One of the great joys of synthesis....replicating sounds of yesteryear and matching the groove. It's also a tremendous discipline and provides you with a great understanding of the architecture of sound. Happy days! 😉
I love the sound and the potential of this board...,its a shame they did not just place two high resolution knobs on there, instead of ,+,-. That could have made the process a bit smoother.
I've owned my JD-XA for 18 months. You're right about menu diving. You can short cut to some pages from various panel controls, but others can only be reached with numerous presses of Shift+. I still think it's brilliant for sheer flexibility and routing possibilities. Analogue out has bright vibrant sound, compared to routed via effects. Combining analogue with digital for extra oscillator or sub-bass works nicely too.
If I had it my way, I think it would be time now for a JD-X8 with eight two-oscillator analog voices and a five octave keyboard. But, Roland would have a conflict there with their Jupiter-X, which again, if I had it my way, deserves an update to a Jupiter-XL with a six octave keybed of the Jupiter-80. Nonetheless, dreams and personal desires aside, we live in the real world where market dictates the rules, and still, I must say that although initially I wasn't too keen on the JD-XA, now the instrument has grown on me to the point that I want to buy it. I think the JD-XA is absolutely amazing!!!
What specific sound is this though? Or is this just made with a plain square and sawtooth wave alone? These sounds sound like they have way more tones than just that. Also, is the chorus effect on here flanger or chorus that you mentioned? Because the JD-XI doesn't have a chorus, which is my favorite effect of course, and it's the only one it doesn't have...SBN RESONATE
Brother awesome. U can fire up 8 tracks same time with jdxa? How is the internal clock of it? Stable? Only asking cause im complete dawless. Gonna clock it from my erm multi anw but still fot them free flow cable free jams :p it sounds amazing
Hi Tim, I know I'm a bit late to this party but what did you think of the JD-Xa?? Do you think it's a bit of a "stuck in the 80's" type of synth sound wise? Is it Roland's updated version of the great JD 800? I'm looking for a synth that exells at evolving pad sound design and this synth kinda has my curiosity...but I don't know why:). If you can remember playing it what was your thoughts on it? Have you come across a synth that is much better for evolving layered pads creation than this?
Hi, Yes it's been a long time since I had the JD-XA. To be honest it is a synth that I kind of regret selling, I'm hankering after getting one again. I think the main reason for this is I have since bought a Jupiter XM and appreciate now how the control surface of the JD-XA was helpful to cope with the complexities of the 4-partial / 4-part architecture of the digital side of the synth. Also, I really miss not having a sequencer on the XM like there is on the JD-XA. That said, the XM surpasses the JD-XA in terms of sampled sounds, the XM has thousands whereas the JD-XA had approx 400. So from this point of view the XM expands a lot on the sonic capabilities of the JD-XA's digital engine, it can do layered pads very well, you can set the velocity response of each layer separately, but the XM menus really do suck!
@@TimShoebridge It’s interesting how Roland just never learns. Going from not to well understood JD-XA, to even more menu heavy Jupiter X. And those small cryptic display.
Shame we didn’t just play 1 bass note + triad on all synths so that the JD’s analogue feature could participate. That’s what’s special about the JD. I’ve already heard heaps of digital Rolands. Appreciate your channel nonetheless
merchannel I know this is an old comment but I just gotta say, aside from the filters, the oscillator section of the jdxa is so stagnant and stale , I kinda feel like the digital VA side of it sounds more “analog” because you have control over osc drift where as the analog side doesn’t (and it doesn’t drift at all)...
Last Roland I bought was the Integra-7. Love it. But on the analog side of things Roland has been a bit of an epic failure imho. Not to mention the synths that are lit up like a xmas tree...
It depends. On the side of the interface and workflow system 8 is better and much more pleasant to use. In terms of possibilities, the JD-XA is much more powerful with real analog oscillators and filters (the vocoder is also analog) in addition to digital oscillators, 3 lfo (only 1 on system 8), more memories, more polyphony... The two are complementary, they don't sound the same.
