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the studio -> roland jv1080


Provided bread and butter sounds for most of my tracks. Expanded with 3 expansions cards, there are plenty of sounds to choose from.


The appearance of the Super JV mainly interested me because of it's massive 64 note polyphony. The typical at that time was 16 to 32 - a limiting figure for many. I had decided that whatever I bought next it was to have good filters, resonant and fully programmable etc. I also really wanted a Roland because they are really, well cool. JX, Juno Alpha Juno, JD, TR, you name it , Roland kit is cool. It took about 10 seconds to decide on the JV and then another 6 weeks finding one!

JV1080 - click for large picture
Roland JV-1080

The JV1080 has to be one of the classic modern bits of dance kit over the last few years (and well used too), offering access to a huge selection of sounds / patches thanks the expansion slots (the 1080 has 4) containing 8 Meg of sample ROM. The modules are available in different flavours for many different styles of music such as D+B, Techno, orchestra and so on. The best part about the module is you get a lovely gold sticker with each one which says
" E X P A N D E D"!!

Roland then introduced the JV 2080 which can hold 8 expansion modules, has better FX and a larger display - a great improvement, as I have almost run out of space in my JV! They also have slots for the new SRX series cards which have 4 times as much memory and generally seem to have very realistic multisamples in them.

You can now pick up 1080s and 2080s cheaply second hand. I think a lot of people are moving to software synths as they are much better ;) :P You can even get a software version of the 1080!

The SR-JV expansion cards have come down in price a lot now and I have seen them around for £60-70 (£169 used to be a good price) making them even more desirable. I now use the Techno, Hip-Hop and House cards which seem to complement each other very well.

I have seen some -very- cheap deals for JV1080s on ebay recently (100 quid or so) which is a steal! With no expansion the sounds are a bit, well, pedestrian these days (and nothing new) but put in a couple of expansion cards of your choice and this becomes a really nice machine. At least I guess you could get  2 or more and use them in stack mode to get stupidly high polyphony!!!

Planet Groove have a useful list of SR-JV cards.

BEWARE of cheap deals on any SR-JV cards with high numbers (98 and 99 I know of). These are not full sound set cards but demos with few patches and wave forms which were apparently given away with machines in some cases? Just make sure you research first.


JV expansion pics

Picture of an expansion card about to be added.

Installing the card...
Cards Installed.


 

Roland JV1080          
Roland JV2080
Roland JV-1080

Roland JV-2080

 


Sounds of note

There are so many sounds / patches I still adore on the JV this is going to be hard, but I'm going to be ruthless - only the most favorite of my favourites and an equal number from the internal presets and Techno expansion card.


JV Sounds of Special Note
Preset Sound Name
Comments
A:061 Church Pipes A good church organ. Layered with the 01 sounds great!
B:057 Velo Techno Lovely, dynamic pulsing sound to add movement to a song
B:68 X-Mod Man Weird. But still good, clean family fun.
C:053 E-Motion pad Sexy moving pad and nicely controllable.
C:099 Flying Waltz I heard this sound and it helped inspire a whole tune.
C:121 Ocean floor Saves getting some expensive AKG mics wet I suppose
GM:098 Soundtrack I guess I have to include one GM sound!!
XPA:033 Brain Waves Wow. Totally spaced patch. Hold a chord and change the controllers slowly - an almost randomly changing sound.
XPA:129 Euforia Familiar sampled string pad sound but usable.
XPA:133 Mystic Pad A lovely variation on the tinkly pad theme.
XPA:149 Liquid Sky This sound is BIG. It builds up and blows your mixer inputs. Wonderful.
XPA:196 Arpege me Do as it says. Very usable, alter mod, breath and aftertouch in real time.
XPA:210 FazzyCow 808 Great lead sound based on the 808 cow bell. I am sure it has a use.
Please note the XPA patches above all address the Techno collection expansion card so you obviously need one installed to hear the sound.


Experiences

The JV used to be my most used bit of kit, until I got the Virus.

The unit has 3 sets of stereo outputs so use of outboard effects is easy and it is possible to set up special outputs for, say drums and bass to bring out onto the desk. The configuration I mostly use, out of interest is the first pair (L,R) to dry mix and second pair (3,4) to wet mix via the Digitech .

I do find the JV a little difficult to program, maybe because of the small screen (though Roland did get the best out of it) or maybe because it's got many parameters. Although there are well thought out short cuts for frequent operations I never end up using them and I always seem to have to press the 'parameter' button once more!

There is at least one editor for the JV which promises to make editing much easier; SuperJV but I have never really got round to try that as yet...


System Exclusive problems

One problem I experienced in early days was when dealing with system exclusive dumps that at times the whole unit would freeze when sending program data, thus requiring a restart. It worked second time. I never really got the the bottom of this problem. Has anybody else experienced this? 

Another irritation with system exclusive was that the Atari could never take a system dump without freezing, and the Midi Translator PC had similar problems if compatibility was set on! The Midex 3 fixed this, but I have noticed the XV5080 is now getting CRC errors on Sysex dumps! I get the feeling the JV/XV is particularly heavy with MIDI when sending this type of data.
 

Summary

I have now started using a xv5080, all the JV-80 cards are in there and I copied the presets across. The idea is it takes the place of he 1080. However its not that simple! More here.

If you are on a budget, it is probably better to get a 2080 or a 3080 if possible. As far as Roland kit goes I want a Jupiter 8 with MIDI, I was lucky enough to spend a little time with one and fell in love! Maybe it's just vintage gear in general though... 

 
© Alan Mathers
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Dec 2013

Tracked by dancecrave