New RD2000 Owner

[IzzyC]

Hi Folks,
I just recently bought a new RD. Great keyboard, I love the piano and organ tones. I also play a Yamaha S70.
Been exploring here to learn more about the RD.
As others have said I find the manual lacking (it's the same for the S70 manual too). This site is full of good information and I am grateful to all those who share information here.
Izzy

[rockyroad]

Yes it’s a great keyboard, and this is a very helpful forum.

[Stuart100]

Hi Izzy,

Welcome to the forum.

The RD has a wonderful keybed. Its worth the money for that alone. I was looking at a Korg Kronos 88 but the key bed was not as good. I used to own an Oasys. The RD is great with most inbuilt sounds. For synths i use a Korg Triton and a mac with mainly Native Instruments Komplete 12 Ultimate or my own vsts/exes.

There is an Apple ios editor and Windows 10 /mac editor for the RD.

Roland are pushing the Fantom synths at the moment but the power of the RD with a mac and vsts/exes is unsurpassed.

For a Daw on Mac I recommend using Logic or Bitwig. For windows Bitwig or Cantabile. Bitwig is cross platform. Other good Daws are Ableton, Cubase and Mainstage on a Mac for live performance.

Cheers

Stuart
Rd2000 windows 10 /mac editor at www.stuartpryer.co.uk

[SledDriver]

> There is an Apple ios editor and Windows 10 /mac editor for the RD.

Which Win10 editor do you refer to?

[Stuart100]

Hi,

The free Win 10 editor is on my website - see below. It runs on 32 or 64 bit versions of win 10. It will also run on a Mac using the Codeweavers Crossover (version 17.1 or later) app too. Its written in Microsoft Visual Studio 2019. Make sure the RD is running the latest version of it operating system 1.51

http://Stuartpryer.co.uk


Documentation is here

http://stuartpryer.co.uk/rd2000.pdf

PS. DesertBoat has written an editor for Apple IOS devices as well.

Cheers

Stuart

[deswind]

I had no idea there was an editor for the RD2000. Fantastic. Is there one for the newest Fantoms as well?

Thank you!

[Stuart100]

Hi ,

I don't know about Fantom. I would love to have one but cant afford one. I wrote the RD2000 editor as Roland did not write one. It really needs an editor as the screen is small with multi layered menus. Gus on this forum did most of the testing for me as at the time mine had not arrived :-) he did a heroic job! It will also run on Linux and MacOS using Codeweavers crossover ver 17 or later for anyone who uses these Op systems. I run mine on MacOS and Win 10.

Cheers

Stu

[SledDriver]

Cool. Thankd for this!

I will check it out shortly.

[SteelyDan]

Hi all,
yeah, I'm also still happy with my RD-2000 after some years; I had the predecessors but RD-2000 - in fact I'm concentrating on Roland keys as they have good mainstream sound selection and they're reliable on stage (top on my list after a different manufacturers product lost all custom patches during live performance...). From my musicians profile probably workstations like Genos would fit better, but I love E-Piano & Piano sounds and I'm feeling lots more comfortable playing that with hammer keys.
There are 3 things on my wishlist:

• a good 2-way editor app: seems a general Roland thing. Nowadays every HW device should have that, and the effort would have been peanuts compared to what the overall development of the rd-2000 probably was. Of course the FW would have to support this (which it really doesn't). Some Roland devices get an editor app in the beginning but then no updates...
• a bigger display: just a little bit less scrolling and clicking when editing; maybe I wouldn't need that if there was a good app ;-)
• class compliant USB audio to work with iOS: so I'm missing some sounds on the RD which could be easily taken from my iPad. The RD HW could do that in general, but only with those specific PC / Mac drivers.

I'm playing around with my setup currently e.g. attaching a Korg microKey Air on top of the RD-2000 to add some iPad sounds to my live setup (synths, SWAM, ...) where I need easy going keys. For iPad sounds I need a small audio interface, probably will feed this into the audio Aux in to get a consistent sum signal to feed into the P.A.
I guess one day a Masterkeyboard + iPad soundengine setup will be trustworthy and reliable enough for me, it's amazing what's going on especially with all the virtual modeling apps coming up. But for now the RD-2000 still is the best choice for me.

[IzzyC]

Hi Folks,
Thanks for the replies. Haven't been back on the board as we did some painting and I had to put the RD back in the box to protect it. Took it out today and I am glad to have it back.

I will check out some of the suggestions mentioned.
Izzy

[Stuart100]

Hi new rd2000 owner,

I use an ipad with the rd. i just connect the audio out of the iPad with a 3.5mm jack cable to the aux in of the rd. the sound is then summed with the rd and appears at its audio out. Headphones, XLR or 1/4 inch sockets.

If you are using a DAW - the aux out does not feed into the usb audio for sending to a mac or pc which is a shame. I guess there are no analog to digital converters for the aux in. I guess you could connect the ipad lightening cable to the mac directly and set up a combined audio device with the rd? I have not tried it.

Cheers

Stuart