Sympathy for the Devil
Update – refurbishment and repairs now at the end of the article.
To be up front: the only reason I don’t call this Roland’s best synthesiser is that I haven’t used every one of them, only most of them. I’ll be content with one of the best.
This will need to be a long review as it has to compensate for over five years of woefully inadequate commentary. I won’t go over all of the basics – if you are unfamiliar with the JD-XA you might like to start with the reviews from Sonic State or Sound On Sound which are the most comprehensive and informed. Even then you will hear the reviewers relentlessly drag the topic back to comparisons with Roland’s past. The ideal reviewer would be about 15 years old, have enough knowledge but no obedience to history. They would use the JD-XA to make the wild and beautiful shit we need in the world right now.
The JD-XA is shiny black, with hot red glowing controls that make it hard to see what you are doing. It looks like something out of 1980’s horror movie like Halloween, a complete fuck you to the classic woody 70s interface. People talk about that like it’s a bad thing. I think of Roland, forever trapped in their wood panelled hell, occasionally screaming out their defiance.
It is a hybrid analogue/digital synthesiser, there’s a green circuit board and a red circuit board inside. It follows current Roland nomenclature – each program includes 8 parts; 4 mono analogue, 4 poly digital. The 4 analogue parts can be stacked to be 4 note polyphonic. The digital parts are Roland Supernatural, which is a new thing to me, I’ll come back to that later.
Let’s just look at the analogue side for the moment and consider what it is, rather than what people might want it to be. Four voices were never intended as a piano and it’s obvious Roland’s engineers were thinking of it as a KORG Mono/Poly affair. The two oscillators per part can synch, and cross modulate, ring modulate. Each has two LFO’s that go way up into the audible realm. And then the filters…
There are 3 filters that can be selected for each partial (on a pentagram knob) – Roland style LP, Moog style LP, and something very odd that can be LP, HP or BP – one circuit – unstable, tumultuous, angry… what is it for? At one point Sonic State’s presenter says he asked Roland UK about it and they were going to ‘fix’ it before release. I don’t think mine is a special machine but here is the same noise – I think they were never about to ‘fix’ it. The manual is terse:
This is a multi-mode filter consisting of a simultaneous LPF, HPF, and BPF. Although it is a relatively standard circuit, it is designed so that the resonance changes dramatically.
Now keep in mind the two LFOs that can reach audible frequencies (and a whole other modulation matrix) being fed to this ‘dramatic’ circuit…
This thing makes a HELL of a noise.
At this moment you might ask, why is this a good thing?
Have you ever used an EMS AKS? Tried to use it for melodies when all it wants to do is tear the universe apart? Why do people want to spend $10,000 for one? The raw energy of the early synthesisers – and no I don’t mean Jupiters, I mean the bleeding edge that defined early experimental music creation. Here it is from Roland of all people. Fix it, my arse.
At the end of every part is an MFX effects unit – so eight of them. I first met these in the XV5080 and then in the Fantom XR. They are notably whack, having some very unusual effect combinations. So having created your four part EMS AKS nightmare machines you can run them through four (or more if you are clever) of the equivalent of a ICRAM jamboree. The result is bracing.
Did Roland really intend to make a shiny black and red devil trombone? Maybe there was that one guy at the table who was a fan of early SPK. But Roland is not Korg, they are large and hard to steer, a bit like the Titanic. They did try the System 500 modules with the slogan ‘Experimentation is Rewarded” – remember them? There was obviously a mood at the Corporation, but I think what we have here is an attempt to introduce that kind of thinking to their primary audience, the guys that want a keyboard for their church services to match their Roland accordion.
So they partnered their red circuit with their green circuit – Supernatural.
Last time I looked at Roland there was Sample and Synthesis. The XV5080 had a system where a pair of tones are combined in a structure which determines the relationship between them, filters and amplifiers. The basic structure is each tone having its own filter and amp, but they could also be crossed in various noisy ways. Two of these structures becomes a patch. So each time you tap a key you might hear four tones overlaid in your patch.
Supernatural is primarily about sample playback, where it replaces velocity sample switching with some kind of modelling that provides a smooth blend of sounds. Roland are extremely vague about it. Sample playback (Supernatural Acoustic) is distinct from synthesis (Supernatural Synthesis). The JD-XA only has the latter. The Integra-7 was the big daddy for this, with the Jupiter 80 as the performance instrument. Now the Fantoms are all supernatural ZenCore.
Each digital part is is based on three partials. Each of these is an oscillator, filter and amp. There can be ring modulation between two of them and some kind of FM, but no synch. There’s a distinction made between modelled waveforms and PCM samples – some of the models can be tweaked such as the pulse width – but I’m not sure what modelling means here – I think it’s multi-sampled waveforms across the pitches that are blended as are the acoustic sounds. The hundreds of samples are old friends like the Jazz Doo. Gotta love that Jazz Doo. It’s actually a very capable synthesiser with broad range of expression and while it will never match the analogue for madness, three oscillators and filters per note is beyond versatile.
Anyway if your ambition in life is the Roland Eaten-All-The-Pies String Sound, this is where you go for your Jupiter 8 emulation. Actually go get a System-8 you’ll be happier. And I think that’s pretty much what everyone did, because the JD-XA languished.
The few people left standing recognise a curious relationship between the red and green. For a start you can run the digital sound output through that analogue filter. Nice, it goes insane. Then remember that you have those eight MFX units. For every mental patient noise you make in the analogue side you can create an evil psychiatric nurse sound in the digital side. You can mix sugar and spice. The combinations are about DEPTH – the DISTANCE between the analogue and digital sounds is vast and of near endless inspiration.
One last thing I should address is the impressive level of whining about the on board sequencer. Remember the EMS AKS? It had a sequencer on it as well, and no it didn’t store your multi-timbral master work either. It was a means to create patterns and rhythmic structures and did kind of well for Pink Floyd back in the day – seeing as you’re all about classic synthesis.
There are synthesisers that have an impressive zest for life – the Novation Bass Station 2 is that. There are some that have a certain majesty – the MKS80 perhaps, or TG77. There are few that can range between these extremes, I guess some of the American ones I could never afford. And then there’s Korg, God bless them. But as a second hand buyer of lost cats this is the best of the bunch. An instabuy. A snapitup. Only if you are that 15 year old at heart, and believe that ‘Experimentation is Rewarded’.
Updates
I’ll never know why the machine came with shiny black panels with red lettering. I’d have thought they’d test this with stage lighting – maybe it only appeared in time for a trade fair and the initial design was locked in too quick. The control text is impossible to read on stage and the shiny finish was all fingerprints. Roland once offered up stick-on matte panels with white lettering years before I bought mine 2nd hand. I fumed and cursed and, expecting nothing, finally emailed Roland Australia with the part number. They were quite surprised (how did you find the number?) and then surprised me with a package with the stick-on panels. Very nice!
Then the machine started to make a HORRIBLE digital noise about an hour after warming up. There’s a problem with the bit where the analogue and digital signals are mixed. I had no idea what to do about it but finally found this discussion. It took me months to get around to getting it serviced but it only took a day to replace the part and the machine is back to normal. So if you get this fault it’s a relatively easy fix.
Would love to but – £1500!