An unmissable powerhouse.
The Roland XV-5080 is one of Roland's biggest flagships synths, featuring 1083 base waveforms built in, a built-in sampler, COSM sound modelling module, 4xSRX and 4xSR-JV80 slots. With its big screen, the on-board editing is quick and easy, especially thanks to the intuitive button layout.
The sound department itself is where the XV-5080 really shines. Thanks to its massive variety in waveforms and where they've come from (including JD-990 waveforms!), the XV-5080 can sound beautifully warm and lush, or cold and creepy. The presets it comes with by default are beautifully programmed, and are extremely expressive, making it perfect for any keyboard player.
On the sound design side of things, patch creation is easy but very in-depth, including a lot of nice features that make it as versatile as it is. Filters have a variety of modes, including your typical low pass, band pass and highpass, and some more variations. Filters can also be made to be velocity-sensitive, making for an extremely expressive sound when programmed right -- especially when combining it with the velocity curves it has on offer.
Other noteworthy patch creation options are the extremely powerful LFOs, being able to control many parts of the synth's engine; the downside is, however, that you only get two. Beyond that, there's also the inclusion of an "analog feel" and "stretch tuning" feature, which convincingly plays the part of mimicking a beautiful analog synth of the 80s. Also a nice feature is a very powerful pitch envelope shaper, to shape more synthesized sounds into something more believable.
The sampler is an incredible feature, only available on the XV-5080. You can load up your own sample CDs and send its samples to the "sample" section of the WG tab, and that sample set suddenly gets full access to the XV engine's features. It turns what looks like a gimmick feature, into a powerhouse feature that you would surely miss if you ever sold this thing on.
The XV-5080's one downside ultimately, though, comes from its ability to be expanded. It's really cool that this is an option, and the features the expansions offer are plenty cool on their own. However, even second-hand they are quite pricey. Your average SRX card ranges anywhere from $130 to $250, and the average SR-JV80 card costs $100-$170 a pop. On top of that, while the XV-5080 has a sampler built in, you're going to have to provide your own 72-pin SIMM RAM (128MB max), and an SCSI drive. Luckily this isn't too expensive, but a bummer to be sure.
Outside of its downsides considering expansion, though -- The XV-5080 is a high recommendation, as are the expansion features it offers. To me, it's become an unmissable piece to my arsenal.
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned