Roland XV-5050

Roland's XV-5050 is a 64-voice synthesizer packed with their XV-5080 synth engine in a small 1-unit rack-module. It features four stereo tones per patch, expressive Matrix Control and over a thousand inspiring presets-expandable via high-quality SRX-Series Wave Expansion Boards. There are also three independent effects processors, digital outputs, plus a USB port for easy connection to computers.

Front panel controls are at a minimum, as you might expect from such a small rack module. You can select and edit patches from the front, but this module is really at home in a computer/MIDI studio set-up. You get all of Roland's XV-5080 sounds plus a selection of sounds from the newer Fantom-X series of synthesizers. The three effects processors offer 24-bit reverb and chorus, plus 90 multi-effects including COSM Guitar Amp Modeling.

For connectivity, the XV-5050 has superb features. They include four analog outputs, 24-bit D/A converters and S/PDIF digital outputs, a front panel USB port for simplified MIDI connections with a Mac or PC (drivers included on a CD-ROM), and two SRX expansion ports for adding more sounds (up to 192 MB total) from the SRX-Series Wave Expansion Boards. Each expansion contains 64MB of new sounds and patches, and can be user-installed in seconds.

Cost effective, simple, compact, computer savvy, superior sound quality. These are the means by which the XV-5050 was designed to provide users with the sounds of Roland's flagship XV-series sound engine.