The XV88 is the 1st Roland synthe with an 88 note weighted keyboard (don't confuse this with RD digital pianos and A90EX controller).

It looks much like an XP30 on steroids and I'll almost put money down that Roland will bring out a 61 and 76 note version later on (mabey called the XV61 and XV76????).

It has 128 notes of polyphony, fx wise it has a dedicated reverb, chorus and a newly designed EFX section with COSM based effects.

It offers 64 meg of ROM out of the box!!!! and can be expanded with 2 SRJV80 cards and 2 of the new 64MB cards which Roland are going to start producing. This is one thing that gets me with these new keyboards (Roland and Korg). With so many expansion boards already produced Roland why couldn't you give us much more slots for these! This is very short sighted as far as I am concerned even though they can be replaced.

There are 4 outputs at the back and 4 real time sliders. Not much has been mentioned about improvements in the synthesis from the older JV's and XP's.

In Australia it should retail at about $5,495.00.