by Rich the TweakMeister
I have it, I love it, I use it in every
song I make. If you can afford only one module this is the one.
If you are a pro with a rack of synths but no current Roland synths, this
is the one, it gives you the entire JV 2080 sound set plus the session board
and one slot to add a board of your choice. This synth is a great way to
start up with MIDI. It gives you tons of sounds to make music in a
wide variety of styles. It is GM compatible, so you can play MIDIfiles
off the internet, or use it to make your own. It works with Logic,
Cubase, Sonar and any other sequencer that supports midi bank select.
What I like about this synth:
The sound of this little box is awesome. It's
a true Roland, with the same top quality sounds used daily in the industry.
The JV1010 is perfect for remote operation
by a computer sequencer. Once you set it up, you never have to touch
the controls again. All the patch changing is done from your computer
screen.
The session board (hardwired in) has a
great, and I mean that, a great acoustic piano that can stand alone or in
a mix. Its classic guitar is the most realistic I've heard in any
synth and very expressive. The Techno sounds in the JV1010 have controllers
routed to filters and resonance. Yes you can do a perfectly articulated
sweep by slowly raising Controllers. You can draw the sweep into your
sequencer to make it come out the way you want. The filter/ resonance
has Teeth! It will bite, growl, tear at your mix (and be careful not
to let it tear up your ears). There's an exotic flute that will really drive
you to the far east. Massive Orch hits. Outstanding guitar distortion.
Great 808/909 kit. Clean drums too, for rock, country, and all the
conventionals. It has a thick choir compared to tinny vox's you find elsewhere
and its orchestral sounds are quite useable.
Add the Orch I expansion board (not included)
and you really can get serious. I also really like the classic pads
and synth sounds of the Roland D50 and Juno 106, and Super Jupiter.
Roland emulated their own vintage gear very nicely! Probably the thing
I like most is how well it all blends together into a unique synth personality.
The sound quality is excellent. the variety of programs is vast and
some are truly inspirational. The factory presets are only the beginning.
You can use Sounddiver, which is supplied, to edit and create your own patches.
There is tremendous tweaking power here.
What I don't like about this synth
The manual is really not as helpful as
it should be. Sometimes newbies read it too close and get confused.
Also you only get one stereo pair of outputs.
If you want more you should look at the JV 1080 2080, 3080 5050. The limitation
here is if you are wanting to mix the parts on a mixer to eq different parts
and add external effects to some instruments and not others.
Not possible. You can, however, mix the sounds using the volume controls
in your sequencer, and you can assign different internal effects
to individual instruments in the mix.
Another issue is that you can only access
drums on channel 10. This means you are limited to 1 set per 16 channel
multi setup. There's no way to isolate the kick and snare on different channels.
Only one free expansion slot. Sometimes I wish the signal was a wee bit
hotter. Its perfectly useable, but if it had another 3 db of gain (a tiny
amount) I'd be ecstatic. Ok, Ok what do you expect for under 500 bucks.
You may have to touch the trims on your board to match louder modules. I
do.
Bang for the Buck
You can bet your hard earned cash on this
one. I think it is worth every cent. Over 1000 patches of tremendous
variety, add a board and you are up to 1,280 Patches! That's 10 MIDI banks!
Official Description
The compact JV-1010 offers
the professional sounds of the acclaimed JV-2080 at an incredibly affordable
price. It also includes all the sounds from the "Session" expansion board
-- including Roland's most popular stereo grand piano -- and an expansion
slot to give users access to the incomparable SR-JV80 Series sound library.
Features:
- 64-voice polyphony
- 1,023 Patches
from the JV-2080
sound module and the "Session" expansion board
- 1 expansion slot for
additional SR-JV80 Series wave expansion board (see below)
- Reverb, chorus, plus
40 multi-EFX
- Intuitive user interface
with knob-based control
- 1/2 rack design
- Phrase Preview for
hearing a selected sound in a musical phrase
- SoundFinder Categories
- GM compatible
- Includes CD-ROM with
sound editing software.
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