Hi,

Roland *do* have a bunch of affordable XV's - they are the JV's. Really, when you look at it, the technology has not changed. Roland has simply added some features, added some better fx and the ability to load Roland and Akai sample libraries (in the case of the XV-5080). They've added some more waveforms and kept *all* of the old ones.

The comment of "It's all house in a huge heavy 2 space rack mounted style while all its features can fit in a half rack module" does not seem to fit here. A few years ago (before the JV-1080), everyone would have been oohing and aah-ing over these units. Sadly, there is not much that is new. The only thing you'll be missing out on really IMHO is the ability to load in Roland samples (buy a used S-760 and you'll have sampling capability as well) and the new 64 MB cards. Only time will tell if Roland will release many of these new cards or not. Aside from that, these machines are re-packaged JV's with more polyphony, better fx and a few more sounds (not many more).

For non-JV owners, I'd say that these units are great and, if you can afford them, it would be great to do that. For current JV owners, they don't give you much more than what you have now. You'd be better off keeping your money or buying something else.

Just MHO,
Fernando