XV-5080 vs. I-7: More differences than you might think!

[PauloF]

I used to have XR a few years ago. Which one sound better (AD converters, EFX) XR or I7. I consider go back to XR + SRX 6,7,8,9....

I think that may become largely a matter of personal taste and is why I have so many Roland modules...they all have their own particular strengths and slight filter differences that make them all indispensable to me (especially the JD-990's!)

If faced with a choice, I would opt for the Integra-7 hands down, because even though the XR is a fantastic sounding 128-voice 1-rackspace unit that allows up to 6 SRX boards, in the Integra you get all 12 SRX titles + the SuperNATURAL + Motional Surround + all of the XV 5080 tones and more for a price that can't be beat.

And for me, on top of that, having (up to) 8 independent OUTPUTS that we can assign any Part to, turns it in several independent Synths at the same time in the same box. Awesome !!

[scottrod]

I've worked hard to keep my studio in the digital domain as it's just so clean! Really disappointed there's no multi-channel ADAT, Firewire or USB, but at least there's the digital stereo out. Will use that to lay down tracks one at a time.

I'm using an mLAN system with two i88x units. Have a Kurzweil KSP8 in the digital domain with ADAT, a Motif ES8 on the mLAN bus, and now the JP-80 and soon the I-7 running into the i88x digital ins. Don't plan on giving it up any time soon despite Yamaha's decision to pull the plug. It works great! Latency around 2.5 ms in/ 4.8 ms out.

From what I read, mLAN required real in-depth knowledge of programming at the OEM level and companies just weren't willing to invest the money in getting personnel trained. It wasn't that Yamaha wanted to abandon it, other companies just weren't stepping up to the plate. Bummer.

[SoundworldA.D.]

And for me, on top of that, having (up to) 8 independent OUTPUTS that we can assign any Part to, turns it in several independent Synths at the same time in the same box. Awesome !!
PauloF

Bully for that Paulo! This thing is such a magnificent beast. I had the start of the SNS patches underscored by 50%! Turns out there are 16 variations of JP-8 Str patches and the Syn Pad patches had no fewer than 23 variations of that one alone. And that's only 39 patches...just 5,961 to go!

I went and took a look at the patch EDIT page. It is laid out so simple and logical. It reminded me of the JD-990 editing screens. Bring on the tones boys...Doogie is about to go to town! ;-))

I'm using an mLAN system with two i88x units.

Lost me with that one Scott! I need an explanation of what all of that is and what it does (well, at least I DO know that LAN stands for Local Area Network!).

A lot of people are complaining on several forums and it would seem that the hardware folks haven't quite caught up yet to fully supporting the digital revolution. Are you using a computer with all of this? Are you using a MAC or a PC? Just curious as a lot of people have seemed to prefer the MAC over the PC for music.

[scottrod]

mLAN was Yamaha's attempt at establishing an industry-accepted digital audio and midi protocol using Firewire (mLAN = music LAN).

The i88x units are simply Firewire A/D converter boxes that allow you to plug in an analog signal (or microphone) and get into the digital world, like any sound card (well, better quality than a lot of them). What makes them unique is they work using the mLAN system so you could not only route signals to the computer, but also into other synths or effects units that work with mLAN, keeping it all in the digital domain. They have ADAT and stereo digital inputs and outputs, so the signal coming out of the digital coax from my JP-80 (for example) stays completely in the 24-bit digital domain in the DAW until it comes out of the computer (the i88x) and goes to the powered speakers.

For instance, when you hook up a system "normally" you might go out of the synth (one D/A conversion) into a mixer (noise), into an effects unit (an A/D conversion) out of the effects unit (another D/A conversion) back into the mixer (noise) and into the soundcard (another A/D conversion). When it finally comes out of the computer heading for the speakers, another D/A conversion. That's a lot of chopping stuff up and putting it back together.

When using synths and effects units that are natively digital, with the mLAN system the ONLY conversion is when it goes to the speakers, even when routing to effects. If you were dumping it to a CD, it would NEVER see a conversion!

With my system powered up and everything wide open, there is no hiss. None. It's incredibly clean. Working strictly in the digital world, I run ten channels for the ES8, two for the JP-80, and eight for the KSP8 effects unit. It would have been marvelous to have ADAT out of the I-7, but the digital stereo is ok. I also have a Lexicon effects unit that works in the digital world. I work with PC's and Cubase as it's all I've ever used.

[timbo1000]

I finally took the time to do a head-to-head comparison between the same patches on my XV-5080 and the Integra-7, and while a lot of the patches of course do sound very similar, there are many that differ in more ways than just the FX employed.

I took a sampling of 16 patches (Dawn to Dusk, Vanishing, 5th Sweep, Phazweep, MG Sweep, Ceremony Timp, Dyno Toms, Inertia, Chime Wash, Terminate, Temple of JV, Dimensional, Jupiterings, PhasingPad, Percolator, and MoodRingz) and made the following observations:

First and foremeost, I had said that I wanted to check the difference of one of my favourites, "MoodRingz"...the winner, XV-5080 hands down! The I-7 version sounded more thin and "tinny" comparatively. The other ones that were quizzical were the two drum patches, "Ceremony Timp" and "Dyno Toms". The 5080 versions have only reverb, especially Dyno, where that massive Hall Verb just makes it come alive. Oddly enough, both I-7 versions employed a healthy dose of delay for some reason, which ruined the sounds for me.

On some of the "movement" patches and especially ones where there were nice filter sweeps, the I-7 came alive! This was noticeable on patches like "Chime Wash", "Terminate" and "Temple of JV". On "Inertia", the "JP-8SQ" tone sounded fuller on the XV version. Others like "5th Sweep", "Phazweep" and "MGSweep" sounded very similar. "Percolator" sounded very different because the XV version did not employ delay whereas the I-7 did.

All in all, a healthy competition, with some nice unexpected differences along the way. I am ecstatic that there are these differences because it just gives me that much more variation and sonic material to play with. I am going to have a blast building (or trying to build!) some of my favourite FantomXR patches like "Vortex" on the I-7.

Ah...I am already envisioning a massive "Dawn to Dusk" extravaganza with the JV-1080, JV-2080, XV-5080 and the I-7 all banging away with those lush slow filter sweeps coming and going at different intervals!

HI SoundworldA.D said that you were looking forward to making some of your favorite fantom X patches on the Integra and stated The Vortex, Rolands best patch ever, has the Integra 7 got the correct tones to make this patch or will you have to use alternatives like I had to on my Fantom G to recreate the Votex patch.
Tim

[SoundworldA.D.]

With my system powered up and everything wide open, there is no hiss. None. It's incredibly clean.

Thanks Scott. Now that is impressive! I can't make that claim and have to work pretty hard to insure that the S/N ratio is minimized especially during those quieter interludes and at the start and ending of tunes.

HI SoundworldA.D said that you were looking forward to making some of your favorite fantom X patches on the Integra and stated The Vortex, Rolands best patch ever, has the Integra 7 got the correct tones to make this patch or will you have to use alternatives like I had to on my Fantom G to recreate the Votex patch.

I assuming that I may have to find reasonable facsimile waves and or tones to match some of the Fantom patches on the I-7. I am hoping that it will be fairly easy though because there is a thread on the Forum where someone either converted 5080 patches to a fantom or vice versa so I know it can be done.

My poor Fantom XR has been sadly underused because my other synths like the OASYS and V-Synth's took precedence but I have built a killer User bank of 256 of my favourite patches and installed two SRX boards in it. I have never edited anything on the Fantom XR (yikes...what a tiny little screen!) but know the Roland architecture pretty well so it should be a good endeavor when I get around to it.

For now, I still have those 5,961 sounds to go through on the I-7 and too many unfinished songs to count to do much else. The Soundworld is suffering from the all too common ailment of "so much to do and so little time!"

[Johan325]

Patch no 189 PlayEuroRiff from SRX 05

Could be true, most of the TONE's in that patch are INTERNAL.

PlayEuroRiff
All Tone Switches ON
Tone 1 INTERNAL Syn Pulse 1
Tone 2 INTERNAL Syn Pulse 2
Tone 3L INTERNAL JP-8 Saw
Tone 3R INTERNAL Bright Form
Tone 4L SRX-05 Funk SD1
Tone 4R SRX-05 Ultra SD 2
MFX Effect is a 3D DELAY
Left is a eighith note
Center is a dotted quarter
Right is a quarter

This is interesting, In the old days of SR-JV this was very common. The POP Card and the VINTAGE are full with patches build by both internal and expansion tones. I always thought that this was not the case with SRX Expansions each patch was built by tones from the actual expansion card. I cannot say that I’ve done any research on it, just an impression.
But this shows that there is Patches built by both INTERNAL and EXPANISONS in SRX Expansions to.
I think I must say of course this patches sound different. Perhaps not different from a SRX card placed in a XV-5080, because those internal tones are included in the INTEGRA-7. But it may sound different from a SRX Card placed in a Fantom or in my case Sonic Cell. I don’t think all the internal tones used in all SRX Card are the same between XV-5080 and the Fantoms. So the patches will sound different.
If we take this PlayEuroRiff #189 most of the internal sound are Synth Tones. If I was a Roland Sound Engineer/Programmer. I would use the SuperNatural SynthTones to build it. Not the old sampled ones from 5080/Fantom. And yes it will sound different, but hopefully better.
Some of you perhaps think this is a bad thing because it won’t sound exactly the same, and I can understand that. But right now I think this does INTEGRA-7 just more interesting. But I know the feeling when you pick up an old project, to found that it wasn’t really saved (Mididumped) and you have to do some detective work from the sequencers track list.

[anotherscott]

In the old days of SR-JV this was very common. The POP Card and the VINTAGE are full with patches build by both internal and expansion tones. I always thought that this was not the case with SRX Expansions each patch was built by tones from the actual expansion card. I cannot say that I’ve done any research on it, just an impression.

That's probably not true, if for no other reason that the SRX cards themselves often also included sounds from the earlier SR-JV cards. And you're right that SRX cards did not necessarily sound identical when put in all the different keyboards and modules you could put them in... I guess that's at least part of the reason.

[SoundworldA.D.]

the SRX cards themselves often also included sounds from the earlier SR-JV cards.

Yes indeed. Here is the verbiage from the SRX-06 manual. "This expansion board contains all of the waveforms used in the SR-JV80-02 Orchestral, SR-JV80-13 Vocal, and SR-JV80-16 Orchestral II collections, along with specially selected orchestral sounds from waveforms included in the SR-JV80-07 Super Sound Set. This board contains new Patches and Rhythm Sets which combine the waveforms in a manner that highlights the benefits of SRX Effetcs and Matrix Control."

While I do not have all of the SR-JV80 and SRX expansions, I do have a whole lot of them (in the JV-1080, JV-2080, XV-5080 and Fantom XR), and having all of these subtle variations amongst the different modules is just an added bonus, unless of course you had a want or a need for them to sound exactly the same.

I never considered putting the SR-JV80-04 Vintage Synth boards in anything other than the JD-990's because not only did they have the regular 255 patches, but also included 255 additional patches designed specifically for the 990, and man do they sound awesome. I got a lot of positive feedback on that "Ringing Falls" patch that I used on "Soft Machine", it being an emulation of an old Jupiter-8 patch. Sweeet!

I have yet to go through the SRX-07 Ultimate Keys yet on the Integra-7, but I know it is supposed to have a lot of vintage and analog emulations as well. I have also found a lot of choice patches and sounds on the expansion boards I didn't already have such as SRX-02 Concert Piano, SRX-05 Supreme Dance, and SRX-08 Platinum Trax as well as the others like SRX-10 and SRX-12 which is why the Integra-7 was such a welcome addition to the Soundworld.

Weekend is here...time to get busy in the Soundworld! \|/

[Johan325]

I took some time and went through number 1-150 of the patches of SRX-05. It’s the only SRX card I have. This patches should sound a little different. Depending what you comparing with. If the SRX was placed in a XV-5080 it should be the same, if Roland have taken the Internal from the XV-5080 Tones and not the Super Natural Tones.
If the SRX was placed in a Fantom/Sonic Cell it might sound different from what you hear in the INTEGRA-7

Patch 009 Acid Punch
Tone 1 INTERNAL JP-Saw
Tone 2 INTERNAL MC Bass A


Patch 36 Low Bass 3
Tone 1 INTERNAL Sine
Tone 2 SRX-05
Tone 3 INTERNAL Sine
Tone 4 INTERNAL D-50 Saw (Tone off)

Patch 42 Saws Bass
Tone 1 SRX-05
Tone 2 SRX-05
Tone 3 SRX-05
Tone 4 INTERNAL MG Bass 1A

Patch 55 DarkEchoBass
Tone 1 INTERNAL JP-8 Saw
Tone 1 INTERNAL SA E.Piano C
Tone 2 INTERNAL D-50 Saw
Tone 2 INTERNAL Atk Syn Bass
Tone 3 INTERNAL Atk Syn Bass
Tone 3 INTERNAL SA C E.Piano C
Tone 4 INTERNAL Atk Syn Bass
Tone 4 INTERNAL Retro Clav C

Patch 63 Human Bass
Tone 1 INTERNAL off
Tone 2 INTERNAL off
Tone 3 INTERNAL Atk Syn Bass
Tone 3 INTERNAL MC Bass B
Tone 4 INTERNAL off

70 FeelBass
Tone 1 SRX-05
Tone 2 INTERNAL Atk Syn Bass
Tone 3 INTERNAL Dyno EP mf C

84 R&B Pluck 2
Tone 1 SRX-05
Tone 2 INTERNAL JD Sm Metal
Tone 3 SRX-05
Tone 4 SRX-05

103 Klang Werk
Tone 1 INTERNAL Male Aahs A
Tone 1 INTERNAL Male Aahs B
Tone 2 INTERNAL Female Oos A
Tone 2 INTERNAL Church Bell
Tone 3 SRX-05
Tone 4 INTERNAL JP-8 Saw, Bagpipe

105 Tropic Slice
Tone 1 INTERNAL Steel Drums
Tone 2 SRX-05
Tone 3 Off
Tone 4 INTERNAL JD Rattles

[alpha_C]

It's true. Thank you for you job.

[SoundworldA.D.]

Johan325 wrote:
Roland wrote somewhere on their website. They had to remake the sounds of the 5080 because the MFX’s are not the same. How is it, or does it still sound like the 5080?

anotherscott wrote:
Roland says, "Since the INTEGRA-7 uses the latest MFX engine, the onboard SRX expansion libraries will not sound identical to previous sound modules and synthesizers." It sounds like it is the effects that are different, not the underlying sounds, so how different a particular patch will sound on the I7 compared to how it sounded on the 5080 will depend on which fx it used (if any), and how different that particular effect might be on the I7. For example, if the I7 hall reverb is different than the 5080 hall reverb, then an SRX patch with hall reverb will not sound identical on the two machines. But the basic sound should be very similar, and probably usable for the same purposes.

These were written on the "Roland Integra-7 thread and thought they should be posted here as well on the I-7 compared to XV-5080 (and Fantom, and on and on).

I understand that the MFX, and possibly the Reverb and Chorus units as well, are different, but what is interesting is that on some of the same patches one or more of the tones themselves is more or less PRONOUNCED on the different modules yielding a different overall sound to the patch, and in some cases entirely different EFX themselves are employed (as in the case of the drum patches that I compared in the first post on the thread). So the "remake" remark becomes even more interesting. Who did the "re-making" and to what extent?

Patch 55 DarkEchoBass
Tone 1 INTERNAL JP-8 Saw
Tone 1 INTERNAL SA E.Piano C
Tone 2 INTERNAL D-50 Saw
Tone 2 INTERNAL Atk Syn Bass
Tone 3 INTERNAL Atk Syn Bass
Tone 3 INTERNAL SA C E.Piano C
Tone 4 INTERNAL Atk Syn Bass
Tone 4 INTERNAL Retro Clav C

I laughed when I saw this patch breakdown in Johan's post...why even put that patch on an SRX board? No matter...I care not where the sonic material comes from on a great sounding patch anyway!

Thanks for that detailed breakdown Johan. I'm sure we will find many more nuances and subtle and maybe not so subtle differences between the same boards and/or patches as we continue the investigation.

[Johan325]

I care not where the sonic material comes from on a great sounding patch anyway!

Agree, don’t take my breakdown as critics. As I written before in this thread, this might do Intergra-7 more interesting.
Why I pointing the patches based on internal tones out is the main question in this thread. Does it sound different? The answer to that is what you comparing with?
Most of the patches will sound the same but those based on internal tones will probably sound different depending on what you comparing with. Unless XV-5080 and the Fantom had the same internal tones. The Fantom would of course have more tones.
But no matter if the internal tones in the INTEGRA-7’s SRX library come from the Fantom or XV-5080 they will sound great. And likely they come from XV-5080.
So to all you comparing the sound with SRX placed in a XV-5080 no difference when it comes to the basic patch, MFX will later in the chain create difference. All of you comparing the sound with a SRX placed in a Fantom will hear a diffrence in some patches. But this means only more unexplored patches

[Ludvig]

... sounded very different because the XV version did not employ delay whereas the I-7 did.

Could this be related to the fact that the Chorus and Reverb are global? I've noticed that it seems that the global Chorus switches to a Delay when Motional Surround has been used. I don't have my Integra here right now so I cannot double check.

Best Regards
Ludvig

[SoundworldA.D.]

Could this be related to the fact that the Chorus and Reverb are global? I've noticed that it seems that the global Chorus switches to a Delay when Motional Surround has been used. I don't have my Integra here right now so I cannot double check.

Best Regards
Ludvig

Certainly sounds plausible Ludvig, and would explain why that odd delay was added to the Dyno Toms patch. It is certainly easy enough to fix some of the patches if they are different like that because of the global setting.

We're just having fun noticing some of the differences and subtle variations amongst all of the models. I have spent hours just going through the SN-S bank. So many more to explore!