Destination - Roland S-5x and S-7x Series

History, Disk, and File Format
In the beginnning, there was the Roland S-50 12-bit samplers. It was put out shortly after the Akai S612 and the Ensoniq Mirage. It eventually got a SCSI interface, and there is at least one S-50/550 CD-ROM available.

Roland then produced the S-700/750/760 line of samplers in the early 1990's, and didn't follow this up for quite a long time. This also included the SP-700 drum machine. Roland's have a dedicated following and a foothold in the media/movie industry of LA - many film artists and commercial jingle writers use Roland's. The Roland uses a proprietary disk format.

Recently, Roland has resurrected the sampler, or at least a unit that can read these samples. The XV-5080 is a combination of the popular JV-2080 technology with the older S-7x engine. It saves a .svd, .svp, and .wav combination on the standard DOS format.

Roland's new units are called Fantom, which are similar to the XV-5080 only more advanced (sort of). We deal with it seperately - go to the Fantom Series for more details.

Architecture Description
A Roland disk holds a variety of objects. The Patch is the basic instrument unit. A Patch is a KeyMap made up of different key ranges (not overlapping) called Partials. A Partial can access up to 4 samples. Samples are only mono, and stereo samples are made up of two mono files.

Performances are a set of up to 32 Patches, which can be grouped or separated on any MIDI Channel. A Volume is an organization of one or more Performances.

Although the Roland can store any of these objects separately, a Patch does not have to be in a Volume - it is helpful to think of the organization as a hierarchy. Most commercial CD-ROM's put everything in Volumes proper.

Peculiarities
Interestingly, the wavedata information sampled with a Roland S-7x series sampler is treated with a Frequency Emphasis boost, which pumps up the high end. When the Roland plays the sound out of its outputs, its internal hardware filters compensate for the built-in frequency emphasis, making the sample sound normal again.

What this means is that if you transferred normal 16-bit wavedata from any other source to the Roland, and then played it through the Roland, it will sound duller since the outputs would be de-emphasizing the high end. Conversely, any Roland data you play through another medium will sound tinny, since the frequency emphasis is not being filtered.

The solution is to mimic the Roland input filters on the way in to the Roland, and mimic them again on the way out. Translator contains a high quality De-emphasis (and Emphasis when importing into Roland) Filter that mimics the Roland samplers behavior.

Import Formats
The Roland imports the older S-50/550 format, and does an AWFUL job importing Akai. The XV-5080, however, can import Akai sounds, wiht better results.