Roland d10/d110/d20 (drexciya equipment)

Just bought a roland d110 for 85 quid. Has a mostly crappy rompler section and a quite interesting 8 part multitimbral polysynth section along with built in drums. For the price and the drexciyan prestige it's worth the money. You can do whole songs on it. It has an envelope like an alpha juno, bit complex. It doesn't have PWM but it has square and sawtooth digital oscs and a digital lowpass filter.

It has PWM with velocity.

You have to sequence the pwm with an external lfo?

Nah, but it has a "Pulsewidth"-parameter that reacts to velocity.

Do you have the pg10? Any good? Or is it fine without?

For the D-110, the PG-10  O R an iPad/computer for editing is essential. To only be able to "click" in values is really horrible, IMHO. I used to have a PG-10 to my D-20 but sold it because the D-20 (with it's value slider!!!) is really quick to edit once you learn the matrix layout of it's tone/timbre-settings. The PG-10 is made first of all for the D-10 and D-20. There is a fifth env parameter that the D-110 has but the D-10/20 lacks but it works anyway for D-110 as well. The display hasn't got any background light which is a MAJOR drawback, it really is missed when you are used to program in the green glow of the D-20 display...

The biggest advantage of the D-110 is the outputs! I would have loved to have those on the D-20... (they came later, in the W-30).

Thanks for the mini review m8. Later when I get home I'll post some youtubes that I found where this guy does drexciya covers on the d110.

Worms there's a Youtuber who does Drexciya covers with the D110. I have one too but its fairly beat up with the volume knob is missing lol. I got mine for £35. Now you posted this thread I need to check its still working!!

Haha - nice one

What Ipad editor are you going to use by the way?

  On 1/4/2019 at 5:55 PM, worms said:

 

Yep that's the guy!!! The K Hand - Mystery track is amazing. Never heard it before but knew of her.

Didn’t realise this thing has 3 complicated envs for pitch, filter, and amp.

Dammit ... Now I have GAS for a Roland D-something.

Guessing for ease of use a boutique D-05 would be better, no?

  On 1/4/2019 at 10:34 PM, rhmilo said:

Dammit ... Now I have GAS for a Roland D-something.

 

Guessing for ease of use a boutique D-05 would be better, no?

Well, it depends... (only vintage gives the true lo-fi grit, but you probably know that already) D-05 gives you a lot of presets (if you can stand them) and the size is unbeatable. The Roland Cloud D-50 vst also sound spot on - low bitdepth and all - but at the moment you have to agree on Rolands cloud business model and I don't.

The D-50 (and D-05) has an earlier (1st gen), more convulted version of LA-synthesis. Sound parameters can be found all over the the place and it is "messy" but gives you the most of possibilities for transforming the sound, more LFO´s, EQ and FX. D-50 and D-05 are only monotimbral. (There was an expansionboard for D-50 that made it bitimbral I think, but it is rare) 

For the 2nd gen (D-110/20/10/5) Roland simplified and reduced the amount of parameters (the only LFO here is a joke and only affects pitch), they included more samples (TR-707-style drumsamples that can be edited!) and added some more "structures" (the basic set up between oscillators & ringmod). If you use a D-110/10/20/5 in multitimbral mode everything is much more collected and straightforward. IMHO it is a lot easier to navigate this architechure even though some parameters are "missing". It makes sense in a way because you are using more sounds for arranging a track anyway. (Some D-50 sounds are more like one track of its own, like the Wavestation presets... They can sound cool but are hardly useful and sounds very dated.)

So, I would say... D-50/D-05 for the full "original" LA-synthesis and D-110/20/10/5 for digital Lo-Fi track experiments/compositions.

If you just go "outside/beyond" some of the regular settings for the D-series synth parameters there is a lot of fun stuff you can come up with. The drumsamples in the 2nd gen are invaluable I think since they can be edited and combined beyond recognition. (the beats on autechre's "Djarum" sound totally like the stuff I used to do on the D-20. For a long time I only owned that synth and I know it inside out. Its unique quirks and oddities makes it still really useful and fun, especially if you like more experimental electronic music.)

I got a free D-110 from a friend a couple years ago, it's great but the PG-10 is kind of mandatory.  If you look hard you can sometimes find hem pretty cheap direct from Japan.

In the early 90s Tim Blake did an entire album with just a D-10, sequencer, microphone and tape recorder, supposedly written and recorded in a single night inside an abandoned windmill in a thunderstorm and not originally meant for release.  It's ridiculous but I really like it.

As much as I like the D110 and appreciate its almost chiptune like quality (and the drums!), I know a guy with a D50 and it's like 1000x more lush, it really is one of the nicest sounding digital synths I've ever heard.

  On 1/5/2019 at 12:37 AM, entropi said:

 

(Lengthy explanation of difference between various D-synths)

 

 

Wow ... Thanks a lot for this! Very interesting!

Guess I'll be on the lookout for a cheap second hand second gen. D ...

Not a hardware user but really appreciating all of the insight here, especially the Drexciya equipment insight

Also thanks for introducing me to K-Hand!

I powered up the D110 tonight. Not really sure if its working though to be honest.

I posted a video about it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsT1OJYltFJ/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1r8u1c9887n25

Was abusing the 707 drums in this thing all afternoon.

Didn't know it had 707 drums lol.

Don't think there's anything wrong with your D-110 Bro, probably just a case of fiddling with the MIDI settings on everything until it's working properly. A good way to test it would be to just plug in a MIDI keyboard direct and play some notes, if it works alright then you can rule out anything being broken.

  On 1/7/2019 at 11:18 AM, BCM said:

Don't think there's anything wrong with your D-110 Bro, probably just a case of fiddling with the MIDI settings on everything until it's working properly. A good way to test it would be to just plug in a MIDI keyboard direct and play some notes, if it works alright then you can rule out anything being broken.

Yeah man gonna do that. Just need to hunt down the psu for the Roland keyboard and a find a midi cable. :-)

  On 1/7/2019 at 9:48 AM, TheBro said:

Didn't know it had 707 drums lol.

Pretty sure that's where the drum samples originated, although I haven't heard a real 707 in person since the 90s when I was a kid and my guitar teacher had one.  Whatever they are, it's a great late 80s digital drums sample set if you're in to that kind of thing.

  On 1/7/2019 at 11:29 AM, TheBro said:

 

  On 1/7/2019 at 11:18 AM, BCM said:

Don't think there's anything wrong with your D-110 Bro, probably just a case of fiddling with the MIDI settings on everything until it's working properly. A good way to test it would be to just plug in a MIDI keyboard direct and play some notes, if it works alright then you can rule out anything being broken.

Yeah man gonna do that. Just need to hunt down the psu for the Roland keyboard and a find a midi cable. :-)

 

TheD110 defaults to MIDI channel 2 as the master when you do a factory reset, just like the MT32, so if you try to play it on channel 1 nothing will happen.  All of the factory multis or whatever Roland was calling them that year are programmed to respond on channel 2 and up.

That wouldn't cause the issue you're having but it might trip you up when you hook up the keyboard to test.

Does Beatmaker 2 send a whole bunch of MIDI realtime data?  I've never had issues myself but it's possible to flood these older machines with too much MIDI data and make them malfunction (which is an entire genre now).

Did you replace the CR2032 battery yet?  Replace the battery.  Roland used battery clips IIRC so it's easy to do.