Roland D-70

I have owned a D70 for 7 months now. Let me tell you about it. First, the voice architecture: first you start with a 'tone'. A tone is a PCM sample that has an associated pitch ENV, Filter and env, and amplifier and env. Once you have your tones created you assemble up to 4 of them into a patch. A patch is 1 to 4 tones layered, or plit over the keyboard. Tones can be set to vel switch or mix. Once the patches are created you can specify up to 5 of these in a multi-timbral 'performance'. A performance is a set of five patches mapped to various midi channels, volumes and effects routings. the 6th voice in a performance is for the rhythm section. The rhythm section is actually quite powerful: you can specify, for each of the 76 keys, all the parameters of a tone. that is, there are 76 tones specifically mapped to the keys in order for the rhythm section so once you have your basic kits programmed you can create other unusual sounds and use those in the rhythm section (reversed sounds, elctronic zings and zaps, etc).

In my setup, I have local off set. In the past (as of a week ago) I would just play the keyboard and not care what channel the D70 was sending on because I would tell my sequencer to send all notes to a specific midi channel, controlling the performance patches or other midi devices. But I have been using the MIDI OUT page recently and now see how the D70 is a superior controller. With the MIDI OUT page you can, by a one button press, specify either LAYER, SPLIT, or ZONE mapping. You can also select which channel a zone will send on. And, you can turn out-sones on an off with the zone buttons:

 
s  s  s  s	upper 1 ch x        mode
l  l  l  l	upper 2 ch y	   sw/mix/norm
i  i  i  i	lower 1 ch z	    mode
d  d  d  d	lower 2 ch $	   sw/mix/norm
e  e  e  e
r  r  r  r	ZONE  LAYER  SPLIT 	     
*  *  *  *       *      *      *             

"slider" are physical sliders	
"*" are physical buttons
You use the alpha-dial (data dial to select the channels the various zones of the keyboard will send on for ch x,y,z and $). If you select LAYER (Simplest) then you will send on all of those midi channels. You can press the buttons under the sliders (each mapped to the uppers and lower zones), to turn on/off that midi out. Example: is x,y,z and $ are 1, 2, 3 and 4 and you are set to Layer and all the LEDs above the zone buttons are on then you will send to all of 1,2,3,4. If you press the 3rd zone button then you turn off the send to ch 3. If you select Split, then you can specify the split point of the upper1,2 and lower1,2 zones. so if all the sones are active (LEDSs on) and the split is at C4, then you will send on 1 and 2 on the lower and 3 and 4 on the upper. (Note: the midi channels can be set to control the internal performances patches or external midi devices. I use ch1-5 for the D70 patches, 6 is minimoog, 7 is prophet 5, 8 is MKS30, 9 is M1000, 10-14 is TX16W, 15 is XR 10, and 16 is D70 rhythm). Finally, if you slect Zone, you ca specify independent zones for uper 1, upper2, lower 1 and lower 2. You may have zone overlaps.

The way you specify the zones is great: if you press the ZONE or SPLIT button twice you get a graphic diaply shwing the keyboard and the zones as lines above the keyboard. By pressing and holding the sone button below the slider and pressing the upper and lower keyboard key you can specify the length and psotion fo the zone and immediately see a graphical rep of the zones. If a zone is deselected you will see it as a dashed line. An active zone is solid. very fast.

Finally, you can specify if the two voices in UPPER or LOWER will be layed (norm), vel switched (SW and approriate vel threshold) or mixed (MIX and threshold). You can also use the LEVEL and TRANSPOSE buttons with the four sliders to set volumes and pitch transposes for the MIDI output even for external devices.

Sorry about the typos... I am feeling lazy.

ciao,

Brett L Maraldo
Plexus Productions


So, I've had this machine at home a day (the D-70, not the drummers' stool), and I'm slowly finding my way around the user interface. I thought I'd give you my first impressions.

PHYSICALLY

Very nice. The 76-note keyboard is a *big* point in its favour. (I was after a partial replacement for the pf85, after all, and 5 octaves isn't really enough for a controller.) It's not very deep (front-to-back) so I'll have to get some longer Apex arms to bring it out so I can see the display when I'm using it live below the Wavestation. The D-70 has a very small cross-section, and looks a little strange alongside a Wavestation. The controllers feel much nicer than the D-50 - less spongy. The keyboard is better (but, it could not have been worse), and passable for piano solos (I couldn't possibly play a piano part on the D-50). The front panel buttons are so-so. Most are fine, but the function keys are shallow travel, creak a little, and feel a little flimsy. I have a phobia about broken microswitches after having a Mac mouse die on me and a fault develop in my replacement trackball, so I have a feeling I might get a failure here sometime.

SOUND

Sounds like $1,000,000. Well, sounds like $3500 which is what it lists for. Well, sounds like a D-50 but with a *lot* more punch and clarity, a smoother and more blended sound (since it's applying multimode filtering to the sample data rather than layering synth and unfiltered sample partials), a superb bottom end compared to the D-50, with the choir and bell samples transposing down well to the bottom of its 76-note board (I don't know yet whether it challenges the VFX as digital-synth-with-the-biggest-bottom until I get into programming it) - I can make sounds like on T. Dream's LEGEND soundtrack. The high-end is different to the D-50, mainly because it's using highpass resonant filtering for animation rather than lots of LFO mod. This is really where the D-50 and D-70 diverge in terms of capabilities. The '70 seems to have more warmth and character than the WS, and out-basses it as far as I can tell.

VOICE ARCHITECTURE

Quite respectable. Less LFO modulation than the D-50, simpler envelopes, no synth features like PWM. No ring-mod (Differential Phase Thingummy instead). But, of course, the thing which sold me on it when I heard it last year is the filtering. It's mistakable for analog resonant filtering unless you listen closely. How closely is a matter I have to investigate. Doing multimode resonant filtering on sample data is sweet. Very very sweet. I like it a lot. It suits the way I work, which involves putting sound elements into specific parts of the frequency spectrum. I enjoyed this on the VFX, and find it's lack to be my single biggest cause of frustration with the WS. Oh, the D-70's filter resonance can be overdriven in an interesting way, I notice.

Here's where the D-70 has its only serious weakness. It only has 30 voices. Without more LFO modulation facilities, I'll probably be wanting to do more layering of tones to add animation, and I'll be running out of voices pretty quickly, especially with multi-channel input. How much of a problem this is, remains to be seen.

PERFORMANCE HIERARCHY

Despite KEYBOARD's slamming, I find this to be rather good. The Tone Pallette sliders make incremental changes at the patch level (I think) to already-programmed tones, so that sounds can be modified in most major respects very quickly. (The LFO's aren't here, which is a bit of a shame - they're lower down.) All four tones are available for these changes, with graphical feedback, in parallel. This is very nice. KEYBOARD slammed the machine for not having cross-referencing tools for the tones. In fact, the Wavestation has the same problem, but has a clearer user interface for seeing what's where, which is why it's not a problem so much on the WS.

The multitimbral operation looks fairly sensible, although the user interface for walking around the MIDI parameters is hellish at times. I'll investigate this further, but so far all I've done with it MIDI-wise is checked controller transmission and SysEx'ed off all the internal memory.

Hey, the word 'SysEx' verbs quite well.

USER INTERFACE

A combination of superb and frustrating. The performance-level stuff (Tone Pallette, dedicated editing buttons) is superb, making sound design and modification quick, intuitive, painless, etc. Getting around the lower levels of the interface hierarchy is like having teeth pulled. It's not possible to jump around between tones as you'd like. Some parameters appear in several pages. Some pages appear more than once on separate programmer buttons, with different page titles (Gnnnh!). So, it'll take some getting used to. Like I say, a nice performance interface with some sh*tty interfacing below ground level...

The manual is fair. Nothing more. But then, it would have to be a very good manual to explain how the user interface hierarchy works - and it doesn't explain this very well at all. It took me a few hours and several cups of tea to figure it out; the most helpful part of the manual was the SysEx memory maps in the appendix.

MIDI CONTROL

Surprisingly good, given Roland's usual reputation here. The standard controllers can all be remapped at the performance (or is it patch?) level for the incoming reception parts. In addition, a performance has a transmission MIDI pallette which maps all the outgoing controllers. Zones can be layered for MIDI (although local patches can't be layered in ways you might expect) and send volume and patch changes. Notes aren't held under performance changes, which is a shame but not surprising. Oh: solo and portamento are supported, and the D-70 has *fingered portamento without retriggering*! Hooray, the feature that until now only Yamaha keyboards have gotten right. Now I have no excuse to buy a TX81Z. (But, who needs an excuse?)

SOFTWARE

Yes. It's true. The LFO's slow down when you play chords. I have to tell you, there's nothing more discouraging than powering up a $3500 synthesiser and having it announce "Software Version 1.00" at you. But then, I've been burned by Ensoniq. So, there's the LFO performance problem and a couple of the interface shortcuts seem not to work. According to Roland UK, I can just install the 1.17 ROMs into it; there's some confusion about whether there's a faster CPU upgrade as well. Roland tell me that I can just put 1.17 into this machine without a fast CPU, but wouldn't deny the existence of a fast CPU upgrade. I'll take the machine to 1.17 and see how well it performs. If it's too sluggish, I'll call Roland again and see what a new CPU will cost me.

FACTORY PATCHES

Usual assortment of Roland Rubbish with silly names. The previous owner had made an attempt at programming with about half a dozen patches called PIANO, CHOIR, SYNTH but otherwise the factory patches were intact. The worst thing is the bl**dy demo sequence. I don't want bl**dy Eric Persing playing sappy New Age fusion music on my synthesiser. I object to the legend "PCM Play" being inscribed on the front panel and the potted biography of Mr. Persing, one of L.A.'s hottest session players with TV commercials to his name. I mean, well, *yawn*.

STUPIDITIES

The D-70 doesn't have an IEC/Euro connector on the back. The mains cable is grommetted directly into the case. STOOPID for a live keyboard. This will be coming off in exchange for an IEC as soon as I can find my wire cutters...

Nick Rothwell


I bet you thought the D-70 was a Super LA synth, didn't you? Replacement flagship to take over from the D-50 and all that. Wrong-o. It so happens that I had the hood up on my D-70 to upgrade the ROMs, and I noticed something interesting. On all the important boards (main digital, analog subboard, PSU) there's the usual printing of the Roland logo and so on, but the D-70 legend is stuck on. Hmm, thought I, and peeled off one of the labels. Wanna guess what it says underneath?

"U-50."

So, the much-vaunted mega Linear Arithmetic synth is no such thing. It's not the top of the LA range, it's the top of the PCM sample player range. Roland obviously decided at the last moment that marketing a new "synthesiser" in the D-50 line was a better idea than another sample player, so the name was changed everywhere (well, apart from the id on the main chassis, which they missed).

This is no great surprise to some of us. I always thought the D-70 was a glorified U-series machine. Brett Maraldo agrees. It has the same sort-of profile as the U-20, and even comes boxes with the same end cheeks. But I never realised that it came so close to being the Roland U-50.

Now, I hope you'll excuse me as I slope off and hide my head in shame at being, after all my efforts, the owner of Yet Another Sample Playback Board...

Nick Rothwell


The sound of the D-70 was the first thing that struck me when I had a play with one. Not the warm (will I get flamed to ashes for calling a digital synth "warm"?), clear sound of the D-50 and not the crystalline, thin sound of the D-5/10/20/110 (although it's *much* nicer than the latter) but a pleasant (if slightly dull) sound that reminded me of an M1's pads with a little more grunt. The acoustic instruments were about as true as the U-20's. In fact, don't they sound rather like the...? Oh, yeah. There was that (finishes aside). The D-70 takes U series sample cards. Surely that would have caused some suspicions?

One might also have noted the lack of pulse width modulation, attack transients (as I recall, all of the D-70's "tones" are single cycle waves or complete samples) and most of the EQ was another sign that all was not as it seemed.

It must, of course, be noted that memory is a lot cheaper than it was in the heady days when the D-50 was released. The main reason for the existence of L/A synthesis (Roland's version thereof, anyway) was that the cost of memory required for the storage of complete samples was prohibitive. Without the cost factor we see complete samples being included.

What about the filters? I've heard it rumoured that they're quite good. One might be forgiven for thinking that Roland looked at the U-20, gave it some filters, did some jiggery-pokery with the LFOs (are there two on the D-70?) and released the beast. Roland might be losing its technical edge but the D-70's still (in my most humble opinion) one of the nicest sounding boxes out there. I'm not sure how useful DLM and "analog feel" are as synthesis tools but I think that the prescence of the former might just allow the D-70 to be called "synthesier", even if the synthesis method isn't really L/A.

Jonathan Elliott