JD-Xi successor with more tracks, touchscreen sequencer?

Forum for the JD-Xi Keyboard.
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Charbax
Posts: 1
Joined: 03:29, 24 August 2017

JD-Xi successor with more tracks, touchscreen sequencer?

Post by Charbax »

Hi, I am very tempted to buy the JD-Xi (after watching Woody Piano Shack's videos on YouTube). A couple years ago I bought an Electribe2 but I barely used it it's just too confusing to use and having lost Korg's proprietary mini jack to MIDI adapter and hard to get a new one I am not able to record the type of music I would like to do on the Electribe2. I need a keyboard and I need a much more intuitive sequencer user interface.

But some of the limitations on JD-Xi are a bit sad, aren't they?

- Why does it only support 4 tracks as far as I understand of which 2 must be MIDI, 1 must be drums and 1 must be the analog?

- Why does it only support 4 bars in the sequencer? Why can't users create a full song in the sequencer?

Did Roland not fix the 4 tracks and 4 bars limitation in a firmware update?

And I wish the sequencer also had a nice display color like on the FA-08 but also as a touch-screen to be able to control and edit each track in the sequencer, to modify/edit each note in each track, or perhaps synchronizing the JD-Xi to an Android phone or tablet to be able to do that would be fine, could they sync a device like a successor to the JD-Xi using Bluetooth to an Android phone or tablet?

I wish that nice looking vocoder microphone could be used to sing and record your singing voice onto your song in the sequencer, but as far as I understand JD-Xi can't do that. It's only vocoding, no singing.

As far as I understand the MIDI sound presents on JD-Xi don't include acoustic instruments like Grand Piano, acoustic bass, brass, strings etc? I guess perhaps these can be loaded through the Axiol website, but I wonder why those types of instruments wouldn't be included by default. Can't they include enough storage capacity or SD memory card expansion for enough instruments to be available to use in the default package?

Because of all these limitations on JD-Xi, I am then possibly instead considering to get a FA-08 workstation that perhaps can do everything that I want, although the sequencer user interface without a touch-screen on the FA-08 also sounds like it might be confusing/limited, and obviously that it might be really complicated for me to travel with the FA-08 as I have no experience checking-in such a large 88-key keyboard on an airplane. It's impressive to me it seems that the JD-Xi is compact enough it might fit in my airplane check-in luggage. I love the idea of easily being able to travel around with my music workstation machine keyboard synth.

So there, I love the Roland sound, and I had a D-10 in the early 90ies as my second synth as a teenager, but the limitations in the sequencer and the potentially confusing user interfaces worry me a bit. I would like to be able to do all the sequencing on the device itself and not have to use a DAW software on a laptop.
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klar_kinelis
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Re: JD-Xi successor with more tracks, touchscreen sequencer?

Post by klar_kinelis »

I think that JUNO DS can be considered at some point a successor of JD-Xi, because just like this one it is created for live applications. In Juno DS you can set more than 16 or even 32 bars, you have much more piano/instruments sounds and large key bed, there is also an 8 track sequencer. HOWEVER I can tell that in case of JD-Xi, it is created to make strictly electronic music, so pianos/instruments suck, but it has much better samples (FA-/Integra samples), it sticks better to the MIDI tempo as a slaved unit. The 4 bar limitation is not really a limitation - why - because in case of JD Xi each "part", each sound source, behaves like a separate synthesizer. So you can play something on part 1 - eg put a chord on hold, then switch to part 4 and put an arpeggiated chord on hold, and the part 1 is still playing. A few moments later you switch to part 1 and change the chord as if it was sequenced. Of course in some types of music it might be a problem to jump from one part to another, but for techno, ambient, the "minimal" electronic music - it is an excellent feature. Most of all, like in JUNO DS you can record live on the sequencer - when the sequence is running, you can just trigger recording on off. FA- series are workstations - so if you want to record on the go - you can't, because first, you have to stop. press record and then hit play to start the recording. Same for JD-XA. So as you can see, the JD-Xi is a totally separate beast, and while JUNO DS has similar possibilities it is not as good as JD-Xi in a live application.
Viaren
Posts: 22
Joined: 14:42, 15 January 2016

Re: JD-Xi successor with more tracks, touchscreen sequencer?

Post by Viaren »

I was thinking about getting the FA-08 myself mainly to use it as an idea making station. However in the end I settled with the expensive ipad pro and a Thomann dp26 digital piano along with korg Gadget app among others. I think that the traditional companies (roland, korg etc) like to use the older technology, and to some extent that is great. However I think that the opportunities with ARM cores is shown very well in the teenage ngineeringe-op-1, and that such newcomer companies will steal a lot of customers from the traditional ones. Also not to forget the fact that traditional companies tend to hold back features that could be easily implemented in the menu or a key/knob combo, (they keep those features for their more expensive models).
Still I think my jdxi is great for improvisation and free play, sometimes having a minimum of features will improve creativity.

For the Axial sounds, they are actually just utilizing the pcm sounds ni the wavetable that is alread inside the jd-xi memory. As far as I know you can not upload new pcm sounds, however that would be great.
mixe
Posts: 24
Joined: 10:10, 31 March 2017

Re: JD-Xi successor with more tracks, touchscreen sequencer?

Post by mixe »

I think the point of the JD-Xi is to be cheap.

Even if it's your first and only instrument, it packs enough features to allow you to build almost complete tracks. For beginners and people on a low budget like me, it's a great entry point to DAW-free music production.

All improvements you mention make sense to me. And many users, me included, would love more knobs to leverage its powerful sound engine.
On the other hand, all these additional features would imply a noticeably higher price. That would make for a different product than the JD-Xi, with a different market positioning.
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