get them and when they are gone, that's it. the old 5v smartmedia cards have been out of production since 1999. So you might want to get right on it and GET SOME CARDs NOW!!
This board has a lot of features for the price they sell for now, so you really cant go wrong as long with this as long as you can still get some storage cards for it ;-) AND get some ROM expansion boards for it while your at it. Well worth the money!!

Sounds fantastic. With the expansion ROM boards you can really get some variety going. I love the fact that you can add 3 more sound boards. Way cool. The sounds that Roland has are ALL GOOD!

Roland builds solid

they are ok

This keayboard is such a great value that i would give it a 10 but the smartmedia card issue is a problem. They are hard to find anywhere but eBay and that wont last long either probably. Thats too bad cuz that feature is nice, but if you arent able to find a card, well, you are kinda outa luck. My advice is if you own this machine or are contemplating it, GET the 5v CARDS NOW--dont wait or you will be sorry to find them GONE forever!

The round dial helps to adjust a parameter quickly, the Patch Category Selector helps to find your sound quickly, the wide display helps the readability (they left enough space in the edit menus, setup menus, etc.) And about the manual, there's nothing wrong with that. I found it very good, and was able to find what I searched for.

The most useful features on this synth are the presence of so many, many sounds. That is the main reason I bought it. Also, the synthesizer capability is a main reason. I like to have control over sounds, like to adjust them to my needs, and then store them in a user memory. The possibility of connection a pc with the To Host cable is a fantastic function! Many manufacturers seem to be developing this Keyboard-PC interface function, and I would very much encourage their efforts.
The least useful thing would be the Memory Card; if I play live, I make sure I store my sounds in a user memory, and for all other playing situations I use my computer.
There is actually nothing more I can wish for on this synth... It's so complete!

I think the sound has a professional touch with many elements from the JV-1080 and JV-2080 modules. The sound quality is very good. It has a lot of usable sounds that can be used in all sorts of music styles. The sound responds really good when playing. Many sounds are good usable in writing my songs. Because of their large quantity I often use the Patch Category Finder to quickly find a specific sound. Sounds are very well adjustable. It's a synthesizer ! It has a lot of options to adjust sounds that can be achieved by scrolling through the menus. It is a good thing that they have the assignable sliders to immediately adjust a sound while playing live for example, and it is also possible to save your customed sound in a user memory. All these things are so practical. Really a must in today's versatile music instruments.

The product is made of good material, doesn't feel cheap, has a solid look and feel. They have sliders instead of knobs which in my opinion are better because knobs may easily break off while turning them. Rolands always have been very reliable, and are excellent choices for playing live, at home, or in a studio. It seems this baby will surely last a 15 years if properly handled.

I haven't had to deal with Roland's customer support, so no comment about that. I rate them a 6. Not bad, not good.

I expect to be satisfied at least 5 years with it. For now I can discover the many sounds and fiddle with them. It is a great thing that it can be expanded with 2 expansionboards. A thing that will keep it fun for a long time.
It is a fantastic product to own, not only for it's professional look and feel, but mainly for the endless sea of available sounds.

I bought it used without the manual. I used the help documents from Roland's site (which tell you a few basics), but I've managed to figure it out pretty well. So, for a synth with so many features, I'd have to say it has a pretty easy learning curve.

You know what it's got. 64 voice polyphony, semi-weighted keys, arpeggiator. 3 SR JV cards built in and room for 2 more. Tons of effects, tons of sounds, great midi implementation. Need I say more?

No sequencer, but hey, get a computer if you want to write music. I'd never use a sequencer built-in on a synth. That's so primitive.

OK this is where it gets tricky.

First of all, the painos are bad. The JV pianos are just old by now. The session pianos aren't much better. I may have to spring for the piano expansion unless I can layer some clunky pianos with some flat ones to make a decent patch.

The pianos are either too dull or too clunky and sound like toys. Reminds me of the Korg A1 pianos, but I was able to make a great piano patch out of those so lets hope I can do the same.

You know how awesome the orchestral card is, which is the reason I bought this. I use it for classical compositions mainly.

The techno card isn't as worthless as some say. It has some fun sounds. The sessions card has a lot of junk you'll never use. It should have been called "all the stuff we didn't want to throw on another card" board.

The JV sounds are numerous and pretty good. I don't really use many of them, but they still sound nice even by today's standards.

The keyboard plays good too. I just came off of a QS 6.2 which plays like SHIT. Worst keyboard ever in terms of action. I love the keys on this thing. They're semi-weighted, which basically means it feels like a piano...except not =D

Also, I should point out that the piano soudns on the QS 6.2 blow this away. They're some of the better pianos you'll find on a budget synth.

It's a Roland and it's not gonna break on me.

Haven't had to deal with them, so I have no idea!

I wouldn't pay full price for this synth ($1000). I only paid half, and I'm happy with it because of that.

It DOES sound great. The pianos are the only weakness (as in most synths except Yamahas...go figure). However, everything else is fantastic.

Ease of use? Maybe if you've programmed synths all your life! If you are a beginner, stay away! That is unless all you are concerned about is using presets. Go ahead, beginner. Get the manual and see if you can do a simple thing like split the keyboard into three sections with different sounds with different levels. You better allow an entire afternoon or more. ROLAND - YOU SUCK!!!

Polyphony is overstated at 64 voices. Any good sound uses up too many of them. 32 voices is more realistic.

If you can't find a sound you like among 2,000, you are too picky. Only major limitation is the organ sounds. The best one is nowhere near as good as the one on an old DX-7.

So far, reliable. However, make sure your rig is stable. If the keyboard starts to rock or bounce, it does funny things: like change octaves, change sounds, etc.

Middle finger up

If it were stolen, the insurance money would buy me a new Yamaha or Korg. I chose the XP-30 because I had some experience playing a JV-80 a few years back. But the sounds in the XP are nowhere near as deep or full. If you are a casual or on-again - off again user, don;t go near this keyboard. Otherwise, you'll be posting something like this sometime in the future.

Ease of use is not bad for Roland, it's actually one of their better designed units for editing, but not for a beginner. You need to know something about synth editing or you'll probably be lost. The manual, as usual for Roland, is lousy. Everything is in there, but not in any logical way and you really have to search sometimes to find what you're looking for.

There's many other reviews for polyphony, effects, etc. I'll just say it stacks up well in these areas.

The patches are mostly really good, it has a lot of stock sounds that Roland doesn't usually put in their synths because they want you to have to buy expansion boards. The thing I think is weak are the pianos, the only usable one for playing live is the PR A:002 Bright Piano, and I still had to make it brighter to stand out in a live mix. Really though, this synth is great for it's variety of sounds, I'm replacing my Korg DW8000 with it, which I've never been able to do before because I couldn't get the same analog type sounds out of anything else. With some creative editing, the XP30 does the trick. And I don't even have the Vintage Synth card installed yet. (It's coming). The Techno expansion, which comes in it, is just wasted space for me though, I haven't found anything very usable there. There's some cool sounding stuff, but I can't imagine ever using it for anything.

Only had it for two weeks, so don't know about reliability yet, but it seems good. I bought it used, and it actually came with a dent in the case but it works fine. I will use it live without backup and hope for the best. I am having one weird issue it. I have a Roland A70 controller plugged into the XP30 and when I change patches on the A70, it mutes the XP30 and I have to reset it with the panic button. It's a drag for live playing, and I hope I can resolve it. Anyone who has a solution, please e-mail me.

Hven't dealt with Roland on this product, but I have on others with mixed results. Sometimes good, somtimes not.

I think there's more bang for the buck here than anything else out there, especially with the expansion capabilities, Roland really has their act together there. The boards are too expensive and too specialized, but still the best thing available for the money. I think I would get another one of these if lost or stolen.

This is gonna be short and sweet. I have never seen a keybaord that claims it has the sounds of another (XV) and sounds so little like it. There were so many disrepancies between this and XV sounds. Did they forget to tranfer the resonance filters or something? The keyboard action is atrocious as well. Why not just get the XV? Being a keyboard player in a legitimate band, I could never in good conscious recommend this to anyone. A good friend told me this was a great board, he must be losing it. If you want all the great sounds from a keybaord, get the Yamaha S90, at least they did it right. Price issues? Save up your money and get something better. Studios are unloading these things as fast as they can because no one uses them and complains about the inferior sounds. After playing this, I can see why. If you ever want to be taken as a seriosu and inteeligent musician, don't ever show up at a tryout, gig, or recording session with an XP 30.

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Everyone and his brother has written a review. I just need to put my $.02 in because this this has become so important to me!

There are a lot of useable patches right out of the gate, especially the pads. Editing patches is very difficult, but according to the manual, can be done. Seriously, I've owned this thing over 2 years, and I just edit small things about patches, because it's a lot of hard work! It'd be nice if I could figure out more of how to do it. The manual is tough reading... which is notable, since it's the same thickness as the one for my TD-8, which reads like a children's story!

I personally like the action a lot on this. This is compared to a Korg N364 which was used in a rig with it, which was like mush. Seriously, I think the keys have a nice snap, and don't feel too plasticky. The aftertouch takes extra force, and you can't inadvertently trigger it (unlike the Korg). There are lots of built-in effects, which I don't touch. I don't ever use reverb or chorus outside of a rack, so if that's on, I turn it off. The patches utilize all sorts of crazy built-in effects, though. I wish I could figure out how to harness them, too! As you have read, it accepts 2 more expansion cards, which I'm DYING to procure. I use the MIDI-in on here like a madman, because I make my bread and butter sequencing on a PC, then having the xp-30 play it back. It's on video game soundtracks. It does not have an onboard sequencer, and even if it did, I wouldn't use it. I prefer the program I'm used to.

The sounds are delicious, I think. At first, I was in love with the orchestral expansion card, and I used that a lot for a chamber orchestra soundtrack to a video game. But I've also written a lot of ambient and jungle music, and it has quite a few inventive pads that were very inspiring. Lately, I've been using it on a driving game soundtrack, and using some totally wicked synth sounds. And it can be deceiving... like if you just play with the patch on its own, you think, "hmm, well, okay." but hearing these sounds in the mix really perks up the ears! Some of these sounds MAKE the song.

I have found it to be very very dependable. I have to carry it every day to work in a gig bag, and there are no signs of road-wear. on stage, it has been very reliable (and has turned a few heads with some bizarre sounds). Knock on wood, absolutely no problems or malfunctions.

If this were lost or stolen, I'd be in big big trouble. When I bought it, I never would have thought I'd use it so damn much! Like I said, I bring it to work with me every day. It paid for itself, and it's still going strong.

I had to write this review because I'm just flabbergasted at how much I depend on it since I've been doing video game music. If I had to get a new keyboard, there's no Yamaha that can hold a candle to it... only a Triton could take its place as far as expansiveness and quality of sounds (and those are just too much money).

When I bought this keyboard it was sort of on a whim. I had extra money, and I'd been using crappy synths up until then, so I'm like, "why not get some better sounds?" I didn't need a built-in sequencer, just lots and lots of sounds and some keys that felt nice to play. There really isn't anything like this out there (eg: a rugged keyboard with a monolithic number of samples right from the factory for a reasonable price).

It certainly makes my job as a composer easier, and the results are pleasing to the ear. It has been my workhorse.

If anyone is good at editing patches, feel free to email me. I can't figure that part out (or I'm sorta too busy).

Owk the manual is very difficult to understand and you have
to be a pro to get it all along... this is one of the worst
manuals i ever get my hands on...

64 polyphony is nice... this synth is fun to play. The expansion abilties are very cool/1500 patches is just awesomeeee!

the sounds are very good.. I guess it works for every type of music around due to the extreme high number of sounds around. then there are these expansion slots to reflects this point.

I would use it on a gig it is reliable

I would buy it again yes... A great synth for almost every type of music (otherwise you'll get your expand to play your type of music)
great synth

The action's keybed is too shallow and there is not enough tension in the springs. There are much better synth actions such as the Korg Triton or the older Roland JV-80 synth actions. You simply cannot play fast bebop piano type licks on this action, it's like playing on feathers.

The presets do not have the clarity, detail or depth of the sound on the Roland JV-80, JV-1080, XP-50 or XP80. It is due to the AD/DA converters. If you select a patch such as "Warm Strings" or "West Coast" with all the effects off and compare it to the same patches in the other Rolands I listed you will hear the difference.

Customer Support is very hard to access with Roland.

The Manual is not for rookies. You have to be an expert to understand it, and experts do not need manuals. What's the point Roland?
It's is not necesarily difficult to use, but it's hard work. The buttons has too many functions. Editing a performance could have bin easy'er. If you whan't to edit a sound, please use the Sound driver, you might get a sound you allready have.

When I edit a patch, and store it in the user memory and choose it in a performance mode, it changes to the values in the Perfomance mode. And I have to do it all over again.

64 voice, 61 keys, 16 part multitimbral, is all good. The Keyboard are nice to touch. Many effects, but if you use distortion, all sounds just get alike. Two expansionslots for JV expansion boards is a very big plus. You can fill this thing with over 2000 patches. The touch sensitive keyboard and the sliders trancieve MIDI. No onboard sequenser, I like the computer.A bigger screen would help.

I must say that, there are many sounds. Greek Power is one of the most wonderfull patch, I've ever heard. And that's it. All the other patches are semi rated. It helped to oppgrade mine with Vintage synth. And I'm very happy with it. This synth is good for Rock Classical and Dance. The sound's would be great to a 80's Pop music style music. You can make good music with this thing.

I'm using a Midisport Midi interface 4x4 box. When I start the computer with the XP-30 turned on and connected, it hangs. I have to reboot the synth. Otherwise, no problemo.

Support? Where? Never heard of. Don'y need it either.

If I've lost it. I would buy a VA synth like, Novation Supernova II, Access Virus, Clavia Nord Lead, Waldorf. The roland was worth the money. Much for less. I've played it for a year. I own midi interface 4x4 box, a home built computer with lot's of softsynths and I't goes well with the XP-30.

I love the sound, I hate to use it.

I choose this synth because it was cheap, looked great, and got alot of sounds.

I wish it had alot more buttons instead of fiew with many functions.

Sorry for my english.
I think is easy to use, not very easy, just easy.
You should be able to use it quickly with a sequencer and a "first sight" check to (at?) the manual.
You should definitly use a patch editor, not because its is hard to do it directly in the keyboard, It's easier to play and tweak the sounds when you are not experienced with sound parameters. I use the menues now, and basicaly, I use the patch editor as a memory expansion and backup tool.
I ussually prefer not to use the manual until a problem arrives, but the only problems i had, were limitations. Manuals (in general) don't tell you limitations explicity. Mine Roland came with an english manual, and the shop where i bought it, gave me an spanish one (xerox copies). But translations use to be confusing...

Polyphony could be larger, in order to use all the deep sounds you can use get, but musically, you dont need to use all the fat sounds at the same time. :-)
And thats the only thing i like to upgrade.
FX are very good, but i would like to have another multifx channel.
It doesn't have a sequencer. But I already had a pc, and thas all I needed. I use it to make demos, and I haven't found anything that can not be done by MIDI. Except turning on and off lights :-)

A very good thing, that make me buy this instrument, were the assignable (?) slide controlers, they are four and glorious.

You have a LOT of patches, sometimes you may think some of them are very similar (the techno collection especially)... and sometimes is true... all of them have a roland signature. you may like it or not. Listen them and taste it before.
There are a lot a drum kits and they are all ok. Piano, strings and guitars sounds unbeliable good. I dont like brasses in general, I mean the actual instrument, therefore i dont like the synth version neither, because they are realistic...
Velocity and aftertouch works fine, but sometimes you may like to turnoff aftertouch, of course you can adjust de "deepness" of aftertouch.
I play rock and I made some clasical/new age experiments, and I am happy with results. If I were a DJ, I should use another tool, i think.

It doesn't weigth too much but its a hard thing.
I don't like to carry to everywhere.
I dont need a backup.

If i lost it, i will cry a lot, when i bought, U$S1700 were 1700 pesos, now currency... U$S1700 are $5610 and i win pesos. But definitly, i would buy the same keyborad.
I bought this keayboard in 2000, and thas all i need. I'm an IT technician since i remember (i had a c64 when i was a child and i had a dream :-) ) and I play keaboards since 1990, and fusion between those two things was only completelly made with the XP30. I had a CT670 casio (child thing) and a piano. I used a Korg, and I prefer roland sounds. But its just my preference.

(The software version hasn't changed since the release of the product, AFAIK.)

Before I mention anything else about Ease of Use, realise that this _is_ a synthesiser - which means that you can change just about every single nuance of every sound.

I've had my XP-30 for exactly one week and I love it. The first night I had it I was determined to get to a stage where the sounds I wanted were being produced by the board. It took about 3 hours, the last of which was very frustrating. The menu system just takes time to understand... as does the Roland Performance/Patch methodology and everything that goes with it. Then everything suddenly "clicked", and I could modify patches, adjust LFOs, TVFs and TVAs and store my new settings.

The manual should be regarded as a reference only. It is not conducive to a cover-to-cover reading. I also felt that it described WHAT could be changed/edited but not WHY one would need to change it. For example, it would describe how to change the timings of a TVF while omitting why a TVF exists.

For me it was important to use the machine for some hours. I find that I got most benefit from simple experimentation. After I mucked around for some hours I reset the unit back to Factory Defaults and then started over for real. It's not too hard to use the menus and buttons, which are well laid out.

The included OEM SoundDiver patch editor is not much better than just editing on the board... I tried to use it at the outset; however, it also uses the terminology of Performance/Patch etc., so it was clumsy and added an unnecessary extra layer of abstraction.

64 Voice polyphony with 4 tones per patch, and 16 patches per performance... Beware! The "St.Concert" patch on the built-in Session expansion uses all 4 tones, thus potentially using 4 voices at once. If each note uses 4 voices, then the max polyphony is 16, which leaves little room for layering, etc. To test this I added XP-A:001 "St.Concert" from the Session board (4 simultaneous voices) to a Performance and then layered PR-C:059 "Warmth" (2 simultaneous voices) in part 2 of the same Performance. I did notice dropouts.

That said, the unit handles dropout very nicely. All the piano patches are set to drop the softest note first, not the oldest - this makes for very realistic play.

The keyboard action is synth-style, which means you don't get weighted keys, but you do get channel aftertouch. The XP-30 can't do individual note aftertouch, but channel aftertouch is good for adding tremolo to organ sounds, for example. Despite the lack of weighted keys, I have found the piano to be very playable - the velocity sensitivity is well implemented.

There are heaps of effect built in, along with the standard Chorus and Reverb, which are reasonable.

It has three SR-JV80 expansion boards built in... Session, Orchestral and Techno. Apparently Roland realised that the XP-30 would sell better if they included the expansion sounds which should have been stock standard. By that I mean Session's "St.Concert" and "LA Session", and Orchestral's "Warm Violins". This was a major influencing factor in my decision to by the XP-30. It can take two extra boards... because I'm heavily into keyboards and organs, I'd probably like to get Keyboards of the 60s and 70s, as well as Vintage Synth. It can also take either a 2MB or 4MB SmartMedia card as extra storage and backup for User presets. I think this was an excellent choice of external media, considering the lack of space for a floppy drive. I rely heavily on the time-consuming edits I've saved in the User bank, so this extra level of backup is superb.

It has a standard MIDI implementation: In, Out and Thru. Most of the parameters for MIDI Tx and Rx can be configured. It can receive note aftertouch from an external sequencer despite the limitation of channel aftertouch from the XP-30's keyboard. The main obstacle to understanding Roland's MIDI is realising that each Part in a Performance maps to a MIDI channel. It's pretty easy after that.

There is no sequencer built in. Perhaps this is the only thing I dislike now that I own this board. On the other hand, the included expansion boards make up for the extra cost (~$1500 Australian) which would have been required had I bought an XP-50.

I do two main types of playing. One is live at my church, with a contemporary-style band. The other is some personal home recording. For the live stuff, where the guitars and drums are the more prominent instrument, I was surprised (pleasantly) to find that the PR-A:001 "64voicePiano" fits better in the mix than the Session board's "St.Concert". I think the "64voicePiano" is quite bright enough compared to the realistic "St.Concert", which negates the use of PR-A:002 "BrightPiano" somewhat.

My first task in building my own User library was layering Pianos with Pads and Strings, and I am very happy with the current result. Many people have said it, but I'll reiterate: the internal and expansion waveforms which Roland has included are excellent building blocks. You must be willing, however, to dive in and modify patches to suit your own needs.

The effects are useable and effective. For live performance I turn off my reverb, but it's excellent for home recording where you don't want to apply it after laying down a track.

I love playing on this board. I can create a sound which I really like and then play out. It is very expressive. The reaction of aftertouch is very detailed: I hooked the XP-30 up to Emagic Logic Audio 5 and watched the aftertouch velocity send as I varied the pressure. It was easy to steadily increase or decrease the pressure, and the sensitivity was excellent.

I believe that the XP-30 could be modified to work well with any kind of music... Rock, Classical, Dance, whatever.

Pianos:
Excellent with the Session board. Short of the new SRX-02 Concert Grand expansion board waveforms, the Session "St.Concert" is, in my opinion, the best sounding acoustic piano in a digital instrument.

Strings:
Excellent, especially from Orchestral expansion.

Pads:
Good and useable. Limited in number, which means detailed editing of patches and filters.

Organs:
Hmm. I would have liked more... <sigh> more expansions needed!

EPs/Rhodes:
Very nice. Some have that characteristic hard edge, while others have the sparkle sound which I like so much. XP-A:007 "LA Session" is wonderful.

Basses:
Good, from what I've tested. I don't use them much.

Brass:
Synthesised brass sounds must always be used in moderation, and they must be incorporated into a mix carefully. I certainly wouldn't use these for soloing!

Rhythm:
Excellent. The Techno expansion has heaps of extra drum sets.

The XP-30 is built with a full metal chassis. The front panel buttons are very tactile and respond with a decisive click. I wouldn't recommend dropping it down a flight of stairs, but short of that it should live to see another gig. Be careful with the pitch bender/mod wheel - it's the only plastic protrusion which might easily be damaged.

It has never frozen, hung or otherwise behaved badly for me.

I only use it without a backup because I used my last penny to buy it. =)

Never talked to Roland, but Allans Music in Adelaide, South Australia were excellent once again. Thanks Paul!

If it were lost or stolen I'd consider buying one again. I might consider buying an XP-50 or XP-80, but only if the price were excellent and I could get the Session and Orchestral expansions at a good price. I'd be lost without those expansion boards. It's well worth the money, when you consider that Session and Orchestral (and Techno, but that's less important to me) still retail in Australia for more than $500 each.

I've been playing for about 10 years, starting on a real piano, not a keyboard. This is my only piece of pro gear... I used to have a Roland EM-10 but I got sick of its bad piano sound and poor quality output.

I love the variety of sounds - there's more than 1500 to choose from. I dislike the lack of an onboard sequencer, but you do get what you pay for. I'll just use my computer for sequencing.

I compared it to Korg's Triton and Trinity, as well as Roland's Fantom. For the price, and for the piano sound on the Session board, I chose the XP-30.

I wish it had more pad sounds, and more organs.

The next things I want... I want a Roland RD-700 Stage Piano to use as a master piano-style controller. Maybe I'll get an XV-2020 module so that I can use the SRX-02 Concert Grand expansion for that superior piano sound. I do want a Korg for their very big synth sounds, as well as getting a bit of a change from Roland. I might even try a Kurzweil PC-something, but all this is far off...

Last word: I'm very happy with this board. It's excellent. If you want good sounds that match your needs, then get an XP-30 and start editing.

First of all, this is my first ever synth-experience. I always worked with software like FT2, ST3 and IT3, wav-editing in Soundforge...before I switched to Cubase VST24 somewhere in the year 2000. Didn't have a clue what MIDI really did untill I found out how the General Midi soundbank of my SBLive! worked. I did this for a year before getting sick of it and walking into a shop for a synthesizer. The XP-30 is my first-ever synth experience. I now have an M-audio Audiophile 2496-card (a baby) and the Midisport 4x4...I found my way in midi.
Now that you know my background, you decide for yourself if you think my info is of any significance.
I use my XP30 as masterkeyboard and as a soundsorce to be triggered by Cubase...so, for studio-owners: try to see the power of the XP30 PER MIDI-CHANNEL! For live-performers: I don't know for sure, but given the possibilities and amount of sounds you buy for your money, the XP-30 can be a beast on stage.
I don't use the software (?).
PRESETS (in general) sounded great to me in the beginning, but now that I had my fingers on more synths, I'm starting to hear a strange behaviour in the higher frequencies of the XP-30...this goes for a lot of the presets.
I'll get into the sound later...in the sound/expression-box below.
Editing the patches is a piece of cake, once you know your way through the device!
The manual is understandable throughout the first few pages...how patches are built etc...that was clear to me. As soon as I arrived at the info for "Professional Use", I ran out of patience quickly and just started trying. I figure they figure everybody just knows it all...
I've reached a point now, where I can find whatever I'm looking for within a minimum amount of pushing buttons. I'm not saying I'm using the Xp-30 to the max!

64-voice polyphony, and in my manual it's clearly stated that this actually means 64 tones...and not 64 patches, cause patches consist of several tones. Shouldn't be a problem, cause I like to record my Midi-track to audio and go ahead with external FX anyway.
It has (besides standard chorus and reverb) around 40 effects inside, and depending on the patch you run through the effect, some are beautiful. If you have external effects, I personally don't see a lot of use for the XP-30 effects...except for creating a certain behaviour on a certain element (a certain midi-channel) in your mix.
There's velocity and aftertouch, you can record you filter etc. movements in your sequencer just by pressing the REC on your sequencer. You get editing software for you computer, but I never used this.
Keyboard action seems fine to me...better than my friend's "expensive as a car" SCHIMMEL-grand piano...
You can put several patches together in a performance (PERFORMANCE MODE) and dedicate every patch to a different channel or bang 'm altogether through your speakers just by playing the keys. Same pussy as always, just a different package..
I write my songs in performance mode, and as soon as the structure is there, I record every channel that breathes the way I like it in PERFORM, and then press PATCH mode and start recording patch per patch for the ones I don't like in perform mode...with some help of my external/software FX and compression etc.
No onboard sequencer as far as I know...

To me, the overall sound is excellent. Especially if you look at the price of this baby. Just select your patch and start using the filters and internal settings to go where you want.
No use in expecting Miles Davis when playing a brass-patch, but in a total mix it can sound acceptabel. At least, if you bother to take your time and listen to real saxophones and try to comprehend how they behave as a result to how they're being played...the velocity-sensitivity does the rest, honestly...this should go for any instrument by the way...a friend of mine tried to play chords on a saxophone-patch and thought it didn't sound realistic. That might be true...but I wonder if he ever heard chords on a real sax...
One tip for the people saying that for instance the brass-family sounds like poop: Experiment more...cause there's more inside this baby then meets the eye...and that's where her power is. Roland gives you realistic guitars, pianos, brass etc...but you're not gonna imitate an instrument if you play the patch like you would play any other KEYBOARD or SYNTH or WHATEVER-sound...but hey, I'm no keyboard-player, I'm just obsessed by music and captured by sound!
What I found out about Roland-products is this: They give you something to start with, and that something might sound superb or it might sound shitty...but they also give you A LOT TO GO WITH...to make something else out of it. And depending on your own creativity & understanding of the machine, there's a whole world of possibilities at your disposal.
The XP-30 is suitable for a lot of styles, old or new, from pop to dance, film-music...whatever. Cause you get so many sounds for your money and a lot of possibilities to change the sounds into something different.
The expandansion-cards add more styles to the list. I make what I call "Underground-round-the-world-Pop" for all kinds of instrumentalists & vocalists (rappers, male and female singers) and there's useable sounds on the XP-30 for EVERY track, for EVERY artist that comes along.
Just play around in Perform mode...use the same patch simultanouesly in different settings (transpose 1 of them up, 1 down etc), put a suitable patch (or more) alongside this, and you'll get a patch in Roseanne Barr-mode. Nothing new to a lot of you for sure...but I've created sounds with the Xp-30 that honestly made people take all their words about this machine back. Mostly people from the lucky few that can afford the "best of the best" ... funny how people judged this machine before ever hearing or feeling it.

Reliable. So Far. Only problem I ever had was the second day that I had my MIDISPORT 4x4 connected. The screen of the XP30 lit up and that's it...no text...nothing but that orange light. It made me scared because I had to finish a track for 2 beautiful lady vocalists to take to the studio the next day. I unplugged the Midisport and installed it all over again and that's it. Everything was back to normal.
So the question is: Was it the XP-30 or the Midisport...or perhaps the enormous amount of That Famous Dutch Smoke produced during the night before that made my machines act "differently"?
I would use it on a gig without a backup, because I would be too busy playing the drums during this gig...our keyboard player uses it together with his own stuff and my EA-1 and AKAI-S2000, hooked up to the Oxygen-keyboard. At least, as soon as we find a keyboard-player with experimental balls that is...

Only experience I ever had was that the specific product-specialist would be back from a meeting in a few minutes...when I called back they told me he was out the whole day (?), but I got reach of him the next day and he cleared my problem in notime...so no complaints here.

If it were lost or stolen, I would definetely buy another one, cause otherwise I would have to find a girl to kiss goodnight everynight...and my XP-30 makes much better sounds...and also doesn't do my laundry.
No, serious: I would check the market for what's out there, but there is a chance that I would buy an Xp30 again.
I don't really play keys, but I have it for around 15 months now. I've been making computer-related music for 6 years now.
Besides the enormous amount of VST instruments and other plug-ins, I have a Spirt F1-mixer, Absolute Zero monitors, Samson Servo 170 studio-amp, Akai S2000 sampler, Samson S-com plus compressor, Digitech 100s-effectsprocessor, Korg EA-1, Rode NT1 stuido condenser mic with a stand, shockmount and popkiller, a Shure SM58, a bosnian handmade acoustic guitar, some percussion, a hughe didgeridoo :-) , a kick-ass Pearl drumkit with kick-ass cymbals, a very special deep maple wood snare that bangs like hell, and some more...hardware, software, electric, acoustic, analogue etc.
I love the versatility of the XP-30. So many sounds, so many possibilities inside, for such a rate. I had also tried the Roland RS5, but went for the XP-30 because of the Barbie-feel & toy-look of the RS5, and the amount of patches the xp-30 offers for the supplement.
I wished it had more outputs and the possibility to have more patches in perform mode go through separate effects, instead of the whole performance through the same effect...that would make my productivity rise up...but I'm saving up money for some more expensive technology!
I think we can't complain for this rate...
It helps me make music and it's fun to jam with...just use the power of equalizing when using it together with others and use the possibilities of your total set-up if it doesn't sound right as a preset...let's be honest: who wants to use recognisable presets anyway?
Good Job Roland...can't wait to have the 5050 next to the Yamaha RS7000 and the Acces Virus...hmmmm...is it a bird, is it a plane...nope...it's my producivity taking a flight.

Feel free to contact me for whatever reason!

Greetings to all from Rotterdam, Holland

Well... As soon as you learn were everything is it is rather easy. I don't like small displays that much and this one has. But there are a lot of buttons and a good explanation chart just below the display describing where to find everything. A + for that.

64 voices is all you need. Kurzweils K2500 only has 48 and Korg Triton I think have 62 or perhaps only 60. About 40 different effects and I say about since half of them is a mix between the other 20... But that is ok since you can apply one effect to each sound (counting out the chorus and reverb. In my oppinion the filters suck but I don't use them that much anyways.

This is the strong point here. With the Session, Orchestral and techno collection you have not only GREAT presets you have a lot to work with. Considering the rest of the on-board sample sounds you can use all the patches avaible from Xp-series and JV-series. Just download from internet and sysex em into you synth. In my oppinion you have more use of this than of a triton (if youre not using the sampler that is).

I have had problem one time and that was that the memory was damaged somehow. I had to take factory reset and all my user sounds vanished. Always keep you pathces saved into your pc. But that on the other hand was once during a 3 year period so don't worry too much about it.

Never dealt with them.

For this price I don't think you can get anything better. If you are buying your first synth and still are a bit of a newbie this IS what you should go for. I have played it for a few years now and I still love it. There is a great PC software which you can use to edit your sounds, that way it'll become easier than anything. ChangeIt it is called. Download it and you'll have GREAT possibilities with this cheap and powerfull machine.

I find the XP-30 quite easy to use. The menu is a bit fiddly, but some patience and logical thinking soon gets you where you want to go. Patch editing isn't too difficult, but then again I'm quite adept at fiddling with buttons. The manual isn't difficult to understand, but make sure you read it all the way through!

I don't really know what the polyphony is to tell you the truth! All i know is that I've never had any dropouts.
The effects are alright, but leave something to be desired. The stereo delay is a bit fiddly and triple and quadruple tap delays aren't really useful. The expansion capabilities are useful; i haven't got any other expansion cards but the sheer number of tones and preset sounds is worth mentioning. But players looking for a 'base' keyboard might do better to consider something else.

Some of the instruments are very realistic, but a few are not. Most are useful, but as with many keyboards you get the "hey look at me" pads and sounds which are just silly. But changing sounds is not difficult.
Expressiveness is something of an issue, when playing piano sounds one might do better with another model. Actual sounds are sufficient, but if you're looking that extra 'oomph' for live playing you'd need another keyboard.

I do use this at a gig without backup simply because it's the only keyboard i have! But one BIG issue with reliability is the modulation wheel. NOT the pitch wheel, but the modulation part of the pitch wheel. It's the regular Roland one where you push the pitch wheel up to turn on modulation. This has broken on my XP30 and i have had many friends who have had the same problem. If i want to change modulation now i have to use a footswitch or assign it to one of the "palette" controllers. Otherwise it is quite reliable, but I am giving it a "5" for reliability primarily based on the flimsy modulation wheel.

If this were lost or stolen I would not rush to get another. That's not to say that I would not get one, but its role is not pivotal enough to warrant me getting a duplicate. I got this keyboard pretty much primarily for the sounds, the sheer number but as for live playing, it's not as impressive. I would recommend this more for the studio where one needs a wide variety of sounds.

I purchased my XP-30 used without a manual, and I've figured out how to do everything I need to on my own. I've heard numerous complaints about the manual, but once you get the hang of the system, it's not too hard to figure stuff out yourself.

As a rule, presets on synths or effects boxes usually suck. The presets on the XP-30 are surprisingly good (no overblown effects and such to cheezy up the sound). For my purposes, I rarely need to make my own patches, because there's such a multitude of presets and a good 80-90% of them are actually good enough to use.

However, I can't give this keyboard a top rating for ease just because the menus, while manageable, could be much easier to navigate (a larger screen would help significantly).

Every time I go digging through menus I turn up another interesting feature that reveals just how deep this synth goes. TO be quite honest, I feel I've barely scratched the surface of what this keyboard is capable of.

The 64-note polyphony has been more than enough for me (although running a complex MIDI through this could theoretically use up all the voices pretty quickly).

Of course, it's got velocity sensitivity and aftertouch which can be assigned to one of many different effects...on some of the synth lead presets, for instance, aftertouch causes the note to quickly bend up a full octave for an expressive squealing sound.

The lack of an on-board sequencer bothered me for a short time until I bought a joystick-to-MIDI cable and sequenced everything through my PC (it's probably easier this way anyhow).

I primarily use this keyboard to build backing tracks for rock songs (generally I use bass, drums, piano, and strings...I always use real guitars, though). For that purpose, this synth's well-rounded sound set works great. I'd imagine it could be used well for electronic music as well, although a good deal of the Techno expansion is wasted on cheesy loops, when I'd have preferred more vintage synths.

There's a bit of tinniness on the high notes (to be expected from wave-based synths), but the low end is wonderfully fat and full.

Although a few instruments (guitar, sax, etc.) still can't live up to the real thing, the majority of the sounds on this keyboard are outstanding, and the sheer number of presets (1,000+) more than makes up for the few lame sounds.

I don't foresee ever using this in a live situation (I don't have a band, and if I did, I'd be playing guitar), but it's definitely sturdy enough to handle live playing.

The furthest I've dealt with Roland was visiting their web page looking for help on getting MIDI connections working. The web page was sorely lacking, but I suppose they'd expect me to own a manual.

My view may be slightly biased because I got this keyboard in great condition for less than half what the local music store was selling it for, but I just absolutely love this synth. I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great entry-level synth. I could go on, but I'll just leave it at that--I'd purchase another one in a heartbeat if something happened to it.

I found this synth relatively easy to get going on. I was a little put off by the manual. It is far too simplistic in the basics sections and overly difficult to understand in other areas. I get the feeling the writers envisioned two types of people buying this synth: Beginners who will never change the presets, and advanced users who know all about synthesis. Unfortunately, I just happen to be in the middle of that equation. Fortunately, I haven't had to venture into the wilds of editing patches much because I've found most of the sounds I wanted in the presets. Editing software is included but I haven't had the time to figure that out either.

I like the keyboard feel a lot. I wish it had separate pitch and modulation wheels but the joystick works fine. The SmartMedia card is pretty cool. I've downloaded Roland's factory patches and have them saved on the memory card for quick uploads at anytime without having to use a computer/sequencer to change the user banks. The 2mb card has room for hundreds of user edited sounds. If you want more sounds you can buy any of the additional expansion cards Roland sells. It is very easy to find the type of sound you want and the keyboard functions are well-layed out and easy to understand. Buttons have a nice feel and light up pretty when accessed. Lots and lots of sounds to choose from! I wish the built-in Techno board was replaceable. But then, I'm sure someone else wishes the Orchestral board was replaceable.

I haven't played a synthesizer in over 15 years and was pretty surprised by the realism of a lot of these sounds. Plenty of pianos to choose from that I like, A lot of strings, solo brass, flutes, and woodwinds are pretty good. I don't care for the saxes, but then I used to play Tenor so I'm probably pretty biased in that area. I think some of the acoustic guitars are great but I haven't found a distortion guitar sound I can use yet (again, I'm just using presets, I'm not editing sounds). I think this synth is tailored to any type of music. There are a lot of sounds I will never use but it has so many, I don't feel short-changed at all. I like the sounds alot!

Seems pretty reliable to me. I use it in a home studio and never tour so ask someone else if it is rugged for touring. I think it would be, assuming you carry it in a sturdy case and don't throw it around. I haven't had any problems and don't expect any so I have to give it a 10.

I haven't dealt with Roland on any issues. Their website is okay and I did get some free sound patches there. However, they should have their manuals online like Korg does... oh wait, maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea (see above). They get a 10 since the unit is still working and I haven't had any dealings with them.

I considered a cheaper alternative for the longest time (Roland RS-5)but eventually went with the XP-30 because of it's expansion capabilities. The sounds are good if you want realistic sounding instruments. I bought a Korg MS-2000R to fulfill my analog-sounding-dial-manipulating desires. I used to have a Moog Rogue and I just couldn't get that sound out of the Roland. That's not to say it isn't in the unit somewhere, I just couldn't find it. The Korg also gives me on-the-fly sound manipulation that "I" can't get with the Roland (I think the slider controls are a joke, plus they're very limited). Try to envision what type of sound you want before you spend your hard-earned cash. Not all synthesizers sound alike! I'm a for-fun songwriter and the Roland XP-30 synth sounds very good to my ears. I get ideas when I bounce through the presets and since there are a lot of presets, I get a lot of ideas. I wasn't sure about spending double what I budgeted for, but for the number of sounds you get for your money, the XP-30 came out well ahead of everything else. I'm very happy with my purchase.

This thing has so many sounds its not even funny and a great number of them are eminently usable, and often inspiring. There's a reason so many music professionals have jv/xp instruments in their arsenals, and getting this many sounds of this quality for the price of this board is insane. I personally haven't used the manual much, but the good news is, you can often get by without it. The layout of the front panel is pretty intutive, and I have been able to make quick changes to midi settings, fx settings, and minor tweaks to a patch without even cracking the manual ... same goes for using the arpegiator .. all the basic functions are right there at the push of a couple buttons.

Keyboard action is very solid for a synth-type action. I also played an xp-10 before buying xp-30 and found the xp-10 to be very cheap feeling and "clacky" (great word huh?). I would be very surprised if the 30's keyboard was not a higher quality keyboard than used on the 10 ... Built in effects are numerous and useful. Accepts 2 xpansion cards ... I've got the keyboards of the 60's and 70's which is great for B3 sounds, electric pianos, and the like. No on board sequencer, but a good arpegiator.

See above. Of course, not all of the sounds are awe-inspiring, but many are superb. I personally have found many traditional instrument sounds to my liking (keyboards, especially electric ones such as ep's and clav's, guitars, and strings, in particular). Nice pads and synth sounds and excellent synth basses (especially on the included expansion cards). The sounds on the techno expansion card are fun to play with but I can't imagine using many of the loops in an actual song (since people would know you just pushed a key on your roland keyboard .. not very original!). The acoustic pianos, even on the session board, imho, stink, but this is a generalist board, so I don't take off too many points for that. I'd say this board would work well for any type of music. The effects are good. It reacts well to playing, except that I don't like the mod funciton on the roland joystic and had to buy a pedal to do that.

seems solid enought to me, although I've only had mine a few months. I've carted it around a bit though, and had no trouble with it.

I'd absolutely replace this board. It complements my other equipment well (primarily a Yamaha S-80 and emu proteus 2k module) and makes both a good sound source for sequencing/recording with PC and a good second set of keys for playing (along with S-80 which is main axe). Also looked at xp-10 (yuk ... would definitely shell out the extra bucks for the xp-30) and read up on (but didn't play)Kork N5D (this got the nod due to expansion options).

Well, that depends on how experienced you already are with MIDI and synthesizers. Setting it up for multitimbral use with a sequencer was a bit confusing at first, but after hunting throught the manual I finally figured it out. Wading through the menus and editing sounds is a bit hard at first, but once you figure it out, it's all right.

64 note polyphony, 61 note keyboard (pretty good synth-action feel, IMO), aftertouch. The joystick (for pitch bend and modulation) sucks for modulation as it doesn't move very far. It's ok for pitch bends, though. The four sliders are great. You can assign any MIDI controller to them, or use them as individual tone volume sliders. These are great for live playing or when sequencing. The XP-30 makes a great MIDI sequencing synth. You can edit any of the patches while sequencing in performance mode. One great feature is the ability to transmit just about any change made on the synth to your sequencer as sysex data. For example, supppose you want to change an effect midway through the song, just manually change it on the synth at the right time and it's recorded. Or you want to change the filter for a patch before the chorus begins? Just change it at the right time while your sequencer is recording and it's done.
Effects aren't too good or numerous. There is global reverb and chorus, and one extra effect to use. Kind of skimpy.
There are two expansion slots for adding more sounds.

Mostly great sounds. From my limited experience, this is one of the best "meat and potatoes" sample playback synths available. It covers a wide variety of styles, especially due to the built in Session, Orchestral, and Techno cards. I especially appreciated the Orchestral sounds, which while not comparable to good sample CDs, composed a variety of articulations and instruments.

Never had any problems in one and a half years. Unfortunately I am selling it soon for financial reasons.

Never dealt with the company. However, there is a ton of stuff on the internet. More patches, mailing lists, discussion sites, etc.

This is a great synth, especially for the price. I think it is especially good for MIDI sequencing. It doesn't have any exotic or really superb sounds (not unless you do a little tweaking...). It's simply a reliable workhorse that does a little of everything satisfactorily.

PRESETS ARE GREAT! (Given Roland's reputation, I was very surprised.) Why would you even want to modify them? There are occassionally a few sounds i want to change, and the keyboard is simple enough that after reading the manual once, you can do it from memory...

64 polyphony. Keyboard has aftertouch, which is a plus, although sometimes annoying as well.
Effects are alright, haven't edited them that much. Could've been arranged in a more user-friendly fashion. But overall, good.
2 expansion boards, plus session, orchestral, and techno boards already supplied. I don't use the techno board much.. not really into those kinds of sounds. But, with the presets, the session, and orchestral board, you have EVERY REAL SOUND YOU COULD EVER NEED, and five different version of it! seems like a billion different string sounds, tons of great keyboards (harpschicord, WONDERFUL ORGANS), bells, ethnic sounds are awesome, harps, bass, and some choirs.
It's true the piano sounds aren't the best. I write music that's supposed to sound manipulated, so i don't mind putting an effect like chorus or delay on a piano to make it sound better...
I also bought the vocal expansion board for this synth. A great ad on for choirs.

Realistic sounds. Not limited as far as music style goes. I write industrial/gothic/classical so I could use every sound on this keyboard.

This synth is EXCELLENT if you're looking for a wave-based synth to expand your horizons as far as different sounds are concerned. If you want to be able to edit synth sounds or something, buy an analoge style keyboard and don't waste your time with a wave-based synth. I use an ensoniq fizmo and yamaha an1x in addition to this keyboard.

no problems with it. great for a gig because of it's giant sound bank.

Never dealt with them.

Great for the price. I wouldn't pay more than $750 for it used, $950 new. If you're a musician who already has some analog and synthetic sounds under your belt, and you want to expand your sound with real sounding instruments, an xp30 is a great buy. If you want a perfect, all in one synth, buy a Triton or something... I just wanted a bunch of sounds so i bought this one, no regrets.

The presets sound amazing and a great variety of sounds are offered.
Patch editing is relatively easy but for newcomers to the world of technology, forget the manual because it says nothing of interest.

There is 64 polyphony which is normally no-more than required but for some giant orchestral pieces it can be used up. The XP-30 is the best feeling keyboard I have ever played(doesn't give a plasticky feel)
The effects are great, especially in the arpeggio button. It has 3 expansion boards built in (Session,Orchestral,Techno) and there is room for 2 more.It is also compatible with general midi.Unfortunately, there is no on-board sequencer but with an instrument lead connected fron the left mono to the line in on a PC you can sequence using Cubase or other audio software.

All i can say about the instruments is WOW! They are unbelievably realistic and the expansion boards will offer sounds for people interested in all sorts of music. The orchestral board offers amazing strings(especially 001-Warm Violins, 045 String Attack), Brass, woodwind and percussion. This will really suit anyone interested in film music.The Session board contains great stereo sampled pianos and cool saxaphones.Although i am not interested in techno music the board has cool effects.The drum kits offer amazing rock, jazz and techno drums also. There is a great velocity and aftertouch on the keys and instruments.

No problems at all. The solid metal structure will guarantee lifetime use.

Dont know. So far i didnt need any support but from rolands usual dependecy, im sure they are very reliable.

Simply amazing.For #999 there is no better deal for a better quality synth. For anyone interested is buying a synth GET A ROLAND XP-30!
The sounds are very expressive and the ability to edit patches and the amazing quality of every element of this synth makes this a must have for all music composing/performing enthusiasts.

I bought my XP-30 from a shop in Japan in October 2001. According to the sales person, it had been on display in the shop for about a year (I bought an ex-demo to save money). I don't know the software version, and I don't care.

In my previous experience, Roland always provided better manual compared to Yamaha (the manual for the DX synth was simply incomprehesible), so I was taken aback by poor quality of the manual for the XP. A lot of poeple had already commented on this, and it's not because of the translation. The manual even in the original Japanese text sucks.

However, it's very easy to find the patch from the buttons and the dial on the panel and select the sound you want. I particulary like the way Roland has arranged the patches into categories. To me 90% of the presets sounds great. Some of the pianos are extremely good. I could have done without the Techno patches, but that's because I'm not interested in this style of music (my 7 old son likes the sounds however for fooling around with my gear).

I have not yet gone deep into editing patches, but it doesn't seem that complicated. Despite the badly organised manual, I think I'll be able to get around the controls without totally getting lost. Setting up a performance also isn't as difficult as some people make it out to be. BUT, what I can't really figure out is how the effects are structured in a performance. On this point, the manual is totally useless.

A PC based patch / performance editor would help a lot, but the Japanese model isn't shipped with one (Soundiver or whatever you call it). You can buy a PC connection kit as an option, but I didn't get one because it doesn't seem to work on Windows2000 system (or at least it's not being advertised as supporting the OS).

I bought XP-30 because of its keyboard action. Compared to other synths in the similar price range, XP-30 had the best keyboard (for me). Keyboards on Yamaha and Korg synths felt plasticky and very light weight. XP-30's keyboard is weighted slightly and has a good firm action. I think you can also adjust the action by pushing some buttons. This is a feature which you might find in a more expensive synth, but rare in the price category of XP-30.

64-polyphony is good enough. I use the synth for composing on a PC with SONAR. If I run out of polyphony, I'll just record the MIDI data to audio tracks.

Effects are good, not outstanding for sure, but what do you expect from an onboard unit in this class. The only thing about the effects is, as I mentioned before, I can't figure out how the global effects and EFX actually interact in a performance.

Two expansion slots for SV cards and a slot for Smart Cards are more than sufficient for my purpose. XP-30 has a comprehensive MIDI control capability. The unit can be set to a GM mode, so it can be used as a simple tone module for playing back standard MIDI tracks. It's not equipped with an onboard sequencer, but this is actually a merit.

I'm no great judge of sound quality, but to me, most of the presets sounds wonderful. I'm a complete amateur who enjoys composing instrumental rock music at home, so the variety and quality of sounds available in XP-30 are quite sufficient; however, I'm tempted to fill the open expansion slots with some SV cards to get more variation in synth lead and drum sounds.

I had own quite a number of Roland products, but I have never experienced breakdowns or other serious problems with them. In fact, for getting my new XP-30, I had traded in an alpha-JUNO-2 which I bought nearly 15 years ago. OK, so I was using it in a home environment for my hobby, but it was working just fine until the day I traded it in.

I have not had a chance to deal with the company, as their products never failed on me.

If it is stolen today, I will buy it again, as there is no synth on the market presently that can match the value for money you get out of XP-30.

I own or had own quite a number of studio equipment such as outboard effects, sound modules, guitar processors, etc. I shop very carefully, comparing products from several manufacturers. Most of the time I find myself choosing a Roland / Boss product because their product gives you such a good value for money and at affordable prices.

To be honest, I would like to have gotten a Triton, it's got a good keyboard action, I like the patches that sounds bright, a large LCD display for easy editing, the style that looks expensive, etc.; however, it would have cost me twice what I paid for XP-30, and that would have thrown my wife into fits who may have then thrown me out of the house where I could enjoy my music.

XP-30 is certainly not as glitzy as a Triton, but it has all the features I need from a synth, and very importantly, I can afford it without straining my bank account (and relationship with my wife).

I am very happy with XP-30 and what it can do. I don't mind keeping it for the next 15 years. (I can't afford to loose it so quickly anyways.)

Well ive had a couple of other keyboards .. an SY35 Yamaha .. a Roland XP10 & the latest one a Korg N5EX . I thought the N5ex was so simular to the NS5r rackmount .. that blew my mind .. but it wasted so much space. The NS5r was very simular .. but the keyboard on the N5EX i thought just had the edge over it. The piano was much fatter sounding.
People have comented about the arp .. but i recon they are a waste of time. They should knock a few quid off if u dont want it & throw it away.So anyhow i sold the Korg & got a XP30. In my opinion the Roland
is better .. its a much more open & clean sound .. the Korg was a bit soft.If u,ve owned a xp10 or SY35 u should find this easy to use.

poly... err .. seems ok.Keyboard action is a little stiff but ok .. the keys across the range are consistant. Well one thing i found is that thank god Roland have put all the sounds in banks in their groups !!! Its more than Korg did on the N5EX. This is one thing that peed me off.I gave up looking for sounds on the Korg & copied them into the user banks. Now its a doddle using the Roland .. especially if u are using a midi set up as i am. I can tell u its arranged more like the Yamaha.The midi is easy to set up .. if u are used to midi .. Midi always is a BIG pain anyway. Why all manufactures use their own way of setting it up ill never know. It isnt std. Getting bank messages to set yuor sounds up are easy.I noticed in some midi files where people use rackmounts with breath controllers & such stuff it plays havoc with your set up. GM is another pain.

Well ive only just got the XP30 so its early days .. but so far there are loads of nice fat bass sounds .. a selection of pianos ( which is wot i really was after ) the pads aint too bad but nothing maches my E-mu for those analoge noises .. oh and the E-mu has brilliant hammond sounds too .. i must say i did notice the organs were a little light .. simular to the ones on the XP10 !! mmm. I dont like brass full stop. The drums are simular to every other drum machine ive ever heard .. but some new pops & farts make them different.Shame u cant shift another kit into another midi chnl like i could on my Yamaha / Korg & Roland XP10 !!!! i cant believe this.
Thank god ive got the Koeg NS5R rack for my drums.

no idea yet

errr ... so far so good

too early to say .. but then .. why does anybody buy a new keyboard ??
Its just a new toy ... well it is aint it ? It looks just like my old keyboard .. but sounds ??? so why did i buy it ??

Preset sounds are OK, but most sound a little flat and dull. If you have hours to spend investigating the simplest tasks, such as splitting the keyboard, more power to you. Otherwise, be prepared to be completely dumbfounded at times. The manual is a joke. Phrases such as PERFORM/COMMON/PERFORM/COMMON appear suddenly without explanation. Don't bother looking for one. I am really frustrated. Forget the 2000 sounds. Without more basic info for the less than experienced user, what's the use. I'd never buy another one. I hope I can find someone to take this off my hands for a reasonable price.

64 note polyphony? More like 16. Any reasonable sound requires too many tones. Effects are mundane. Nothing special. And of course they're not easy to use. Expansion modules are great. More sounds that are hard to manipulate. Midi capapility is standard for a keyboard of its price range. No sequencer. Its a good thing. Because Roland would never give you enough info to be able to use it anyway.

I played a JV-80 before, so I thought I knew what kind of sounds I'd be getting. But these are somehow muted and unexpressive.

Seems dependable.

Just try. You'll see. I'll never buy another Roland as long as I live.

I'd be thrilled if somebody stole it so I could file a claim and go get something I could really use. I used to have a Yamaha, and I could kick myself for switching to Roland.

If you have never used a Roland JV or XP keyboard before, it is a bit confusing. It is not very user-friendly.

This keyboard features a lot of interesting features.
64 tones polyphony, 16 parts multi-timbral (1 for drums).
A batch of different choruses, reverbs, and 40 types of EFX (one insert)
Lot of sounds (over 1600).
Good keyboard keys.
Great controllers.
2 expansions boards (3 built-in included) for SR-JV series.
No sequencer.
Cool Preview Button for every category (Piano, E. Piano, Mallets...)

Every music can be made with it this keyboard. Orchestral, Pop, Techno, Ambiant, Rock...
Orchestral sounds are great, such as flutes, strings, woodwinds, french horns, oboe, sax (for a keyboard, it is great), techno/pads/fx are great.
piano is very great, choirs are great.
Trumpets, Trombones and other solo brass sucks.
Onboard effect is great for electric guitar, other stereo fx...
a lot of sound is responding to the velocity and aftertouch (especially pads...)

Yeah, lightweight, very good for any gigs.

Don't know. Like any other roland stuff i guess.

It is the best quality/price for roland keyboard up to date.

The good things of this board have already extensively written, so I will tell you my opinion. I bought this board to act as a compliment for my Trinity and I F*CKed myself. I owned an Ensoniq MR-61 and it's another monster from the past. Back to the XP30, the ugly things about this sinth are...

1: The sound quality is good, but the dynamic range is very flat. On a mix, the Trinity's total output (even with the internal eq on flat gain) eats all sounds coming from the XP. Sounds are lifeless, no character at all. Your individual sounds will lost their thin vharacter in multimode. The effects should be able to fix this, but...

2: The effects are a real shame. Master chorus don't add spaciousness to your sound, it simply detunes it. Master reverb sounds passable, but it doesn't even touch the reverbs from the Trinity or Ensoniq units. Both master effects have very few parameters and they are 'magic' settings. In example, the 'Time' parameter for the Reverb (which can be turned into tap delay) ranges from 0-127, in unknown units (no clue of how it translates into seconds or milliseconds). Insert effects are somewhat better, but they lack the detailed parameters I've found on other gear's FX (Ensoniq or Korg). CRAP EFFECTS! Maybe I'm used to the Trinity's advanced FX setup (8 insert, 2 masters, variable routing). At least you can mix the XP's insert FX out with the master effects.

3: DRUMS ARE LIFELESS, FLAT, DULLY and... well, to me, useless. They are boring and you can write only 2 of your own kits to memory, unless you've get one of those expensive SmartMedia cards. I've to admit that I expected better drum programming or samples from Roland.
Because the 99% of the kits' samples are mapped to keyboard with low pass filters, they sound darker than most synths I've heard. Modyfing them (changing the filter to peaking or hi-pass) will take you to use the one of the precious RAM locations for user kits. The Trinity has 12. Mi MR-61 had over 70 ROM kits, built on top of over 700 drum samples. The XP, once again, don't touch them. Some techno and jungle kits are better, but not mind-blowing. One really stupid detail is that there are only 2, yes, only 2 GM drum kits, Standard and Brush. Coming from a manufacturer that created the GM standard, it's simply senseless (but the GM bank is pretty good). If the limited drumkit architecture only allows 2 kits per bank, I would be happy with the Analog and Standard GM kits. I didn't buy it to play GM files, but even cheapo Casio keyboards have the 8 kits...

4: Acoustic pianos sucks. Period. I'll stay with that high criticized Trinity piano.

5: The 'Control Pallete' (AKA realtime control sliders) are effective, but they don't display any value on screen. When used as internal Tone controllers, they are useful, but you can't save the tweaks you've made. If you enter the Edit mode, your tweaks don't are translated into altered tone parameters. Krap. The sliders doesn't have a physical center mark, so you won't ever know if you leaved the sound as it was selected. If you try to use them as MIDI controllers... good luck. Use your imagination to figure out what data was transmitted. At least, you can freely assign any CC number (as well as aftertouch or bend) to the damn sliders. I don't know if the sliders found on XP60 or XP80 suffer from that problem (probably not, they're theoretically pro keyboards)

6: Being a hard fan of Vangelis and Jarre, I expected more from the built-in Techno expansion. But I think is a damn wasted space. As other reviewers said, why didn't roland take that 8 megabytes to put a decent piano sound or at least leave the slot free? Anyway, I'm not going to buy any of those expensive SR-JV80 cards. Why buy top waveforms if the internal DAC converters will make them sound flat and dull?

7: Many preset sounds are actually using up to 4 tones per note. In most cases, that's accomplished to buy more fat sounds (which is a consequence of a very basic filter impleme

my xp-30 is very good.I like it very much.The pre set sounds great except piano sounds.For me I'm a pianist I don't like acoustic piano sound so much.It's kind like a lay back sound compare to my kurzweil
micro piano.So when I play I use piano sounds from kurzweil and other
sounda from xp-30.

Everythings are great.It's very easy to use.I'm a professional musician
in Thailand.I've played many many keyboard (LIVE),and this one is the best to use.

As I said the piano sounds are not my tased.May be other pianist'll agree with me ha ha ha .......It sound unlike real grand piano.Or may be I've to buy a piano card?

No problem man!!!!!!

I live in Chiang Mai, It's quite far from Bangkok.So it's very hard to contact a dealer.

The xp-30 is just great!Thanks to the god.

I bough this thing new for about $800-900.I've been keeping an eye for an used one, but by the time I wanted to buy it,it's already sold. not my luck, I guess.I don't know about the software,but I bought it about 2 months or so, then I guess it's the newer version. the preset sounds great to me. for about 1500 patches available definitely more than enough, well, this is one of the reason I bought this thing anyway. I'm not really a keyboard player, as I guitar for the past 6 years and just learning to play piano for about a year. so I know nothing about programming the patches. I've only been messing around with the preset only,even with that I still discovering new sound that I like (well,1500 patches....hmm) I'm just beginning to explore the editing and stuff recently with the manual, and for me it's fairly easy to navigate trough the menus. the manual itself is adequate. I've read reviews about how bad the translation is, but for me, well I came from Indonesia, and with a 'not so good english' , so I guess that's not a problem too. :)

The polyphony is 64, and really want to know how people can run out of them, maybe some day I will too, but for now it's more than enough. haven't use it for sequencing yet, for live only at the moment. the keys have velocity and aftertouch. It's the first experience with aftertouch,and my,my, what a wonderful thing it is. I don't know about the other keyboards though, maybe all of them made that way, but this one, not only it reacts to pressure, you can also wiggle the keys to get a reaction!! some preset only though, not all of them. It has about 40 effects, but you can't use two or more at a time, that' not a good thing.but the reverb and chorus are independent. expansions? well, it can hold two more of that expansion boards, but for me it can mean more sound to deal with, and I'm already overwhelmed here!!! hehehe, just kidding. seriously, i'm thinking of adding the world expansion board, or the asian board to it, when I can find one cheap, of course. there's a slot for more user memory if you feel like the internal user wasn't enough. I haven't really use the MIDI capabilities, but I've read reviews that among the other XP's this one has the best MIDI capabilities. I'm looking forward to proof that. No on board sequencer, but I own a computer,so I don't really need one. besides, It cuts down the price, or else I couldn't buy this thing. maybe later I'll look for an used external sequencer if I need to play in a gig. It has an updown lever, but no modulation!! it's not fair!! the other XP has one, why can't this one has it too??!!well, i'll just have to rely on that awesome aftertouch then...

Like I said, the patches are a lot, and surprisingly, most off them are great. The sounds that i love are the pads(oohh... so niiiceee...), the strings, the horns and solo trumpets, and (don't kill me for this...)the acoustic guitars!!! unless you want to make guitar strumming,which, with all my respect to keyboard players, are impossible to fake (better play the original thing, besides, who can't learn to strum a guitar?) the guitar sounds are realistic!,well not all of them though,some are cheesy as hell. as for the pianos, well I owned a real one downstairs, so I think the presets are good enough. my favorite piano patch is the compress piano, it has a nice 'old record' feel when you hold the notes. the techno, well, I like the aggresive synth sound there, but I really haven't found the need to use it yet. The basses are good, some of them not fat enough. the rhytm are good too, but for my taste, there's not a single snare sound satisfying to me. overall, this synth is an all arounder with more ambient and more of a new music style in it. for a guy who seems to like something from any kind of music, this is the ticket. on board sound is adequate. the reverb and delays are top, but the distorsion lack that analog feel. just not my taste.

To my knowledge, roland products are built like a tank and are made to be abused. and judging by the what it's made of (really guys, don't fight anymore, let me tell you the truth,IT'S MADE FROM METAL!!except for the sides)

I never had any problems with it, nor that I'm looking forward for it.

For me,being the first synth I ever had, It's a dream!! worth every cent. This thing is the best buy. This thing has the same sound generating capability as the other XP,including the XP80,plus this one is newer,has two expansion boards, and better interface with the computer. I don't play keyboard very well, and usually I play on the middle, so I don't really need XP80's 76 keys. Compared to the N5eX, the closest competitor from korg, XP30 has more sound, expandable, and easier to use. compared to the X5D,well,this one don't have an aftertouch, that alone makes the XP30 a winner to me. IMHO this thing has it all,and more. the best in its class, the best among the XP's,THE BEST,PERIOD.

It took a few weeks to get the hang of the interface, but I'm expecting to be able to . Once gripe: I wish I could specify key ranges using the keys themselves! I do feel that the keyboard can do a lot more than I have the time/patience to set up on it.

It's my first keyboard, but it feels very nice. I compared it to the Yamaha. You've probably heard about the 2 extra expansion ports. It will be a long time before I actually need them, but if I did I would add the piano expansion.

There's just a HUGE number of onboard sounds out of the box, both acoustic instruments and electronic stuff. I've found great bass and a variety of good organs. The keys are quite responsive, the aftertouch is funky.

This keyboard is sturdy. I've gone places with it twice a week all winter and it comes right up. The construction and controls just feel sturdy too. The only thing that could be improved is the sliders and pitch shifter. But I haven't actually had problems with these. They just feel less robust.

Never needed customer support.

This keyboard is my first -- but has turned out to be versatile and fun. If you're looking for a keyboard to do a mix of acoustic and electronic stuff, this handles quite well. It's well worth the money.

Roland definitely has their own distinct style when creating their interface. I've worked with Korg O1/W, X3, and N364's and there was definitely a little reading required to figure out why Roland does thinks like it does. The keyboard has all of its patches seperated into presets A-E, holding about 128 sounds each, plus 150-250 sounds for each of the expansion cards. Then, some of the sounds are doubled in the user area, where owners can overwrite the patches with their favorites. If you play live, it is absolutely necessary to move the patches you plan on using in this user area. Trust me, I tried gigging while switching through the preset banks and then jumping to the expansion cards. I was sweating buckets and looked like a fool! Just imagine, every time you want to switch sounds required a bank switch, the entering the patch number (3 digit), then hitting the enter button!! That's a lot of button pressing for a short period of time. HOWEVER, if you take the time to move the patches you plan on using into the user area, you've eliminated half the work - you can spin the dial, use the increase decrease keys, or again, punch the numbers in followed by the enter key.
The manual gets the job done for explaining patches and how they can be manipulated on the keyboard, and Soundiver is a fantastic computer editor if you are so inclined. BUT, if you plan on sequencing using the performance patches, get ready to find some outside help. Funk and Wagnalls couldn't understand this manual in regards to working with MIDI! Seems to be a common consensus.

I've read the complaints about the polyphony, but as I only play live (no sequencing) and have only ten fingers, I haven't run into any problems. Users new to Roland should be aware of the solo button, which while useful with various orchestral sounds, is incorrectly (not necessarily) activated on many sounds. A lot of bass/synth patches for example. The FX are great, although the drums seem to have a flange that doesn't go away even with the effects turned off? Can someone enlighten me? Expansion? Um, yeah, lots of room! I've installed the country card and wow, a great keyboard gets even better. That has got to be the greatest asset of this keyboard - tired of your sounds? Go get some new ones! In regards to MIDI, there is no on-board sequencer, but that is what your computer is for right? The aftertouch needs to be more sensitive, and the modulation bar only works for some patches. I'm sure it is editable, but it was implemented poorly overall. You can't push the bar forward, but rather just lean on it.

The aftertouch needs to be more sensitive, and the modulation bar only works for some patches. I'm sure it is editable, but it was implemented poorly overall. You can't push the bar forward, but rather just lean on it. The sounds all receive high marks from me - they were a breath of fresh air after playing Korg's all my life. The stereo concert piano in a quiet environment could fool lots of people, I guarantee! Nylon acoustic, squealing organs, strings, synths, clavs, and from my country card - fiddles! The techno sounds are good, but they won't be your bread and butter that's for sure. I do have a complaint with the drums though, like I stated previously their appears to be a flange that won't go away. The dynamic range is considerable, and the FX are nice and thick. But there are some negatives.... The output overall appears to be lower than my Korg X3, which is causing some problems while gigging. And, the synth lead pads are not anywhere as thick as the X3. Brass patches also suffer from this. And while the stereo concert piano sounds fantastic, good luck getting it to cut through the mix while gigging. I had to switch to the 64VoicePiano (which is good in its own right) to get the high-mid/treble cut.

Seems to be sturdy - Heavy, yet small - no problem at all fitting this in a SKB case. Backup? Yeah, my Korg X3 sitting on the top rack of my ultimate stand.

They should be shot for their poor explanation of working with performances and including Soundiver without a detailed manual.

I play in a Shania Twain tribute band that does top 40 as well. I have been using two X3's for 4 years, I know my patches, and I know what I need in regards to sound quality and ease of use. the XP-30 has delivered. It fills in the gaps of the X3, while the X3 does the same. Definitely worth the money - in fact that is the main selling point. How are you gonna compete with this many sounds with this level of quality for $1000! And then, it is expandable with cards to suit your style of music. It CAN be used for gigging regardless of what you may read, it just requires a little pre-planning and using the user bank. It was either this board or the JV-1010 module, but why spend that much money when for a little more you get the JV-1010, and a set of keys, plus more sounds and expandability. If you are thinking about this board, here are some things to consider.
- Is it your one and only keyboard, or used with another? I believe it is the perfect partner board. No sequencer, and lacks a little in some sound areas (but fills the gaps of your other boards too!)
- Is expandablity important to you? My country expansion card brought the keyboard to a whole new level.
- Can you deal with a little patch work - not even editing, but just saving to different bank areas on the keyboard? This thing is NOT ready for use live straight out of the box.
- Do you have more money to spend? Of course, there are more expensive boards, but last time I checked, bands are still making the same range of money they made ten-fifteen years ago.

Please feel free to send questions and comments...

It is kind of a pain at first, but after a lot of exploring, you will get the hang of it.

Plenty of polyphony - 64 notes. Everyone bitches- "I don't have enough notes to run my grand sequencer thingy....blah blah...bullshit." I am a keyboard PLAYER, and I don't ever use a sequencer. I only wish it had more knobs and sliders, and I wish the sliders on the front would actually change the patch (you can't save the slider changes.)

Does great strings; the orchestral sounds are great. It is VERY important you run this board in STEREO through two identical, clean amps. It sounds funny, but in my house I use two Peavey Rage 158 guitar amps with 8" speakers, and they sound awesome. The effects are good, and they can make or break the sounds. The touch is great, and the action is fast, great for crazy lines and trills.

Yea, I guess...as long as I take care of it. I have a big ass Grundorf case for it. Damn, I could run that case over with a truck and it would be fine! It doesn't really mess up or anything, so I would use it without a backup, because I don't have any money to get another one!

I have no idea.

I would get this again, because I need the sounds and patches for my music. I play in a sort of progressive rock meets rap-rock 4 peice. We are very keyboard led. I don't know if I would buy another roland keyboard, because my next would be either an analog for lead sounds or something like that, and the jp-8000 is not QUITE what I need. But this is a perfect all around, comprehensive synth...and if anything, this beast inspires your music making. If you have any questions, you can ask me. I may not know the answer, but we can talk about the synth. I think that the best way to learn synths is to pool knowledge of them from all over, from many people. That is how I learned what I know today.

Roland OS's always seems to confuse me a little. Of course their manuals confuse me a lot more. Why can't Roland figure this out????!!!!

64 voice polyphony, great keyboard action, nice effects. 2 Expansion card slots and a smart card (?) slot for holding extra program data.

Here's why we all buy synths. The sounds on this machine range from good to excellent. I absolutely love the Orchestra I card that comes with it. Beautiful warm strings, great brass. I also own the Orchestral II card and prefer the Orch I card for strings. The Session card is beautiful as well. Nice pianos, drums, guitars, basses. Maybe a little heavy on the synth side (Would have liked to see more vocal, guitar, drums, etc.) I don't like the techno card at all. I don't play this type of music so maybe that's why but I can't stand the fact that Roland uses up precious memory on loops. (They did the same with the Bass and drums card which I also own.) Overall this synth has a ton of sounds and offers plenty of bang for your buck. I actually already own an Xp-80 with 3 expansion cards and added the XP-30 to my set up because it offered so many beautiful sounds for such a reasonable price. (OK I could't afford the Triton!)

Never had a problem with Roland gear over the years.

The tech guys at Roland are too busy to really get a good response. I've had moments where they've been very helpful and others when I might as well been talking to a wall. Plus their manuals really really suck. ROLAND FIGURE THIS OUT!!!!!!!! (Hire the dude from Emu)

If I had the $975 and could do it all over again I probably would buy it again. I should have maybe saved up for the triton but when you get approval from the wife to by a new synth you can't sit around!!!! There isn't much else out there with all these sounds for so little money.

I like most of the presets. I use this keyboard mostly for background synth and orchestral sounds. Editing patches is easy (especially if you've ever used a JV, JD or XP before. The manual is fairly easy to understand.

Polyphony is sort-of 64 note... some sounds can use up to 4 voices per note so it drops considerably. The effects are good and easy to use. It accepts 2 srjv boards (to adsd to the 3 that are built in to it).

The ORCHESTRAL sounds and acoustic instruments are very convincing. The electric guitars are OK... most other sounds go from very good to excellent. I use it for ELP - PINK FLOYD style stuff. It has good aftertouch and velocity sensativity.

I use this keyboard to do most of my song-writing (although I use a 76 note controller with it). I use it everywhere, all the time.

Roland support is usually pretty good... if you can ever get through the "PHONE-MAZE" and actually get to the right person.

If it was stolen I'd replace it as-soon-as the insurance check cleared. I've been playing since 1972. I use this synth along with: a JP-8080 which I use in conjunction with an MC-505, an XP-10 (with a PHATBOY), a JD-990 (with a KNOBBY controller), a JX-305, (2) A-33 76 note controllers, and a Yamaha TG-33. I've expanded it with the ORCHESTRAL II & VINTAGE SYNTH boards. In 2 weeks it will be joined by an XV-88 as well. I love to yank this one out of my rig and sit on the couch and play it with the headphones on.

To check the software version turn off the synth.Hold down the CONTROLLER, -OCT, SESSION buttons and turn the power on.To check the XP-30 version Hold Down the SHIFT and the UNDO/COMPARE buttons together. Thanks to David Green - www.Lilchips.com.

The best!

I love it.

It seems good.

A bit strange in Hungary.

Try it out!

Software v: Don't know. I guess they don't have updates for it, so that's irrelevant.

Ease of use : well, since those greedy engineers there think one can save himself with a 2x40 char display screen, ease of use is brought back to zero. You'll have to overcome way to much submenu's to keep it still funny. A lot of parameters can only be found by just testing (LOCAL OFF - uhm, where was that? - 20 menu's later : oh, THERE :)

This is a so-called preset synth. Roland doesn't want you to meddle with the patches (except for the elements on/off/level and cutoff, reso, attack and decay). Decay's a neat word for 'the other half of the envelope'. Sliding the decay will make the difference between a staccato sound and an extremely long release time (hey, I thought it said DECAY, not RELEASE). A patch editor could do miracles, but the e-magic sounddiver supplied with the XP just... Ehm. Well. It lets my computer crash - over and over again. Roland should write something native for this thing.

The manual? Come on! 'R-O-L-A-N-D'. The clearness and ease of use with their synths and their manuals stopped when they started releasing the digital machines. I didn't read it. I'm familiar with the type (sample + synthesis) plus the 4-element build and the rest is just rock-bottom trial and error. Shift keys come in handy too.

Polyphony : 64. But wait, this is a trick. One patch consists of 1 up to 4 elements, and of course, one element needs one polyphony unit. Means if you want fat orchestral layers, you're in deep problems.

Keyboard action : Plastic Roland synth keys. Still durable, they don't seem to break with loads of aftertouch *hah* but not as sturdy as a Juno's keys. No weighted action, but perfect for quick arpy lines and flashy techno chords.

Built in effects : 2 master (rev + chorus) for all the 16 channels and 1 insert for 1 channel. You can share, however, thus causing the insert (for instance, the distortion) to be put on 2 channels if you have 2 e-guitars.

Concerning the insert effects: I had a Korg N5ex before this one. I loved the Rhodes on that thing (XP default Rhodes is BAD :( but there were only 2 master effects. No insert fx. Meaning if you set one on distortion (for a guitar) you'd have only one effect left for the rest. Luckily, the XP does this better. Effects are about 35 types, only for the insert. The reverb and chorus types have some models (hall, room & stuff) and you can tweak a bit with the delay and detune.

The synched delays are TOP. Though my Yamaha W5 can do 'm better - instantly synched and stupid values down to the millisecond, without making a choice between 420 or 440 ms because there wasn't a 430 or 425. I like the multi-taps - the odd things the pitchshifters can do are worth a small applause too. Take the "Pure Tibet" patch. It's just downright weird...

Expansions : Yup. 2 left for me. I'm thinking of getting the 60's expansion somewhere because of the excellent Rhodes sounds there. The vintage synth sounds also interesting, but I encountered it already in rack form (MVS-1) and that was dreadful enough.

MIDI : the 4 sliders pass data fluently. They seem to be assignable, but I'm to lazy to figure that out.

On-board seq : No. Good thing. Everyone uses Cubase/Logic. Why need an onboard? And you'd need a big screen plus more insert effects..

What comes close to it is the arpeggiator. Too bad it has totally no imagination (up + down, no matter what pattern you choose unless it's "note order". Still better than the AN1X arp - because they call something like Up+Down 1 oct, Up+Down 2 oct, Up+Down 3 oct three separate patterns. I mean, that's nonsense. Octave range should be a parameter.

Instead of what I always thought of digital S&S Roland synths, the quality of the instruments is frightening good. The pads aren't that lush and deep like the Korg N5ex's, but they compensate in clarity and a very good use of effects. The humming voices are stunning, strings are very nice, piano's sound plastic (except for the concert grand).

Since the XP-30 has some expansion boards, I may say the Session is an extremely good allrounder, the Orchestral board with its brass is just beautiful and the Techno board is, well. Obsolete would be the right word.

All sounds come from the mid nineties! Basses imitate Snap's "Rhythm is a dancer"! Gabberhouse is not that alive anymore! And for the rest, they should let the Underworld engineers or Aphex Twin go loose with the samples.

After all, the Techno is still applied big times in a JV-1080 or a 2080 - and sounds of that board get used frequently when the virtual analogs don't provide inspiration anymore.

It works good for a lot of types of music, a good allrounder. However, I can't stop seeing it as a JV-1080 keyboard version.

The sliders do the small miracles. When you hook up a traditional digital synth (no RT controllers) to the XP it'll do subtle things with the sound and the texture. I don't use them that frequently on the XP sounds, most of 'm already contain enough modulation.

The XP doesn't have a real OS. It also lacks bugs - unless you count the overrated resonance (speaker destroying) you get with putting that slider to full. That's just insane. They could've done it with 85%/90% of the reso power. That's also safer for your ears.

For the rest - the XP is not that heavy to carry, provides a lot of easy-searchable instruments as well as a complete recall of what patch you had on last time. I took it on a gig and loved the quick build up, plus the decent power supply.

Never dealt with Roland in person, but from what I hear, they're not that great with it. If there'd be something to repair, I think it'd be the keys.

If it were lost or stolen, I think I'd be pissed off. This is a producer synth. Has good sounds, always something neat to fill up with and a bagload of presets. It hasn't dropped in price seriously, but that could also be because of the stream of not-new products Roland's doing. This was a budget synth, and those insane XV things where you pay way too much for zero innovation, double polyphony and other things you don't need are not worth the costs IMHO.

Other gear: W5, MicroQ, Drumstation, ESI 4000. The XP's doing fine with the W5, the controls do mysterious things with the MicroQ (really really weird things - everytime something different) and for the rest the arpeggiator comes in handy for some drum loops.

Love : easy. switch it on and get lost in the presets
Hate : the d(*#&@ submenu's. Also done in a very illogical way.

Comparison : Korg N5ex. Some of the sounds aren't that great on the XP, but they don't sag when you remove the effecs. And it's got resonance instead of a separate insert effect. I switched from the N5ex to the XP because of the better and more techno sounds, plus it was... I don't know exactly. Less dull could be the correct word. Nicer to tweak with.

Wish : more insert effects. Some ROM upgrade, but that'll never happen.

Helps making music. Yup. See, inspiration gets "triggered" by a certain sound. If you have lots of sounds, you'll have a lot of triggers.

Anything else : this is (as said before) a producer synth. If you want make a lot of music and need something digital in your setup, go ahead.

Latest edition software, I don't even know if Roland ever upgrades their romplers. Editing patches very easy, but the manual sucks.

Polyphony is 64 voice and you can expand with 2 Jv expansion cards. This would bring the total patches to about 2000 patches(give or take). The effects are just ok, nothing to spectacular. O.K. as a controller. No onboard sequencer, but easy to use with computer or akai. T

patches are ok but to do serious electronic arrangements you must edit and use external effects. It would be good for generic pop arrangements, very good. The effects are O.K. but only 1 and its global. Very good with velocity and aftertouch.

Very reliable, no probs here.

Probably no need with this keyboard, except for the patch editor. I don't have to go into that.

If it were lost, and I sold it, would not buy again. However, If your doing straight pop arrangements, or rap, very good buy. I have had an XP-60(better effects & has a sequencer), Nova(better sound and efx), Mpcs, electribes, E-MU sound modules(thinner sound),Triton(I personally don't like the sound), Yamaha's Ex5 and Anx-1(best sound of any romplers period, and Anx is heavenly)

No idea on version.
Presets are surprisingly solid for a board under 1k.
Patch editing is easy, duplo, fun, except their part/parameter split thing gets a little confusing at times.
The manual blows.

Polyphony is dangerous when used as a standalone board programming anything layered. If you want to do techno/trance, and not some weak 1991 BS, you will have problems if this is the only board you are trying to use. Action of keyboard is not weighted, and thats all that matters to me, I use it as a controller. The EFX are pretty crappy, but then again, I'm used to working mostly on the ASR-10. The non-pan delay seems useless, the reverbs are a little tinny, and I found the routing structure to be a little confusing. I have expanded it with drums and bass, w0rd to Marcus Miller. Trying to use this expansion board for actual rock seems dumb, but these patches are fun for tooling around with the sounds like you would on a sampler, ala Koxbox. The DnB card has some decent cymbals to replace the poopy stocks. The fact that it didn't waste developmental cost or retail price on a sequencer was one of the reasons I bought it.

Some are great, some are mad stupid. For instance, the guitars suck, but I guess it takes balls to even put guitars on there since they are probably always gonna suck. But the point is, there are TONS of sounds. You get well over 1 patch per dollar, probably better than any other board. And this is also valuable, if for no other reason than the fact that you can do concentrated composition on one single board (provided you dont hork the polyphony) and then just re-route your tracks (from say Cubase) to another board with more solid sounds. They are definitely compressed, sometimes too much. I was very annoyed by the fact that the drums can't use the filters, without assigning them to another part. I like the bandpass and peaking filters as a whole.

I've dropped it a few times cuz I'm like that and it has fux0red up a little bit here and there...one time it just froze up and had to be rebooted, another time it took a few reboots. W0rd to the panic button, I use that like every 3 seconds. I would most definitely use it on a gig without backup because almost all of my stuff is on DAT. AHSDH jk

I don't even want to know, I have never called them, and their suck is apparently legendary. Suffice to say they dont even have support info in the manual I believe? Or no email address, I cant remember.

I would buy it again because its a great "miscellaneous filler" board. I made the mistake of relying on its sampled basses and synths for a brief experimental period, don't do that, you'll end up sounding dumb. The strings and all that are probably the best I have heard on a board that actually sported decent drums. I have been playing for 20 years. I have an ASR-10, a VirusKB, a Juno 106, an An1x, and too much other aux BS. I love its interface, catalogging, intuitiveness. I hate the polyphony limit. I wish it was USB or digital. It has been very helpful to me. Also, one time I ate an entire box of Cinnamon Altoids in one sitting.

Great for a gig kbd

Great

Great for an all perpouse synth

This is my main point of my review, and also as a reply to the reviewer named N.S. ,in my oppinion i think, with all due respect, you should REALY learn the difference between metal and plastic, the top and lower bodies of the xp-30 ARE made of METAL (aluminium), so if you still dont belive me and that other reviewer that stated the same, i sugest you open yours and look at the inside of the top pannel,or if that doesent convince you pick a key or something metalic and knock on the top panel and listen to the metalic sound,and theh knock on the side panels and listen to the plastic sound, and if you are not convinced yet try putting your hand on top of the top pannel (preferably in a cold day) and then in the side pannels and you will notice that the top panel is alwaays colder than the side panels, thats becouse the top panel IS MADE OF METAL!!!!!!
This synth DOES'T feel cheep to me at all, thind you could use it as a bat to play baseball and still be working!

I would buy it again

Works great with Logic Audio... Go here for the environment patches http://www.lilchips.com/roland/synths/jvxp/patches/30fact.asp. I think the presets sound awesome.... and most everyone who records electronic music uses the JV1080 and it's sounds are included. I haven't tried to edit the sounds and like most everyone else, I couldn't get SoundDriver to work with my Mac... probably and extension conflict though. I thought the manual was okay, but I upgraded to the XP-30 from the XP-10 so I'm not a real good judge... the XP-10 manual is a bad joke.

I haven't heard any drop-outs due to polyphony and I've made some songs with lots of pads and drums, but I don't have the keenest ear. If you use a sequencer, you can get around poly issues by mixing down your different parts to audio files, etc. I love the keyboard action. Much better than the XP-10. I really don't want true piano feel. I write techno music. Love the built in effects. I use the effects as they are... pre-programmed by Roland, although you can edit to your hearts content I believe. You get the Session, Orchestral and Techno and two left for whatever you want. The cards are too pricy though. Aftertouch is pretty cool (never had it before). The sliders for filter's etc are really cool and work great with Logic Audio (your can record your moves to midi). The arp is cool and it also dumps to midi.

I'm not the best judge for audio fidelity, but the instruments sound good to me-- I think the onboard effects really thicken up most sounds-- there are a hell of a lot of sounds to choose from. Some sounds just will never sound like the real instruments I guess. I believe the velocity and aftertouch are adjustable, but I haven't messed with that yet.

I haven't had any problems yet. I'm not a musician so I don't do live shows.

Haven't needed to call them. Hopefully never will.

I'd totally get another one if it were lost or stolen. I think it's worth every penny I paid for it. I don't know that much about other synths, but this one has everything that I need. I have only been playing for about 6 months (I'm not a musician), and don't own much other gear. I will say that if you're thinking about getting a synth for the first time and you want pro quality with and enormous sound set, this is the thing to seriously think about. The XP-10 doesn't really compare to the XP-30. For $500 more (a lot- believe me I know) you get over 1000 more sounds (I think).... no question the better deal. If you want to hear what the XP-30 sounds like, listen to my song "homage" here: http://www.mp3.com/omegaman . I made this song with Logic Audio Silver and the XP-30 & nothing else. Hope my review helps!

Cheers and enjoy!

The version of my XP-30 is 1.0 I think.
There are good and bad presets. There are really tons (too many) strings sounds like violin ensembles etc.
In a general way, I find the acoustic sounds really great. The organs are medium, and there are only few and bad pipe organs sounds.
The synth is very easy to use, thanks to the large buttons. It is easy to modify sounds, even several parts at a time. However, programming the controllers (aftertouch, sliders etc) is very unconvenient, you really have to read the doc to do that.
The manual is good if you are already familiar with synths programming. It does not give too many details on the effect of each parameter on the sound.

Polyphony 64 but in practice I would say 18 as most patches use more than 2 tones.
I like the keyboard action, the keys are long enough. A bad point is that I have a hard time controlling the aftertouch.
Between 0% and 100% aftertouch, there is very little difference in the pressure of the keys so it is hard to master it.
This keyboard has really tons of sounds and you should have enough with the 1040 patches available there !
The effects are good and quite versatile I think.
The MIDI capability is great, although you still have to compute the checksum at the end of SYS-EX that you may want to write yourself.
Otherwize the midi implementation is well documented, although they don't provide all the information about how the synth dumps patches and performances.
The arpeggiator is good but it's a pain in the ass to change its parameters. You can change some of them directly by holding the "arpeggio". But to access the most interesting ones (style), you need to go through menus and submenus.

I am not a real piano player but I like the pianos (especially the Concert Piano on the Session board).
The acoustic sounds are great, but there are not enough oboes, clarinets, and organs (reed and pipe).
The synth does not even enough wave form to create them. They wasted the ROM. Sometimes you have waveforms that you can hardly differenciate, and which difference is only in the filtering, but you could do it yourself with the filter !
I think the synth sounds are bad. You can hardly use the "structures" to combine tones because the ring modulator is really really bad. Do not expect to be able to make things like on a D-serie synth.
Also the synth waves sound like plastic. Hopefully, with the "analog feel" parameter you can try to give them some charm but it is still very limited.
The XP-30 is very unsucessfull in creating fat and metallic sounds (except if you use distortion effects or the "booster").
Actually, it is sample based and the only it does well is sampled instruments.
Forget about the fat synths. Even on the Techno board there are really few of them.
I rate it 6 as I use use synth sounds (not techno) and the XP-30 is not good at this.

I have 5 or 6 Roland devices, some of them from 1987 (D and U expanders), never had a single reliability problem with them.
I blindly trust Roland for that. And the XP-30 case is made of hard plastic. It looks
robust, although it's not heavy.

Never had to deal with them.

I am not gonna sell it because it's a good workhorse for acoustic sounds.
I've beeing owning it since April 2000. I've been playing for 17 years.
The drums are not very powerful although realistic. It lacks a "infinite time" drum roll.
I own a D-50, D-110, U-220, R-5 drum machine.
I owned a E-15 (first keyb) and a CS1x Yamaha (which I sold for because I didn't like the plastic synth sounds)
I love the ease of use of the XP-30. The sounds are sorted by category and it's really easy to find what you're looking for.
I compared it to the Yamaha CS1x. The drums are worse but the acoustic sounds are much better.
Also the CS6x. I did not like the sound of this synth at all (but it looks very pretty). If you consider buying a XP-30, give a try to the Yamaha S-30, it might be worse trying this one as it is very similar to the XP-30.

I have no idea how to determine the software version on the XP-30 so I'm afraid I can't comment on this. . .I've had my XP-30 since July 1999 though if it helps any.

The presets pretty much run from average to superb--that is there are *no* bad sounds (with the exception of the GM bagpipe sound). There are a few mediocre sounds (the guitars are kind of thin and reedy)but overall the (acoustic) sounds compare VERY well with every other machine except for the Kurzweil K2x00 series, but those cost two arms and two legs.

The OS on the XP-30 is absolutely stellar IMHO. There are some 1400 patches on this synth, which can be very overwhelming at times, but the way they are organized by bank, and then by expansion board, with the CATEGORY sorting function is first-rate. As far as editing sounds go, it's very easy to do exactly what you want to do to the sound, and it's very easy to find the specific parameter(s) you're look for. Even by today's standards this is a deep instrument, and it really says a lot that's it's so easy to use.

The manual is better than most Roland manuals I've used, which isn't saying much. The XP-30 comes bundled with an OEM version of SoundDiver, the PC version of which is worthless IMHO.

-64 note polyphony, 64MB ROM (compressed to 32)
-multimode resonant filters (lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and peaking)
-the keyboard (velo and channel aftertouch sensitive) action is of the semi-weighted variety, and is very good; it's solid enough to be confidence-inspiring but not so heavy that it impedes your playing I think
-the pitch-bend/modulation joystick sucks though because the joystick can only travel about 1/4" in the Y axis, which can be troublesome. It's a shame Roland decided to use this joystick instead of the one in the XP-60 and XP-80.
-2 outputs: this is the biggest shortcoming by far and is inexcusable. People may argue that that would increase the cost too much, but the XP-30 is based completely on previously existing products. It's obvious the absence of an extra output pair is intended to prevent cannibalization of the XP-60/80 (most pro users are unlikely to use the 60/80's onboard sequencer, and would want to have the 3 expansion boards, but would be turned off by the 2 outputs, and then fork over the extra $400 for the bigger machine).
-the effects are mediocre overall, but the funny thing is that the people who programmed the presets obviously knew they aren't that good. You don't really run into many sounds drenched with reverb and delay like you do with the Alesis QS series (I used to have a QS6), and the effects parameters are carefully adjusted for each sound.

-You get separate global reverb and chorus processors (the GM style controllers 91 and 93 to adjust effects depth per part), and an EFX. The reverb is kind of grainy and metallic, but doesn't get muddy at all the way the dreadful Alesis QS series do. Roland's always nailed chorus effects and the excellent chorus on the XP/JV is no exception. The EFX offers 40 algorithms from EQs and compression to up to 2 chained effects (like distortion and delay). The delay effects are great, and the chorus and flangers are equally good. Some of the effects like auto-wah, and particularly distortion and overdrive are dull and lifeless and are in desperate need of some balls. It would certainly be nice to have more EFX options though on this synth.

-2x expansion via SRJV-80 series PCM expansion boards
-no onboard sequencer (the XP50/60/80 have sequencers however)

-well obviously the session piano sounds' realism is kind of controversial so I'll leave that to you; I like it personally and use it all the time in songs or to play Chopin or whatever.
-the acoustic sounds on the session and orchestral board are what really make the sounds on the XP-30; the string ensembles on the Orch board are absolutely beautiful (esp. #39 Full Strings, and #84 Big Marc! The solo strings sound good in a mix but are not realistic enough to be by themselves. The brass sounds are pretty good overall; choir sounds are superb (Session #23--Dream Voices, Orch #228--Choir 2), especially if you make a patch that layers these sounds together; the woodwinds are flat-out outstanding as a group. The electric pianos are kind of thin, as it seems obvious that Roland wants you to fork $200 over for the sounds on the Keyboards of the 60s and 70s expansion board. The guitars and basses are average, with a few standouts on the session board. As for electronic sounds, the pads are very Roland-like-->very clean and smooth but precise and digital. The synth leads and basses are good overall, but they're lacking in the "balls" factor--they're kind of thin and it's obvious they've been compressed. This is where your synth programming skills come in: get 2 or 3 tones working in a patch, detune them, add a noise waveform to the other tones to fatten them up.
-the filters are pretty good for a sample playback synth--no real stepping artifacts; the bandpass filter is particularly good
-the acoustic snares and kick drums *SUCK* and are not at all realistic, though the toms fare much better, as do the various percussive instruments e.g. congas, timbale . . .The electronic drum sounds are good, and there are a *lot* of drum sounds on the techno board. That said, you can never please Roland TR drum machine gurus/addicts/whatever with samples, so be prepared if that's your bag.

-a lot of people comment on how the sounds lose their effectiveness/character/whatever in multitimbral mode and though I agree to some extent, this phenomenon is *nowhere* near as bad as it is on synths from other manufacturers (especially Alesis and Korg products except for the Trinity and Triton). Other companies' synth programmers rely too heavily on effects to get the patch's "sound" so when you use them in multi mode, they fall flat, but I've found Roland's presets are carefully designed to prevent this becoming an overriding issue.
-As for the notorious "static decay" problem, it *does* exist but it is nowhere near as bad as some people describe. The first time I noticed it was when I put an XP-30 synth lead through one of my compressors, which (with a 4:1 ratio or so and 6 or 7 dB of output gain) boosted the level of the decay portion of the waveform. . .

The XP-30 is quite well built for something in its price range. The top, bottom, and back panels appear to be made of aluminum, while the sides are made of a sturdy plastic. Still compared to a Juno or Jupiter, it's pretty fragile and would probably not survive in the hands of a careless owner (or roadie) for long. Roland has an excellent reputation for reliability though.

I've had some major problems with Roland in the past, and was so pissed off with my encounter (in 1995), and the utter arrogance that was de-facto at Roland U.S. that I vowed I would never buy Roland equipment again. Based on what I've learned on the net it hasn't improved much if at all. I couldn't resist the XP-30, because there's really nothing else within a $500 range that has better sounds.

If this thing were lost or stolen I might think about getting an XV-3080 or 5080 b/c I have another good 61-key keyboard controller. Still, I really like to play it by itself late at night so I don't have to turn on all my other equipment so this says something. I've been playing since about 1995, seriously since 1997 or so.

This synth has a ton of good sounds that fit well in a mix, is well-designed, is easy to program, and has some nice synthesis feaures (ring mod/booster, frequency cross-modulation, 2 independent midi syncable LFOs). This is my all-purpose machine that I use for song/idea sketches before I start to seriously work on a new project, for specific instrument sounds, and as a basis for resampling (for example sometimes I'll put the XP-30 through my Wavestation A/D's inputs, run it through some more effects, and then sample away). It has a great GM bank, which I use every once in a while. . .On a typical song, I use 4 or 5 channels in multi mode, so I rarely have a problem with polyphony, but if this were my only synth I would have trouble for sure.

The 2 output limitation is frustrating, but fortunately I have enough other gear to compensate; if you don't you might not like the XP-30 as much. Nevertheless there's really NOTHING that unequivicabllybeats the XP-30 for several hundred dollars more and that's quite an accomplishment. Everyone else who has reviewed the XP-30 mentions the Alesis keyboards--they honestly can't hold a candle to the XP-30 as far as sound quality or synthesis power. I owned a QS6 for 2 1/2 years and quickly ditched it as soon as the XP-30 came out and I've not looked back since.

We don't have to buy MIDI interface.. because it is including a built-in it

Everything was OK.. but I don't know why my computer doesn't detect it... I mean, auto-detect..

I used Korg X5D before. I think, xp-30 is better than that.. except
piano and drum sounds.

the first time that i bought xp-30, there was something wrong with my expensions. I called them, and they fixed it easily.

if it was lost or stolen, then i'm gonna buy it again.^^

The Presets sound good though they go a little flat in Multitimbral mode. Some aspects of the interface are very easy to use (like patch selection, turning on and off instruments in layered sounds(programs). But, trying to figure out MIDI assignments in multitimbral mode is way too hard and the manual is useless.

The action feels pretty good to me. I play acoustic as well as synth and it doesn't get in the way, which is good. The XP-30 is expandable, though I can't imagine navigating more sounds. It is a bit overwhelming even with the category buttons. Has a lot of features, no sequencer.

Have to agree with what has been said before. The Piano sound are awful. I like the Alesis Piano sounds better if that is any reflection. I didn't get this for piano sounds though and the rest sound good. Maybe the brass is a little weak

Haven't had it long enough to have a opinion

Didn't see a toll free number on the website nor an obvious tech support e-mail. Going to have to look again.

Don't know yet whether I'd replace if lost or stolen.
I've been doing the MIDI thing for 4 years now and feel pretty competent. My old Yamaha V-50 had much better navigation through sound parameters, midi assignment, etc. i have to say that the manual is awful, awful, awful. It is unfortunate cause a well written one would make this instrument so much nicer to use.

I found the XP-30 easy to use, if you wnat to use it life on stage, however, at home I use it with other syths and modules, like MU100R and technics KN1500, and ASR10. ALL completely different machines that has their own characteristics. Using this synth between the others can cause errors. Also using it as a multitimbral soundmodule, is not that easy.(or is it me?) I use it mostly with the old atari Qbase, and find it very difficult to set up the keyboard aswell as the soundmodule, so I can use both seperate (this function is possible according the manual (YES I read the manual)) It gives and gave me some brainbrakers to set it up right.

Looking to all the features this keyboard has a lot of them(if you really goin to use them is a second question). Sound expansionboards are nice, but looking to the price and see if you really need ALL the sounds on the expensionboard is more me a big question. The effects are very nice, but one insertion(40) is now a days not TOO much. looking to my MU100r wich has 2, with more effects inside (60) and also tripple effects. looking to the MIDI possibillities, I think you can do a lot with it, but me, user of Yamaha mostly, find it very difficult to set it all up the right way.(Is it ME again?)
No sequenser build in, wich is good, (who needs a sequenser inside when you have a computer that can do it all).

Goin thru all the banks multi and pathes, I find the sounds very progressive. (else I never would have bought this synth in the first place). I play a lot of jazz and funk, but at home I make a lot of different musicstyles. the most sounds were okee, but listening to the piano, I Have to be hounest, is too much attack sound, wich the keyboard is too much responding to my playing. Also the aftertouch is nice, but would have liked that you can really feel it in your fingers when pressing the key(s). Also I noticed, that the aftertouch seems not to be polyfonic, but maybe I'm wrong here, and have just to figure out how to set this option. keyboard is very smouth to play on, I have to say, wich gives me the feeling that I wnat to use it also as a masterboard.

I think the xp-30 is a reliable synth, to use it on stage, how ever, using it at home with other synths, I found a lot of problems, that I still did not found a solution for.(midi settings for instance, or putting the synth to multitimbral, to use all the patches over 16 channels.

I called with the helpdesk in belgium, and also emailed the same person, but stil did not get any answers yet. This was obut one week ago. caling the helpdesk in the UK gave me the feeling that the number does not even exists there, or the line must have been really busy. giving it an advantage of doubt I I hope to get a reaction soon from them.

If it was to be stolen, I would have been very sad, because its not insured at all, anyway, I think I would buy the sameone, or mayby I would buy the JV2080 instead. When I bought it, there was also a QS6.1 wich people seems to compare wich the XP-30. I dont think that the QS6.1 is worth a compare to this one. However, QS6.1 and for example the Yamaha sinths in the same price were also very nice with the sounds, but really not so beautifull as the sounds off the xp-30.
I would have liked the synth to have also GS and in the general midi a possibility to use more sounds then just the 128 that you have normally.

Very easy to use right out of the box.I did have a little trouble figuring out how to get phrase loops from my expansion cards to sync with my sequencer, but I finaly got it (no thanks to the manual). The manual can be a little confusing at times.

64 voice polyphony is plenty for me, and I have some very textured sequences. I never had a problem with note cut off. The effects are great, and easy to use, but in performance mode, its hard to get the sounds to be as fat as they are in play mode. I still long for a keyboard that can duplicate the effects of each instrument seperately while in a performance mode!!! You can still get them to sound great, but not all of the sounds will be as good as the original sounds in play mode. So far I just have the Hip-Hop expansion. At about $230, they are a bit pricey, but I am totally satisfied with this card. Its a lot of fun, and very useful while sequencing. Live I run the XP-30, a Juno-106, and a Korg M1. All my sequences come from a Kawai Q80-EX, and the XP-30 has given me no problems. The action is good. The only thing that I can complain about is pushing the joy stick up for LFO and other effects is very stiff. It feels like I have to push alot harder than I should!!

The sounds are mostly excellent. The only complaint I have here is the piano's and brass! I'm sorry Roland, but Korg has it all over you as far as these sounds are concerened!! Everything else is fantastic. My band plays cover tunes from oldies to techno, rap, classic rock, alternative, and lots of dance. The XP-30 is usefull for all of it.

I use it live 2 to 4 times a week, and it hasnt let me down yet. My sequences depend on it to work and I'm not worried.

Havent had the displeasure of finding out!

I would buy this unit again in a heart beat! For the price you cant compare anything else to it!! I've been playing proffesionaly for about 13 years (since I was fifteen). I started out with a JX-3P and a Wurlitzer electric piano that I traded in for the Juno-106 (stupid, stupid, stupid!!!). I got a Korg M1 about 6 years ago, and the XP-30 about 1 year ago. If it had Better Piano's and brass, it would be perfect.

The patch sounds are splendid, on the whole. The XP-30 utilizes the JV 1080/2080 soundset + Orch. + Techno + Session boards. A wide variety of sounds.

The manual is very good for providing an overview of the synth; it is easy to grasp basic concepts, like auditioning patches, using phrase review, changing filter (palette) settings. More advanced operations (as you might expect) are more difficult and tedious to understand. I found myself reading some sections in the manual 2-3 times, to try to understand what is being said.

It is fairly involved to edit the patch tones (patch mode) or tone voices (performance mode). I'm having to do it manually, [and it requires careful attention].

Tried installing SoundDiver -- but the software would not auto-detect the XP-30 on my Pent. 166 Win NT system. I sent an e-mail to Emagic, and never heard back. So I've kind of given up on SD, uninstalled it, and just use the XP-30 panel buttons instead. Note: I've heard other users use SD quite successfully, though--so maybe it's just me...

All in all I think there's a lot of power in this synth--I know i'm not close to exploiting all the functionality available. Hope Roland comes out with a video on the XP-30 like it did on the other XP models, to make it easier to master the "more advanced" stuff.

Well, 64 voice poly is plenty for my needs. I haven't come close to running out of voices--although it's theoretically possible. The manual addresses the issue of "using up too many voices" in-depth, and offers useful options [e.g., drop oldest or quietest tones, I think].

Note that Roland now has an XV-88 synth [128-voice polyphony]. If you've got $2500, it's certainly a better synth with more poly (and it is backward compatible with JV/XP gear).

The stock EFX on the patches are fantastic. I especially love the pads, since i'm into new age music. Some patches could be better [a few flute and harp patches are disappointing, I think]. But many patches sound like the real thing.

As with all JV/XP series synth engines, you can't have separate EFX for each tone in Performance mode. Patches therefore sound somewhat different (i.e., thinner) when you switch from Patch to Perf. mode [from what I'm reading, you must user Perf. mode to make a multi-track MIDI recording].

Volume levels of different patches aren't particularly well normalized. Some blast your ears out; others are practically inaudible.

It can accept SmartMedia memory cards, and can take up to two additional wave expansion boards [which cost c. $250 each].
I'm glad the XP-30 includes the Sess. and Orch. boards at no add. cost--these patches are very useful in compositions:.

No on-board sequencer, but Cakewalk works great for me. I suspect it's much more of a flexible tool than an on-board seq.

The real-time sliders are cool. Very useful for tweaking up the sound.

The Arpeggiator is nice. There are quite a few styles. You just hold down the ARPEGGIO button for a second and you can change some of the ARP parameters--pretty intuitive. But it can require extra effort to use in performance mode, because you have to set the keyboard coverage area for the non-arp. parts so they don't overlap with the (single) arp'ed part.

Fantastic sounds. Don't know which type of music the synth is suited for, but I do like the pads, Vox sounds, New Age stuff [e.g., "Desert Crystal", "DreamVoices2", "Str+Choir", "Enlighten", "Translucence",
"Liquid Sky", "Big Vectors", "Stacc. Heaven" patches, etc.]. I also think the "Cathedral" organ patch is killer. My 11 yr. old son loves the "RockYurSocks" distortion guitar patch(!).

Again, the flutes and harps weren't so hot IMHO--but you can probably buy add on wave-expansion boards with better samples of these instruments.

The EFX are very powerful -- there are multiple parameters you can tweak for reverb, chorus. Through intelligent choice of reverb and chorus settings, you can probably improve the sounds of Performance-mode stuff to the point where it is usable.

The keyboard action is great. I've never played any other synth with vel. and aftertouch sens. before, but when I pound down on the keys, the sound seems to react dramatically and promptly. I suspect things are working the way they should!

I did my homework thoroughly before I bought this synth ($860, used on ebay). I'm very happy with it. Don't think anything comes close for under $1000, including the Alesis QS6 and QS7 line, which i read about carefully. If I had more money (and didn't mind my family starving), I would have gone with the XV-88. Oh well.

Can't say. I bought my XP-30 used [a few months old], and it's held up well for the last 2 months, but this is hardly a good test. Other users indicate Roland stuff is very reliable. But it doesn't hurt to be careful... I've read horror stories about users breaking the pitch-bend lever or wearing out the "VALUES" dial on some of these XP units.

Haven't had an opportunity to interact with Roland support. As noted, I think the Emagic (SoundDiver) support is poor.

Great sounds. Very high on the BBFTB scale (big bang for the buck). One can certainly overlook a few negatives here and there.
Would buy it again.

Alleluia, Praise the Lord!

Editing the patches is fairly straight-forward. Editing the performances, however, is a another matter. I have had this board for about two weeks and I am still trying to figure out how to make the performances sound the way I want them to. Of course, I read the manual, but it seems to me that it overexplains the simple functions and is vague in its explanations of more complex functions. Maybe I'm just stupid, but I had give a low rating on this category because I just didn't get much help from the manual.

The keyboard I had prior to the XP-30 was an XP-10, so needless to say, this is a vast improvement. I won't go into the ployphony and MIDI capabilities because I mainly use this board live with a band, and frankly, I don't even have a sequencer or computer. The keyboard action is pretty sturdy and solid-feeling, and I love the aftertouch function. It is expandable with up to two of the Wave Expansion boards and it already has the Session, Orchestral, and Techno boards onboard. No sequencer, but I have no real use for one right now anyway. For the price, this board is packed with features, which is one of main reasons why I decided to buy it.

Like I mentioned before, I had an XP-10 before this one, so when I first played the XP-30, I was blown away. I may not be very finicky when it comes to piano sounds, but I think the ones included in the Session board are pretty good. I usually play piano, electric piano and organ patches with my band and there are plenty to choose from here. The Orchestral board is pretty impressive, too. Almost every patch is very realistic sounding. The Techno board has some interesting stuff on it, although about 90% of it is useless for me, seeing as the bluesy/rock band I play with would probably kill me if I tried to use them. The multi-effects features are good, although almost every preset patch has an excruciating amount of reverb added to it (That's easily edited, though). The velocity sensitivity and aftertouch make for a fairly expressive board.

I feel that can I rely on this keyboard 100%. I played live with my XP-10 for about two years and it's never freaked out on me. However, I still bring my old keyboard to gigs, just in case.

Fortunately, I've never had to deal with customer support.

Overall, I think this is a great synth for the money. It's a great benefit for me live, and if I ever get a sequencer, I'll enjoy messing around with more interesting sounds. I've only been playing keyboards for about two years (I'm more of a guitar player), but since I bought the XP-30, I've realized how fun it can be. My only qualm is that the patch and performance editing can be a bit complicated and frustrating (and the manual is no help). If this were lost or stolen, I would want to get another XP-30 (after an appropriate period of mourning, of course).

Just some info...
When looking for a patch:
HOLD THE CATEGORY BUTTON WHILE PUSHING THE CATEGORY YOU WANT!!!!

This opens up a menu, for example.
If you push and hold the category button and then push the guitar category you will have three choices.
AGT, EGT, DGT. You choose them with the left/right arrow keys. Up in the top right it tells you which one is which. If you put the cursor under "DGT" in the upper right it says "Dist. Guitar" for distorted guitar.
This makes finding patches much easier. Some categories like SYNTH give you 6 sub categories.
Everyone I know that has an XP-30 just pushes the category button and then chooses the category they want. Bitching about how it was a good idea to put the function there but they only put 100 or so patches in the categories.
Well, they,(the patches), are all there. Just remember to hold the category button while choosing what category you want.
The down arrow will take you to the patch select, the up arrow takes you back to the sub-category.
Hope this helps some people navigate this thing easier!

I found this Synth very easy to use right out of the box. The presets for the most part are very nice, although patch memorizing is very key. The manual is worthless unless you are out of firewood. Perhaps a video manual is in order (hello Roland!)

The action is great, the built in effects are nice. No sequencer is necessary in this age of the PC. The expansion capabilities are wonderful and it's extremely easy to pop in new cards. Feature wise, near perfection.

This synth is very versitile and could be used for many many different types of music. Better piano voices would be nice, but that's what Kurzweils are for, right?

I've owned it for about seven months now and no problems yet.
As far as backup goes, if you've got the cash...always have a backup at a gig.

I haven't needed to deal with Roland yet, but let's hope their customer service is more friendly than their manuals.

Overall, this synth is wonderful. I've been playing for about seven years. I started out with Yamaha and switched to Rolands about four years ago. I also own a Juno 60 and a JP 8000. Go Roland!
For it's class of synths, there is no equal.
If you're in the market, I highly recommend the XP-30.

I just wanted to say a little something about this noise (Grunge)
problem some people are experiencing with their units.
I owned an XP-80 (3yrs) and then bought an XP-30 (8mos)old.While I
still had both, I sent both units L/R outputs to my Yamaha MD8 Mini-
disc recorder and A/B their sonic quality. I could not tell any difference between the two units, either played thru my audio system
(EV S122s Pushed with 2 Stewart 200w Power Amps)or with my Headphones
AKG 240DF. This info is just FYI, I thought someone would like to know
my experience. Thanks PH

I find it quite easy to use but it isn't that simple really. Finding patches is the hardest while playing. I memorised about 4 and am stuck with them until I remember a few more

This is just an update on my earlier review of it. Now I have had the keyboard for over a month (!) I can say that I am growing to like the sounds a lot more. As a performance keyboard it is great to take out - light weight wise, small length wise and fat sounds.I have posted samples of the session and techno boards here : http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/hall/4339/techno.mp3 (1.3mb)and http://www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/hall/4339/session.mp3 (4.3mb)if anyone is interested. Right clicking on the link should (in theory) invoke the save file as box and such.

it hasn't broken yet
would I use it without a back up - course I do, I only have two keyboards and I have no room to take out two of everyting. Roland gear is usually well made. Look at the number of D110's out there still chugging away after years and years

Auckland has the Roland distributor. I deal with my local music shop who are very helpful

It is pretty easy to use out of the box.
The sounds on this machine blew me away after listening to an Alesis.
The sax sounded like a real sax.
The manual is alright. It was not as thorough as the Alesis keyboards.

The keyboard action is kick-butt if you compare it to an Alesis keyboard.
The built-in effects are really good. I love em. They are pretty easy to use also.
It has two expansions on it. It also has capabilities for Smartmedia 2meg and 4meg.
16 Channel midi. Doesn't have a sequencer, but if you have a computer like me grab a simple Cakewalk program like the HomeStudio.

The sounds are very realistic. They are very easy to use. This keyboard can work for any style of music. Effects are good. It is very expressive.

Yes. Regardless of what I or anyone else has. A Backup is required.

Not the best. It sucks about trying to get the sequencing definitions for Cakewalk from a different site. Couldn't find any definitions on the Roland site.

Very good. If it were lost or stolen I'd kick some !@#. I would definitly buy another one.

the presets sound good. most are usable for various kinds of music. Editing is done with the Sounddiver CD. Intuitive to use. The manual is written in a simple manner, but just has a technical nature to it. But I learned this synth by trial-and-error. Easy to use.

64 note poly. keyboard action is semi-weighted, but solid and very expressive. i love playing the piano patches on it! Only complaint is the bender.

for the price I payed, it is probably the best sounding synth in its range. no other synths in its range has as many sounds, and the quality of sounds it has. Chorus, Reverb, and EFX are good. I love how most of the patches can be controlled with aftertouch and velocity.

If I plan to gig with it, i would depend on it w/o a backup. It has been sex months now since getting it, and still has not locked up on me. i managed to crash it when i tried to upload some sysex stuff to it, but resumed when i reset the synth.

i e-mailed a few inquiries to Roland, and they responded promptly. The local dealer would probably be more help for more detailed issues.

It is the best value of a synth out there in any class. Hands down!!!

At the risk of turning this site into a discussion board, I have to object to a few N.S.'s views about the XP-30.

The sampling quality: I think 90% of the patches sound good. Almost all wave-based synths have the munchkinization issue. And very impractical to use 8 MB on a piano sample just to get a few lo and hi notes right. In the range of notes used by most music, the XP-30 does well in the sounds it produces. And pls. tell me how many times u plan to use the extreme high's and low's of a 88 key scale? For the normal user, it would not be a problem.

SoundDiver: The synth, as noted by many other users, was meant to be more of a studio synth, than a performance one. And even if u were to gig with it, do u plan to edit patches while doing a set? And even if u plan to, maybe u can use an equipment called a laptop?

Cheap feel: Are you sure? If u read the other reviews, nobody has a problem with the built of the synth. i was particular with this factor, so i made sure i had a synth with a metal body. If it had a plastic body, i don't know if i would've gotten it. As far as the "cheap feel", u were mentioning about, i just can't get that "cheap feeling" u were talking about. For me, anything soft, mushy, and unexpressive feels cheap. the Trinity's keys felt cheap. Those Yammy PSR keys felt mushy and cheap. This one ain't, bub. Some users even note that they've abandoned their pianos for their XP-30's. I think the keys feel slightly weighted, but expressive and firm. As for the bottom panel, as soon as I read your post, i turned my XP-30 upside down to press that part. No bending noticed(unless u hit it with a hammer i guess). if u want something to use as an anti-tank armor, don't get the XP-30. otherwise, it's fine. Also, u actually turned the XP-30 upside down to press its underbelly in a music store?

Lastly, u cannot compare apples to oranges. Some of Mr. N.S.'s views are correct, but the complaints about the XP-30 are done without fair comparison to other synths in its class. In its class, the XP-30 is the runaway winner.

If there are other XP-30 users who can give a second opinion on these issues, please feel free to make them known in order to resolve this matter.

As far as editing goes, it is a little dificult without the sounddiver software. However compared to a lot of other synths out there it is still pretty easy to do straight from the board.
Once it's in pallette edit mode it lessens the button pushing by half.
The manual is pretty easy to follow, however I made it through the VS-1680 manual which made this one a breeze.
Not a beginner synth in programming unless that beginner is willing to take some time to really sit down and work on it.

Lots of polyphony(64), and it hasn't cut any notes out on me yet. And I have some pretty large sequences.
Of course I also have a couple of others so it's spread around some.
The built in effects are pretty good, with plenty of choices for you. Distortions, 4band stereo EQ, enhancer, rotary, auto-wah, just to name a few. Plus a seperate chorus and reverb, as well as more intricate types in the EFX.
2 expansion boards can be installed allowing up to 2044 total patches available.
And a SmartMedia card of 2 or 4mb can be used for saving more user programs.
The 4 pallette sliders perform many different functions as well. You can assign any of 94 different parameters to them such as breath, modulation, etc...
And use them internally, or have them control another external MIDI source, or both at the same time. Then, with a touch of a button they control the different volume levels of the different tones used in the preset you are playing. Another touch of a button and they control the filter, resonance, attack, and decay of the preset you are playing.
Velocity and aftertouch as well.

I love most of the sounds. I am sick of paying $300 or more for something that gives me 2 sounds I like.
The XP30 has to many good sounds to list, and not enough bad ones to mention.
The effects are pretty good for onboard effects. And the velocity and aftertouch are very nice.
With the expansions available I would say you could use this board for any type of music.

A nice strong metal body to this one. I would definetly trust it to not fail me live.

the only time I had a problem with a roland product,(the zip drive went out in my recorder), it was fixed for free and promptly. Unfortunatly I had to drive it to where it was fixed, an hour or so away. But that is a small price to pay for a new zip drive 8 months after purchase.

I wopuld definetly buy this synth again. I have been a proffesional musician for a long, long time. And I just love this keyboard.
I wish it had more outputs, and the pitch bend/mod joystick is pretty crappy.(very cheap feeling, like you could easily break it). But I have a Korg Kaos and that melds perfectly with it.
For the price, you really get a great synth. IMHO much better than an XP80,60,or 50(we won't even mention the xp10). The amount of sounds and control you get with the XP-30 far outweighs the importance of an onboard sequencer.

Just a follow-up to my Roland XP-30 review.

An XP-30 reviewer (BW) was concerned that I did not actually own this keyboard and thus mistakenly thought that my review was based on a one hour trip to my local music store. To clarify: I auditioned the XP-30 on three different occasions. In total, I probably played and extensively programmed this synthesizer for fifteen hours. After my three auditions, I decided not to buy the XP-30 for the reasons given in my review. (You can read this review a few reviews down.)

With regard to BW's comments:

I was informed by the salesperson that the XP-30 used lower quality components than some of Roland's other JV/XP synthesizers. Upon comparing the XP-30 to a JV-2080 and an XP-60 (using high quality studio monitors), I could hear little difference in sound quality.

As for "munchkinization" in the upper and lower registers - what do I expect from a wave based synth... I expect better sampling quality than used in the XP-30. This means a greater number of multi-samples spread across the full 88 note range of the piano keyboard. Many sounds on the XP-30 can only be used within its 61 note keyboard range (and quite a few within less than this range). In addition, I expect the samples to be of sufficient length and looped such that instruments with decay sustain and fade out naturally. Many samples in the XP-30 have audible looping defects.

Concerning the comments "this guy didn?t bother to find out about the included SoundDiver CD" and "the XP-30 is meant to be used with a PC, as a sequencer and patch editor". I was aware of the included patch editing software. And DW is correct - you do need to use this software. Editing patches using only the XP-30's front panel is incredibly painful. The interface is terrible requiring many redundant keystrokes and shifted button presses. This is my point. You can't just use the XP-30 by itself to easily create sounds (not unless you happen to be a sadomasochist). Thus, I gave the XP-30 very low marks for ease of use. (Hauling a computer around just to edit your synthesizer is not very convenient.)

The XP-30 is not well made and has a decidedly cheap feel about it. DW is incorrect in stating that "only the side panels are plastic". Everything (front panel, side panels) except for the bottom is made of plastic. The bottom made of very thin, tin-like metal that bends quite easily if you apply pressure to it with your fingers.

As per my previous review.

As per my previous review.

As per my previous review.

As per my previous review.

As per my previous review.

For anyone used to Roland synths, especially the JV line, this board is simple to navigate. For those who aren't accustomed to Roland gear, it can be a tad daunting at first, but with the Category buttons, it certainly makes it easier. The presets are generally of a high caliber and a good 80% are more than usable. Editing patches is also very straight forward (I was able to create a custom drum kit in no time at all). The 4 sliders are a great addition, especially when they transmit midi info. Sadly, like most Roland manuals, the xp-30 reads as though it were translated for from Japanese without the benefit of someone who really knew english. Better off just mucking around with the board; you'll get farther faster.

The polyphony is 64 voice but a good deal of the patches do use more than a single tone therefore bringing the max polyphony down. However, I've used the xp-30 almost entirely for some compositions and I've never noticed a drop-out of voices. If anyone knows anything about traditional arranging, you should have no problems. If you want to play massive chords on each channel, then you will encounter difficulties.

The effects are all decent although I'm having a tough time using the one insertion effect in the performance mode when I want to have say a distortion effect for a lead guitar on part 2, but don't want it to affect the other parts. Consulting the manual was just frustrating.

The expansion capabilities include to pcm-board slots located on the underside of the board. I've already sunk the Orchestral 2 board in and it sounds great. 3 expansion boards are already built in to the xp-30 and that accounts for its massive library of sounds.

Although the xp-30 doesn't have a sequencer on board, it's well designed for multitimbral use with a software sequencer (I'm using Cubase VST with it). Including a resident sequencer would have only served to up the price tag.

I've read varying opinions on the sounds. Well, they are Roland sounds which, depending on your preference, is either great or marginal. I for one like the sounds quite a bit. Roland was the first company to include a fortissimo french horn patch so they're tops in my book. I've heard the Triton and, other than it's sampling option, I do not think it, or any other Korg board, holds a candle to the xp30 when it comes to acoustic instruments (except for upright bass which my X5Dr has). It's also nice that some of the patches are monophonic depending on their orientation (it really helps when you want to have a trumpet trill for example). The orchestral expansion sounds contain quite a bit of variety and are great for concert sketches or film scoring. The strings on the orch. 2 board are better mind you but there are the 2 open slots. There are also good pop sounds although I agree that the pianos are tinny sounding (my Yamaha p50m kills it) and I wish they included a Wurlitzer instead of the plethora of Rhodes patches. The organs are quite good as are a great deal of the synth patches.

The keyboard itself is geared for non-keyboard type sounds (ironically). Pads or leads are best suited for this board as you can really dig into them. The keyboard seems a bit too mushy for pianos or things of their ilk. I still use my U-20 for things of that nature.

Roland has always been fairly reliable when it comes to their keyboards. However, I encountered a problem once when I turned on the xp-30 and it just hung on it's opening screen message- it didn't switch to its sounds aeven though I tried prompting it by severa; keystrokes. Weird.

I don't perform live but I would just use this over any other single board for the road.

Roland Canada are fairly decent although I've not had too much dealing with them.

If the xp-30 were lost or stolen, I definitely would buy one again. For a single instrument, it offers a lot. You could compose an entire symphony on the board without having to resort to other gear. Some of the patches aren't perfect, but show me a keyboard that has it all. Fact is, the xp30 gets as close to an all around workstation as you could find save for the lack of sequencer. Since I purchased it, I've used the board for 80% for my compositions. Once you add a couple expansion boards, this thing is almost perfect. The keyboard is generally good for playing most of the on-board patches and, in a pinch, isn't terrible for even the piano-type patches. I wish it had a couple more line out puts for individual mixes but that's not a huge thing. The xp30 makes a superb first keyboard as well as a nice addition to those who have a veritable synth arsenal (like me). It covers almost all of the bases sound-wise and has very few throw-away patches. The 4 sliders make it a great controller and the ability to affect timbre changes in real-time is a wonderful idea. And the price is right too (considering a JV-1080 goes for the same price). Definitely a worth while purchase.

I LOVE this synth. I find the preset sounds usable right out of the box. Editing patches is fairly intutitve as long as you've been down this road before. I think a patch editor would make a HUGE difference, with only two lines of information opposed to what can be done with a graphical interface. I just WISH there was one for the Mac. I have no problem with the manual and like the step by step instructions for various operations.

The polyphony is said to be 64 voices. As with other roland instruments most patches are composed of multiple voices. So, while the 64voice polyphony seem large, if running stand alone in performance mode and Using a computer sequencer, note drops can occur,but are rare. The built in effects are very clean, even if they aren't the easiest to use. The XP-30 has room for 2 more expansion boards. No onboard sequencer (a waste for my setup anyway).

I LOVE the sounds on this deck. I have already used it for dance,darkwave,techno,classical,and ambient. The on board effects sound great they are just hard to program unless you read the manual. The sensitivity of the keys is exactly what you'd expect from roland.

Yes, I would depend on it and as far as gigging goes, I don't play live so it doesn't matter.

Have not needed to deal with the company. I have been playing this synth for a month and had no problems.

If lost or stolen I would purchase again without hesitation. I think this synth is worth more than what I Paid for it.. I've been playing for ten years (self taught). I currently own Alesis QV,QV2,S4; Opcode Studio 128x; Roland D20,CM32L; Akai S2000; Mackie 1404vlz; General Music s3; My PowerMAC running Various softwares. I compared this to several other synths at the same price range and under I just couldn't find a better deal for the money. I like the built in appgtr it alows me to toy around with specific phrases and play lead in real time along with it(performance mode). Hmm a wish list... I would like the patch lists to be included in some sort of txt file or xcel spreadsheet so it would be easily imported to various sequencers. I would also like to have a Graphical based patch/performance editor for the Mac. It would also be cool if the mod lever was metal or a joypad or joystick, it just feels as though I am going to break it. If you are going to do all your sequencing on a computer, I can't recommend a better keyboard for the price range $500-$1500. As far as helping me to make music, I get inspired by certain sounds and there is such a wide selection and some really intresing sounds, I have already started several new songs.

Very easy to switch on and start playing - although I am a professional musician and used to a Korg X3

the polyphony is 64 but so far all the sounds seem to use three or four layers which would trim that back to as little as 16. They sound thin in places without the layers
Midi wise, it has no on board sequencer but relies on an external. About time too, disks are old and dated technology. Finally on the XP30,but not on the XP80,60, someone has had the foresight to put a computer to host port. Korg and Alesis have done this for years now. I like to play GM sequences and the XP30 would have to have one of the worst Gerneral Midi banks I have ever heard. The velocity and attack are poor - the drums sound unbalanced and hard and the midi sequence kind of pushes and pulls its way through a song. The Korg X3 I have is however brilliant in the GM stakes.

Some are great but there is an over abundance of soume sounds and totally lacking in others. I can only find one or two great sounding organ patches so far and I miss the G19 Hammond organ of the X3. It doesn't exist on the XP 30. There is an organ add on board available of course.
Other stuff already covered

Roland generally are very reliable
Yes definitely use it without a backup

The Roland dealers are usually very good to deal with when asked although they made me wait five weeks for the XP 30

No, probably not, I would rather another Korg only I can't afford a Triton, maybe an Alesis Q6.1 next time. Ensoniq are not represented very well in NZ
Roland gear is, I believe overpriced. They are way behind on technology in some aspects.

First of all, I?d like to say that I?m writing this because I feel compelled to give my thoughts about the XP-30, after reading the other guy?s review below. I agree with a lot of things he says, but I also disagree with a lot of things he says.

Let me start off by saying that I?m an XP-30 USER, as in I actually have the XP-30 with me, not someone who went to a music store, tried it once for an hour, and left. I actually waited for almost a year before getting the xp-30 to see if it?s all hype. I found out, as in most stuff in our highly commercialized world today, that there is still a bit of meat inside the hype.

Some things I agree with HIM:

Many repetitive sounds: there r a bit too many orch sounds in there, but it depends. Since I?m more into modern music, I find it too much (most usable though). But for classical and soundtrack composers, it will suit them.

Okay sounds: compared to the other xp?s(xp-60 and up), xp-30 uses a lower DAC converter, therefore a slightly inferior sound quality. But it still uses 44 kHz samp rate, which is still CD quality. The other xp?s use 48 kHz. So unless u?ve got 1,000,000 listeners out there with golden ears which can notice that difference ( and u r too poor to afford $2k and up synths), there is really no other way to go. As for munchkinization in the upper and lower registries, what do u expect from a wave-based synth?

Rhythm loops: limited usefulness, esp. since many cannot be MIDI-synced.

Decay sounds: some patches have decay that trail away, though would be hardly audible in a recording.

Tech support: Non-existent, except for website and dealer.

Some Disagree?s:

Interface: Obviously, this guy didn?t bother to find out about the included SoundDiver CD. Bottom line: the XP-30 is meant to be used with a PC, as a sequencer and patch editor.

Construction: I was also worried about its ?plastic? body, but was relieved as soon as I found out most of it is made of metal. Only the side panels r plastic, same as the trinity. The triton has a completely plastic top body.

Final thoughts?

Not every synth is for everybody, mostly due to $$$. U could wait another 1000 years (year 3000) for the ?BEST SYNTH?, but u?d better hope cryogenic technology develops faster than current synth technology. If you?re filthy rich, go buy a Kurzweil K . If you?re filthy rich but feeling a little scroogy (esp. this xmas season), get the Triton. If you?re someone who actually needs to work for a living (or have not inherented that great fortune from your late Aunt) but looking for a very decent synth, the XP-30 would be excellent. If you?re just looking for something pro and don?t have the bank account to afford it, the QS6?s, N5?s, and PSR?s could be worth a look.

For me, the XP-30 has the best price/performance ratio for synths out there. Next would be the Triton (at double the price). It has great sounds, synth engine, features, customizability, plus a good feeling keyboard. It?s great for compositions and song demos. Sure, I can gripe about the bender, onboard patch editing, and one line output, but considering the price... u can?t go wrong.

I have just returned from auditioning the XP-30 at my local music shop. After auditioning the XP-30 (with cash in hand ready to buy), I did not buy it. I thought my reasons for not purchasing it might provide some contrast to the reviews from owners that I've read here.

O.K., for starters, let me say that the XP-30 is not a bad keyboard. In fact, for what you are paying ($1000 U.S.) it is reasonably priced. This keyboard has thousands of patches (1500 some odd to be more exact). It includes the ROM waveforms from Roland's JV-1080, JV-2080, and Session, Orchestral, and Techno expansion boards. This in-and-of itself makes the keyboard a good deal when you compare what you'd have to pay to get these same sounds when buying one of Roland's other JV/XP synths. (Note, to get the same sounds and in any other JV/XP synth you'd have to buy the three expansion boards that are included in the XP-30. These boards are approximately $300 each so it would cost another thousand dollars.)

But now we come to the crux of the matter. The sounds. Are they any good? Well, in a word, yes. Yes, they are O.K. But only O.K. Many of the samples can only be played within the 61 note keyboard range. (Transpose the XP-30 up or down an octave and play on either end of the keyboard and you'll see what I mean. The sounds become un-usably tiny or flat and muddy with no attack.) There is a large number of waveforms, but the samples are relatively short. Because of this, in some cases you can hear the sample loops. (i.e. the sounds go "flat" when they are sustained for any period of time.)

Here I'll answer a question I've seen in various discussion groups. "What is the best piano sample on the JV/XP synthesizers?" The answer is "none". The pianos are awful. The best one is the piano from the Session board. Still, even on the session "Stereo Grand", the samples are short and a little tiny, with an audible "flatness" when any notes are held. (This makes sense of course. The waveform ROMs are only eight megabytes and the whole ROM is not used for just the piano. A good 16 bit, 44.1KHz, stereo piano sample takes anywhere from 12 to 24 Mb.)

There is a large number and variety of sounds in the presets. This is the XP-30's main strength. Almost every possible sound you could ever want is represented in the presets. I don't want people to get the wrong idea. Many of the presets are very good. Extremely rich and warm. You can use the XP-30 right out-of-the box and never have to program it. This is really where I think its strength lies. For players that just want a lot of sounds with "reasonable" quality (i.e. they do not want to program original sounds), the XP-30 is an incredible instrument.

This leads in to my second concern with the XP-30, the interface. The interface is terrible. A two line display is simply not enough to probe the innards of the synthesizer engine in this instrument. In addition, many editing functions are contained on shifted buttons. For example, to turn an oscillator off you have to leave edit mode by "un-shifting" the tone editing buttons, press the tone edit button (which now represents an oscillator switch) of the oscillator you want to turn off, press another button to "re-shift" the tone edit buttons, press the tone edit button (which now represents an edit function) of the envelope you were originally adjusting, and cursor over (more button presses) to the parameter where you left off. Yuck! After spending an hour experimenting I gave up. The interface was just too cumbersome to allow for easy sound creation. This is a shame because the XP-30 has the same powerful synthesizer engine contained in the JV-1080. All the cool features are here (structures, the booster, the ring modulator, cross modulation, etc.). The XP-30 is an incredibly powerful synthesizer, not just a sample player. Unfortunately, its

The XP-30 basically has everything (and more) that you could hope for in a synthesizer in its price range. It's polyphony is 64 voices, but this is misleading. Because each oscillator (tone) in a patch uses one voice of polyphony (and patches can use from one to four oscillators), the typical polyphony available is 21 voices. I arrive at this conclusion because to do anything interesting on the XP-30, a patch typically uses three oscillators. For patches that use all four oscillators, and many do, the polyphony is only 16 voices. Thus I don't really think the XP-30 is a great multitimbral box for sequencing. Nor do I think that any of the JV/XP synthesizers are great stand-alone boxes for sequencing. Try using two four-oscillator patches together and you'll soon run out of voices. (Yes, you can strip patches down by removing oscillators or using patches with fewer oscillators, but now you are losing the rich sound of the XP-30 which is presumably the reason you wanted to sequence with it in the first place.)

Another problem affecting multitimbral use. The XP-30 has only three effects processors: one reverb, one chorus, and one multi-effect. These, in many cases, are used as integral components of a patch. When you switch into Performance mode (the XP-30's multitimbral mode) you still only have three effects processors. Thus, your patches lose their effects.

I have owned other Roland JV/XP gear and personally never used the synthesizers in multitimbral mode because of their limited polyphony and effects. What I did do was lay down a track (to digital "tape") using a patch in single mode. Switch to another track. Lay down another part with a single patch. You get the idea. I don't think recording an entire musical idea to MIDI and trying to play it back on just the XP-30 is realistic (at least not if your musical ideas are of any complexity).

There are two addition expansion slots in the XP-30 that accept cards from Roland's SL-JV80-nn waveform library. With the three waveform libraries already built into the XP-30, and the two additional slots, you have more sounds and expandability than most people would ever need. If there is any problem with this, it is that there are already too many sounds in the XP-30. I found it a bit daunting scrolling through patch, after patch, after patch, after patch when I only really need 20 to 30 sounds for everything I do. (Just how many string, piano, synth, and orchestral sounds does a person need!) I remember this same feeling when I first used a fully expanded Kurzweil. The extra sounds actually took my focus away from what I was trying to do which was to create music. That said, you can probably copy the 30 sounds that you use all the time into the first user bank of the XP-30 and then forget about the rest of the sound banks.

The sounds from the internal (JV 1080/2080) ROMs are extremely versatile. So are the sounds from the Session and Orchestral ROMs. To sum up the Session and Orchestral ROMs: there is a good selection of piano, synth, string, woodwind, horn, and other special effects sounds. There are even a few accordion samples (albeit, they are not very good). The Techno ROM is one hundred percent useless. Ninety percent of the sounds from the Techno ROM could be achieved using waveforms from the internal ROM. The other ten percent are sounds that are really so specialized you might use them once in a lifetime, if that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing electronic music. People who write electronic music tend to be pretty intelligent folks who are "very up" on their gear. (i.e. they know how to program it.) There is a myriad of saw tooth, sine, pulse, noise, and special effect waves already in the XP-30 internal ROM. These are perfectly suited for creating ambient and techno sounds. So the Techno ROM is wasted space. But, two out of three ain't bad. Especially when you didn't pay for the three to start off with

Hmmm. I think I've pretty much covered this already. The sounds I liked: synthesizer pads, strings, cello, flute, bassoon, choir. The sounds I didn't like: piano. The sounds I thought were useless: sampled orchestra hits, rhythmic drum loops (these chew up memory in the waveform ROM very quickly - to bad Roland didn't use this extra wave memory to create better piano samples). Some of the orchestral sounds are too short and you can hear their sample loops. In other orchestral sounds (fugal horn for example), the attack portion of the sound is truncated. (This is true of some of the other orchestral sounds too. In general the orchestral sounds are useable, but not great.)

I didn't spend a lot of time playing around with the effects processors. What I can say is this: the reverb sounded very good, even at long reverberation times. There was no noticeable "breathing" the way there is in many cheap effects processors.

What kind of music can the XP-30 be used for? Anything. The XP-30 is an all-around general purpose synthesizer.

What was the velocity and keyboard response like? It seemed to me that the velocity response curve on many of the patches was exponential. Playing softly yielded a very soft sound, but playing just a little harder caused the sound to become extremely loud "all of a sudden". I could not tell if this was simply the way the patches are programmed or if this was the physical keyboard itself. For my preference (if I had bought the XP-30), I would be looking to try and program a more even response to keyboard velocity.

In general, the sounds of the XP-30 are good, but not great. I agree with the salesman at the store where I tested the XP-30: "you do get what you pay for". In the JV/XP synthesizers Roland has elected to give the user a great variety of sounds at the expense of the quality of each individual sound. What I'm really saying here is "would you rather have hundreds of good sounds or ten really great sounds?". If your answer is "yes" to the previous question, then the XP-30 is for you. The quality of the sounds in the XP-30 is mixed. Therefore I give the XP-30 a 5 in this category.

I can't say for the XP-30, but... In general, I have found Roland equipment to be extremely reliable. It is some of the most reliable equipment in the business.

As for construction... This was one area where I was a little disappointed. Yes, the XP-30 is only a thousand dollars, but a thousand dollars *is* a thousand dollars. The XP-30 is constructed of plastic. (The bottom is metal, but the top and sides are plastic.) And the "big" buttons that everyone seems to like also feel very plastic and light. In addition, all the jacks on the back panel look as though they are soldered directly to the PC board (as they are on most Roland gear). In other words, don't trip on a patch cable or you'll crack the PC board.

I would gig with this keyboard, but I would be very careful with it. I don't think it would handle much of a bump very well. My guess is that the XP-30 is very reliable if treated well. It would have got an 8, but because of the plastic case it gets a 5.

For customer support, forget Roland U.S.A. They have been awful every time I have contacted them. "Customer? You're a customer? How dare you waste our time!" Roland Canada is a different story. (And I'm not saying this just because I am a Canadian.) I have found Roland Canada extremely helpful. People call you back when they say they will. Their service technicians have helped me debug problems over the phone. Their sales people have helped me track down hard-to-find, out-of-production items. Roland Canada gets the thumbs up as far as I am concerned. So if you need support, don't call Roland U.S.A., call Roland Canada!

Another plus for Roland is that they have been in business for a long time. And it looks as though they are in no near sign of going out of business (something that you *do* have to be concerned about with keyboard vendors). Roland also has support and their own service centers all over the world. This is yet another plus. I found out how important support is when I bought a Yamaha P200. I almost bought the Kawai MP 9000 instead, but Kawai had no local support. Soon after I bought the Yamaha, I did have a small problem with it. (For those of you that don't know what a P200 is, it is a digital piano that weights mucho pounds!) Yamaha sent someone to my house to fix it. No kidding! They gave me absolutely superb customer support. Kawai could not have provided this kind of support.

For customer support (despite Roland U.S.A.) Roland gets an 8.

If it were lost or stolen, would I buy it again? No. I didn't buy it to begin with! I was prepared to buy the XP-30. But after letting the hype die down, auditioning it, and letting my sensibilities kick in, I think there are better ways I can spend my musical money.

The XP-30 does have a lot of sounds. More than any synthesizer in its price range. Heck... More than any synthesizer (out-of-the-box) in twice its price range! If this is what you want, then I'd say the XP-30 is a deal. I'd give it a 10. But if you are as concerned with the quality of the sounds, ease of programming, and the quality of construction (which I am), I'd give the XP-30 a 5. Thus, 5 is my overall rating for the XP-30.

I tried to compare the XP-30 with other products. Really, in its price range, there is nothing to compare it with. It is good value for the money. The real question is, "is this enough quality or should you save a little more money and buy an instrument of higher quality?". The answer to this question (of course) depends on the buyer. For me, the answer was "save my money". (Because like I said before, how many synth, string, and oboe sounds can one person really use anyway? I'd rather have fewer and higher quality sounds, and a higher quality interface.)

I suppose I should add a little background to give my comments some legitimacy. I've been playing different kinds music (Jazz, Blues, Afro-Cuban, Pop, Celtic, Folk, Bluegrass, and Country & Western) for twenty years. My experience with synthesizers dates back from analog keyboards (like the Profit 5, Profit T8, Yamaha CS-80, Oberheim 4 voice, Oberheim Xpander, Rhodes Chroma), to FM stuff (like the DX-7), to early samplers (CMI Fairlite, Emulator I, II, and III, various Akai and Ensonique models), to modern-day keyboards (Korg Z1, Korg Triton, Kurzweil K2500, digital pianos, Clavia Nord Lead II). I've owned most of these and played many others. And I've been through everything from pitch instability, to the advent of touch sensitivity, to good, bad, and impossible single-slider user interfaces, to buggy internal software (most notably Yamaha's horribly buggy EX series - I love Yamaha stuff, but they sure pulled a blooper when they released the EX).

So I guess I'll leave my review here and sum up with this... These days, it takes a lot more than a few hundred samples and some filter sweeps to impress me. Most important, whether I am playing in the studio or playing live, is that a keyboard allow me to translate my musical ideas from vision to reality with as much expression and as little impedance as possible. For this, Korg's Trinity and Triton series gets my highest marks. These keyboards are not the most flexible sample players/samplers available. And they do not have as many sounds as Roland keyboards. But the Trinity/Triton provide superb sounds (again, except for the piano), powerful and flexible synthesis, and a touch-screen interface that nobody seems to be able to beat - both a joy to play and to program.

I bought this synth because I knew the presets were excellent. I want to make music not program sounds. For most tweaking I can use the pallette controls. As a veteran of Roland JV/XP synths I find the user interface is very straightforward. The programming I do is for setting up Performances for multitimbral sequencing. I've only had to crack the manual once but I haven't been fond of Roland manuals in the past and this one doesn't look much better. The included Sound Diver program can make it easier for a newbie to grasp the JV/XP architecture.

Polyphony is 64 but this can be reduced drastically by using patches with multiple tones. I love the way the patch EFX settings can follow the patch into performance mode on one channel. That way I can run a multitimbral sequence and easily audition patches w/EFX. The XP-30 has space for 2 SRJV expansion boards and a memory card if you feel the need for more then the gazillion patches it starts with. I'm subtracting 2 for mod/pitch stick. The throw in the Y axis is pathetic. Everything else I love.

IMHO Roland XP/JV series has the best overall sounds of any PCM type synths except for maybe Kurzweil. And this was $1K not $4K. For the most part the sounds still stand up when you turn the FX off unlike many other synths. If your primary app is sequencing with a computer then don't go out and buy another PCM machine until you hear this one. I could have got this and another JV2080 for what I paid for my Triton and been more satisfied.

I've had a half dozen pieces of Roland gear over the years and I have not had a problem ever.

Never had a need for support. N/A

I would probably have preferred an XP-60 but then I would have paid more for a sequencer I didn't need and I would have to ante up for the Session, Orchestral, and Techno boards - all for a decent joystick. But what I REALLY want is for Roland to put a keybord on a JV2080 or put more EFX in the XP series. This board sets the standard for value. I've take many side trips but have always come back to Roland.

The board hasnt even been out for 6 months yet, so there isnt any OS updtaes...i dont even see a need to update it..

I've either owned or extensively used every synth in the Legendary XP/JV lineup..so i basically know all the presets by heart..most are so-so, but with the Xp30 you get the session, orchestral, and techno already built in...very sweet..i've previously owned the techno board, so i knew what i was in for in that one, so the orchestral and session boards would be new territory for me. the Session sounds great, Roland told the truth when they said they put quality into this expansion..check the out "9 ft. Grand" patches..i love em to death, very realistic sounding to me!..for the orchestral..yeah, its decent, but hell, i make Dance-oriented music, so unless im making a n ambient track, i wont pull strings out for anything...

Editing patches for me is a snap..i been doin it ever since i got a Jv1080 a while back.i can program Xp/JV's in my sleep..it does come with a sound-diver editing CD rom..but mines kinda funky..it thinks that my Xp30 is a JV1010...hmmph...

Manual actually wasnt that bad this time around, i actually got my head around it quickly.. yay!.

There are 64 voices of polyphony, but each sound can be made up of 4 "tones"..think of it as 4 Oscillators.each oscillator uses up 1 voice of poly. Keyboard action is nice and semi-weighted....fun to play

There is an EFX processor inside with 40 EFX, and pretty nice ones too.. i like em and use em frequently..delay is pretty nice

expansions...yes...probably the most expandable lineup ever in synthesizer history..in the case of the XP30, 2 more expansion cards can be inserted, D + E....a Vintage Synth card currently occupies space "D"...theres also a smartmedia storage slot on the back, in case your a programming hound and happen to outgrow the 128 user patch/performance memory internally

Keys respond to Velocity + Aftertouch, and VERY nicely i might add.Theres an Arpeggiator on-board, but most of the styles suck anyway..oh well, back to step programming in the sequencer for that one..

One of my faves about this synth is the realtime control capabilities..it has 4 sliders for filter and envelope, tone control and midi controller...the filter actually sounds quite nice...kinda like my Jp8000 did...

Also has big luminous buttons for jamming or programming in the dark, if that applies to you somehow...

No on board sequencer, but if you connect to any sequencer, the power of this synth is VERY apparent

The Realistic sounds are pretty realistic...best steel guitar ive heard is on the XP/JV stuff, also has some nice stereo grand samples...for Analogue-emulation its also great as well...like i said, i have a Vintage synth card in there too, so even better for me..i have WAY more sounds than i'll ever need, and theyre all great too...Hell, this board works for any music genre guarenteed..if it doesnt, then the user must be mentally insufficient..Considering the Xp30 is the heart of my setup, it better react to my playing, which it successfuly does. Like i said before..both Velo. and A.T

its VERY sleek, its METAL..and id definatly gig w/o backup..as a matter of fact, i always gig my XP/V stuff w/o backup..

If it were lost or stolen id definatly buy ALLLL over again..id beat the hell outta the person who stole it if i ever found that bastard too..I been playin piano for quite some time, and i been programmin synths ever since i was 13/14 years old..i used to have a ton of gear floatin around, but i downsized..ive got my trusty Vintage expanded XP30, and an An1x for those REALLY convincing analogue sounds...all sequenced into an MC50...I love everythin about this synth, except for the ARP...its got the basic 1/4 1/6 1/8 1/12 1/16 1/32 up/down/updown/random stuff...but the other patterns suck!! mambo patterns? Bossa Nova Patterns?? what the hell?? i hope they write another OS that adds cooler ARP patterns..is that possible?? I had no need to compare..for under $1000 where do you get almost 2700 sounds and like 12 drumkits? thats right...nowhere else..Since this my main piece of gear, it definatly helps me make music..

The sequencing software that I am using is Master Tracks Pro. The presets sound wonderful and I couldn't be happier with the sound banks. The XP-30 has the Orchestral, Techno and Sessions Cards already installed. In addition, I have the World Card installed. the only problem that I have is "ease of use" and the manual which is unbelievable BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD! Who do they have write these things, accordion players in mental institutions? Absolutely NOTHING makes sense in this manual. They might pull a term out of mid-air and you check the reference section, and the term isn't even there! Whoever wrote the manual presumes that users already know and understand the instrument. The XP-30 does not have an on-board sequencer and my guess is that the majority of users would NOT be able to figure out how to sequence by using the manual! With the Proteus for example, one simply assigns the patch that they want to a track on both the proteus and the computer. With the XP-30, it is necessary to get into a "performance," and somehow assign patches to tracks and channels within the performance. I would really appreciate it if someone would give me a simple set of instructions, 1....2....3......4.... steps to set up a multitimbral operation.

64 voices polyphony. I like the keyboard action, but I grew up playing an accordion...... It plays like an accordion. Does that help or scare you away? It is nice and soft and mushy. It definitely does not have a piano action, but the keys are pressure sensitive. There is no on board sequencer. As stated before, the manual SUCKS and it is not a very intuitive instrument.

I love the patches and the additional cards. There is an exceptional assorment of sound banks. I'm into space and ambient music and could care less if I have realistic sounds. I don't think that the strings compare to those in the Proteus, but they're OK. I was disappointed in the depth of the French Horns, Trombones, etc. It has good velocity and aftertouch. Too bad the manual SUCKS! OOPs! I've said that before!

I've only had it a couple of weeks, but it appears to be reliable. If only I could have someone interpret the manual, I'd be a happy camper.
Also, a video manual exists for the XP60 and 80, but there is no video training manual for the XP-30, because it does not have an onboard sequencer

I spent almost an hour with customer support, only to learn that I need to be in a Performance in order to do multi-timbral things. The person with whom I spoke couldn't translate things into "blond," and had difficulty breaking things down into Step 1, 2, etc.

If it were lost or stolen, I would by a KORG Trinity or Triton or Proteus 2000 or ANYTHING else! Why? The sounds are great, but if I can't figure out how to sequence with it, I think it is TOTALLY WORTHLESS! I would buy something with easier to understand documentation and a more intuitive interface similar to a Korg or a Proteus!

I've had my XP-30 for a month now. I took 3 weeks vacation and virtually dedicated this time to go beyond the "surface" of this amazing machine. For ease of use I found nothing comes easy unless you take stabs at the various settings WITHOUT THE MANUAL. That way you find out what you need to know before going into such a sophisticated piece of gear. Once comfortable with the instrument, I found navigating fairly easy. Presets sound excellent (but I expected this from Roland) after being quite surprised with the sounds even on my now traded in XP-10. Patch editing does become a bit easier with the OEM supplied E'Magic's SoundDiver v. 2.06 (the most current) software. I did have trouble with loading SoundDiver at first. It did not like Creative Labs drivers that were set up for the standard AWE64 card. SoundDiver would not boot up due to some of Creative's drivers "blocking" it, so I disabled most of the MIDI drivers that Creative Labs sets up save the AWE64 Wave Table Synthesis driver and all works fine now. (If you have an AWE64 card you can't delete the drivers or you will lose all of them!) You just have to disable them. Patch editing with SoundDiver is quite easy once you get the hang of it and you can copy and pastes performances from one spot to another quite easily. As far as the manual goes...typical Roland (or is it typical Japanese to English translation problems) it is great in some areas poor in others. How about the XP-30 video Roland?

Polyphony of 64 voices and in my use, have not heard any signs of notes dropping...but I'm working on it. Keyboard action is semi-weighted and feels very comfortable. Insertion effects number 40 and I've used the foot controller to trigger Rotary on some of the organs. Sliders 1-4 can be programmed for controllers and work in real time in MIDI sequencing. (Nice!) Easy to set up splilts and having the ability to assign a pedal hold on either side of the split or both!
Unit will handle up to two expansion boards. I installed one already and it took all of 2 minutes. No problems. Purchased a 4 Mb Smart Media Card ....wow $125.00 CDN from Roland agent. What a rip-off. These cards are manufactured generically by Toshiba and I would recommend going out to a discount camera store and see if you can get them any cheaper. But 4 megs on board is plenty to "back-up" your system and store many more performances. When you back up to the Smart Media card, you back up the entire synth each time and either overwrite a file or create a new one. Great for keeping a gigging set on board and when you get home you can load on your "Home" setup (s).
There is no on-board sequencer but this is why I bought it. I use my PC to do this stuff.

Pianos are great. I have the Roland RD-600 stage piano and the Steinway Concert 1 patch is on the Session patch on the XP-30...it's very hard to tell the difference if there is any. Of course there's patches I won't possibly use but I've run through most of the "on-board" patches and I'd say 90% sound great. It lacks ethnic and the common SFX that I had in the XP-10 under the GS structure but some of these can be acquired via the expansion boards. With the 60/70's Keyboards expansion card...I don't think I could ask for very much more, plus the fact you can do some fancy tone editing.
I'm in a 50's/60's R & R band for fun and will find this board very satisfactory. Organs (with the expansion card) are great and the on-board brass and strings will fill in nicely. At home I tinker with classical and contemporary stuff from the 20's 30's 40's & 50's. Again the XP-30 will fit the bill precisely. Keyboard action is pretty good being semi-weighted and is responsive I feel quite "correctly" for the respective patch being used.

After owning an XP-10 for 4 years and lugging it along on boats and in my car and having it withstand a lot of bouncing around, I have complete faith in the reliability of the XP-30 although time will really prove this out. I would use it on a gig without a backup. On gigs I'm considering leaving my RD-600 at home due to the great piano sounds the XP-30 provides though it's a bit short on the number of keys but switching octaves is very easy and all the buttons are large, well lit and laid out for quick access.

Due to the size of our city, and in all fairness, the limited knowledge that a local retailer can offer, I have contacted Roland a number of times. I have had nothing but a "bending over backwards" in help from them. I work in the computer field and it's impossible to know everything on every machine. (Where is that person?) I give Roland Canada (Gary) a thumbs up for his assistance.

If stolen I would acquire this unit again. I am just over 50 and have been playing keys since I was 5. I currently own a Roland PMA-5; Roland RD-600 Piano and now the XP-30. (I don't work for Roland...just like their stuff) I've had short term ownership of a Korg NS5R module but dumped it as soon as I saw the add in Keyboard Mag for the XP-30. I have also complied a patch list for myself and others for the XP-30 and Cakewalk. My own list covers the XP-30 on-board tones plus the 60/70's 70's keyboards, the PMA-5 and RD-600. Anyone interested in the XP-30 + expansion boards ONLY, I would be willing to help.

The presence of many big buttons makes the synth very easy to use overall to do the main function. The editing in depth is very hard if you use only the insufficient display(2x40). To choose the sounds is necessary to press too button. Very interesting is the software to manage the sounds and the performances but it is a little difficult. The manual is too simple: it doesn't go in depth.

The polyphony is 64 notes but every sound can have four tones that reduce the polyphony. The keyboard action is very good and has channel aftertouch. The synth has three built in effects: one for reverbs, one for chorus, one for dsp they are insufficient (look at trinity or alesis qs and yamaha) but the quality is very high. The sounds are more then 1400 and you have 128 user sounds in addition. The performances are 32 + 32; they are few but you can buy the memory card to have some other space. The sample memory is 32MB of compressed samples and you can add two other expansion board (they are very expensive). there isn't a sequencer.

The general quality is very high and you can make many interesting sounds using the big synthesis capabilities. Many sounds have different level. To make better sounds you must use the dsp effect processor. Pianos: nice piano very good (not acoustic) it plays a little bright, The session piano isn't good; you can have some enhancement using the editing(sessione piano is good on the upper frequencies). Too few. Organs: poor Flute: very good Pads: wonderful Brass: poor (an exception is the super tenor) guitar: nylon good in the middle, str guitar very poor(has somebody a k2500 Slo type Guitar for xp30?) electric and distorted are good. all orchestral: wonderful synth: very good bass: very good ethnic: good but too few.
ps if you use very well the effects and the editing you can make many acoustic sounds interesting and make many new sounds. For me too drum sample

I'd buy it again but I'd look the Generalmusic Equinox. I love it but i'd have liked some other sample of piano and acoustic guitar and overall a bigger display. The overall quality is very high. I'll look the country board for guitar.

The preset patches are incredible! Most keyboards will have some not so useful patches, but this one has very usefull prsets! This Synth is amazingly easy to edit patches to create your own variations of sounds! I've already made a couple of them. The manual was difficult to completely understand at first(especially the section on how to make your own patches) but it gets much easier when you actually start trying it yourself!

It has 64-voice polyphony. I love the weighed keys because it gives it a much more realistic "feel" to it. It has 40 effects that can be applied to the patches. I was amazed that it had so many sounds! It has the full JV1080/JV2080 Sound set plus 3 of Roland's more popular Expansion boards(Session, Orchestral, and Techno) and there's still room for 2 more expansion boards! The lack of a sequencer is easily made up by the expansion boards and price of course.(Since you can still sequence with a PC and MIDI software like Cakewalk)

The sounds are trully impressive! Especially the Orchestral sounds. One of the reasons I purchased this synth was because of the realism of these sounds! Since I compose mostly scores, the Orchestral expansion alone was worth getting this synth. Everything is fully customizable(The effects, velocity, aftertouch,etc.)with the assignable sliders! The effects were very natural as well. I also like how the sounds are "true to life" depending on the velocity.When the velocity is very high or low, you can hear the changes in the sound.(unlike other synths that will just increase or lower the volume of the same sound)

I would definently depend on this synth. It has a very durable body which can be trusted to take anywhere. I would take this and a laptop to a gig, without any other backups. (If anything was to go wrong, it most likely wouldn't be the synth's fault)

I haven't needed to use it yet. (hopfully I won't have to)

If it was to be stolen, I would definently get it again! I've used it for a couple of months now and I've aleady made several songs and scores with it! This is by far the best damn package you can get for a synth at this price range! I definently would never get rid of it! (If I ever get new gear, this synth will always remain in my gear list)

This is an update to my previous review - At the time, I said that I loved the machine except for some significant grunge - IM distortion, and a grungy static near the end of slow decays.
The grunge has been resolved - it was a problem in the otput circuitry, and not a design flaw.

The sounds are impressive, but I dislike the method of selection - requires a confirming press of the Enter key to actually change the patch. I suppose this can also be useful, you set up the patch number as you have the time, and then one keypress switches, but this is not the best performance option.

Generally good sample set - saxes suck, of course, but the ALL do - it's not a good instrument to sample, there aare too many ways to produce the same note. This is best left to modeling-style instruments.
I have a minor issue: many of the decaying-type sounds (guitars, pianos, etc.) have what appears to be a short loop-very 'static' sustained tone-and a tendency toward an unnaturally long decay time. This is. Of course, easily correctable, but a bit of a pain.

Roland's Customer Support desk was initially not helpful - the tech could not hear the problem over the phone (may be true, but it was really obvious to me, and to a friend who heard it on the phone.) But in the end, this was not an issue.

The grunge in my XP-30 was not a system-level problem, the output stage was defective. My service tech replaced a couple of parts and the problem went away! Curiously, this was the second XP-30 exhibiting the problem (the first I returned to the store) but the main point is - it sounds great!
I think it's a great cost-per-feature machine, and now that the grunge has been resolved, I wholeheartedly recommend it!

I am a professional musician, but a first time synth owner and MIDI enthusiast, and I found all the basic functions of the XP-30 to be very intuitive for a beginner/ intermediate. You can pretty much figure out all the basic stuff just by spending 10 minutes with it in the music store without even looking at the manual! When you get into the guts of it though, this board is an incredibly versatile machine, if you can figure out what everything does. I figure it