Here is a useful test:

Go to PR-A and choose the patch "House Piano."

Play more than one note and hold the notes down.

Since the patch is programmed (as you'll see if you check the EFX Parameters) with MASSIVE compression, it will highlight and reveal this "decay noise" people have been worrying about.

It's been there in my XP-80 since day one, and I've never minded it.

The DACs on the XP-80 are, according to the service manual I have, high-quality Burr-Brown converters. You can buy a service manual for your synth directly from Roland and confirm this for yourself, with a little research. So this shouldn't be a problem; if it were the DACs, they'd have to be technology two generations behind the chip in the synth to even be theoretically capable of being responsible for the "problem" people are talking about.

You'll note that if you "gate" the "House Piano" patch, by reducing the decay using the sliders, by the _tiniest amount_, i.e. enough to affect the decay of the sound, but not enough to cut it out entirely, that this will reduce the sound significantly.

This is what I think the Roland UK office is probably referring to as "gating the sample."

Playing around with the programming of this patch will give you a good picture as to what the sound is, where it's coming from, _why_ it's there (it's got actual use in this patch, to give it a gritty, lo-fi quality appropriate for house music, so it must not be an accident that it's there), and so on.

I consider this "problem" an actual intentional part of the JV/XP sound. We all know that pure, clean digital can sound sterile. Introduction of a little noise can actually provide some "air" to the sound that would otherwise not be there, if it is handled in recording appropriately.

Steve