I may get a lot of disagrees on this one, but I was heavily dissapointed with the Orch II.
The story I was looking all over New York for an Orch I. At the time (Sept.), no one seemed to be stocking them anymore.

A guy at Sam Ash told me that the Orch II was better for the taking anyway as the sounds were recorded at 48khz which allowed more headroom than the original orch. He also said the sounds were richer and that this board had more variety.

I took it home and was immediately dissapointed. There is more headroom, but the sounds sounded to "sampled" to me and fake. Also, heavy vibrato was included in the samples (which can't be taken out) and that upset me a little more.

Then next day, I discovered that the store had a used Orch I board in their display XV88. This board is a killer. The strings sound so much better and IMO, had a much better variety.

It's hard to imagine that the Orch I board sounds better than the Orch II considering that the Orch I card debuted back in 1992.

If you already have the Orch I, I would say that the Orch II board makes a great compliment. This can be seen as you'll see patches like "Oboe 5-8", where the Orch I board has "Oboe 1-4".

Other people disagree with me on this. if you are into the Celtic sounds, then go for the Orch II board, IMO, there are too many celtic sounds. Perhaps they should have included these kind of sounds on a "World II" card.

BTW, there are some great Celtic sounds on the new Patch bank for the XV series (which are also compatible with the JV/XP series) from the Roland web site. All in all, the bank they offer sounds great!

The Infamous EPU.