17 thoughts on “The Roland D-50 D-Mystified”

  2. I played in a band where the keyboard player had a D-50. The sounds were fascinating and musical. I remember being impressed with how clean and clear the PCM “attack” samples were. The player was no slouch.

  3. My buddy had a D50 in his studio way back when they first came out. I loved that thing! He had a Matrix Xpander, Emulator III, OB-8, DX7 – all the biggies. I love my little D-05 now. Same great sound – tiny little package!

    1. I don’t understand why Roland didn’t update it with a more intuitive interface and the ability to route the sampled elements through the filters.

  5. Pardon me for asking, but what on earth is “mystifying” about the D-50? It had an extremely straightforward architecture — interesting and novel at the time, and still capable of producing great sounds, but “mystifying”?

  7. I never understand these videos where a guy is twiddling knobs on a synth and just talks endlessly without touching the keyboard. Play the damn thing and actually demonstrate what the knob does!

    1. When somebody does a sound design tutorial, I don’t expect them to do a lot of playing beyond what’s needed to demonstrate their sounds and their points. In this context, we’re looking for info, not to see how awesome your keyboard skills are.

      It’s like when companies intro samplers and people criticize the demo sounds – it’s completely beside the point.

      1. Agreed with Brock- there’s a lot to take in with videos like this so demonstrating how each function works with sound would help a lot. Relating those words to actual functions/sounds can be hard. Old mate from the video may as well RTFM at us.

        Re the samplers bit- if a sampler doesn’t play a sound the way its maker claims it sounds, fair call to point that out. If I see something new claims that to have a lo-fi setting but doesn’t have that Emu SP-1200 grit or Roland SP-202 murk, I’ll speak up. That and demo kits/patches should inspire the potential buyer & demonstrate what’s possible, but frequently they don’t.

      2. This isn’t a sound design tutorial. It’s a video of someone going from slider to slider on a VST reading out the name of the slider. The same amount of information could have been presented with a couple images of the interface. It’s a useful video for people who own a D-50 but can’t read, maybe?

        1. yeh you are exactly right. i can read those faders myself how about explaining and demonstrating what they actually do not just reading them out

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