Roland JD-Xi Analogue and Digital Crossover Synth

Staff Review - Roland JD-Xi

So got my hands on the JD-Xi and thought I would not touch the manual as per usual and see what this little instrument could do and how quick I could get my head around it. Straight from the box the product feels great, very lightweight and despite its compact size does not feel tacky as you may expect it to. The colour contrast with the red/orange lights and text on the black background looks amazing and makes everything very clear for operation.

Turning it on the first time brings you to a nice synth sound, rich and full toned. First thing I did was straight to the 4 effects dials and instantly dialled in some reverb and delay to see how the effects came out. They were amazing, reverb is really smooth along with clear delay and control. The dials respond very nicely with the amount of applied effect making effects control really nice. The effects also have a dedicated on off button which turns each effect on in sequence and then off so you can have whichever effects applied you want without having to dial them down.

On the left side of the panel is the 4 part buttons - 2 digital, 1 drums and 1 analog. Initially it was not obvious to me but each one of these buttons is in-fact a different part of the step sequencer. Pressing any of the digital parts allows you to use the big category sound knob to choose a digital sound from. By digital it means sampled sounds like pianos, strings, etc. Because the JD-Xi uses supernatural voices, the sound of the digital parts is superb. Its amazing how good sound like the pianos come across. Using the tone + & - buttons it is easy to flick through the sounds in the selected category. The category dial was vey very solid and actually almost difficult to turn but it gave a sense of good build quality. What I did find myself doing a lot by accident was pressing the performance button + & - instead of the Tone buttons. The performances are the overall preset memory buttons which remember all your settings so of course it was a pain for me, all because when you change performance of course you loose what you were doing before! There is no way to go back to what you were doing you simply have to start again but thankfully its easy to do with the hands-on controls.

I had a good play with all the parts including drums and anlog synth section and they are really good! The analog synth is rich in sound and easy to manipulate certain parameters with the hands-on controller. It may have been nice to have more hands on control on the product for filters and envelopes etc but then the front panel would probably be really cluttered where as its very clean and clear. There are additional parameters available from the menus to edit your sounds should you find yourself wanting to edit in more detail. The drums action amazed me a lot. As it turned out it was possible to filter independent drum sounds so If I applied a filter to a cymbal it did not affect the whole kit which could be very useful! There are lots of great kits built in to play with as well.

So after playing with the sounds it was step sequencer time and it was then I realised each performance that is pre-set by Roland has a step sequence already done for it. Its great just going through the performances and listening to whats been done as inspiration. Its possible to delete parts and modify whats been recorded as well should you wish to use one as a base for your own creation. The sequencer has a lot of settings which are accessed through menus such a the timings, pattern lengths etc which you need to make right before you start recording if starting from scratch. I think it would be wise to read about all the shortcut keys as well because there is so much you can do by holding the short key to get to alternate functions. Example - It took me a little time to realise you can switch measure holding the shift key and selecting the next measure set from the step sequencer buttons. I was looking for this because when I modified for example an analog part sequence the changes were only applying to the first bar, which of course is useless in a multi-bar pattern. Its also easy to delete a whole part using the shift key as well as being able to mute any of the individual parts by holding shift then pressing whichever part button you wish to mute/un-mute.

I did have a few issues trying to record a pattern from scratch. I found no sync start feature to start recording in real-time and I found trying to generate a step pattern in any other type of timing was a little arduous having to change the settings within the menus. It was easier to record in real-time for anything like that. It would have also been nice to be able to mute individual drums quickly. I could find no way of doing it without going into the menus for the drum part which of course is useless when performing live. Maybe a software upgrade will update such a feature, who knows what Roland will do with that.

On the whole I was amazed at what comes in this little instrument. Its compact, the mini keys felt good to play, the sounds were really high quality and the step sequencer a huge feature to have on an instrument of its type at its price bracket. Yes, it has some slightly fiddly issues but these may even be addressed with future software upgrades. I would highly recommend it just as a sound source and everything else is a bonus!