I ordered the ROLAND E - 80 yesterday

I was very fortunate yesterday to be treated to a 3 hour demo by Roland District Sales Manager Travis Mitchell at Colton Music, my local dealer here in San Jose. I have concluded that Travis must know every thing there is to know about this keyboard and some tricks that nobody else even knows yet.
The President of Colton Music, Dave Gatt, my local dealer, made me an offer that was exactly the number I had in mind. They must be mindreaders as well You will also have to be a mindreader if you expect to find out the price I agreed to Don't ask. Just know that Colton has three stores in our Bay Area and they will deal. They also have the G 70's in stock.
I expect delivery in about another week so stay tuned.
I will be selling a Yamaha Tyros 2 and a PSR 9000 both with hard drive and maximum ram memory installed if anyone has any interest, just let me know. NO, I have no idea of current values so you can let me know about that too
Best to all
Bebop

------------------
BEBOP
Senior Member SYNTHZONE FORUMS Retired Moderator of Technics Forum. Starting member of Yamaha Arranger (tyros) Forum
Bill Forrest in Central CALIF. USA
ICQ # 562519
Homepage http://www.anycities.com/bebop/

Good luck on the E-80. I am sure you will have lots of fun with it. What features of the E-80 made you decide to switch from the T2?

Ditto! Must be one helluva board for you to be selling both Yammies!! Best of luck, Bebop. I'll be anxious to hear more about it once you get your hands on the E80.


[This message has been edited by Stephenm52 (edited 05-06-2007).]

BEBOP,
congratulations. My next keyboard may well be a Roland of some sort too.

Did you realize Technote have created most of the Technics style disks for the G70 on a single card http://www.technote.com/retail/product_list.asp?CatID=36

Accidently stumbled on it the other day. May be one way of havin g a piece of my technics back.

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by BEBOP:
[B]I

BeBop ... all the best with the new board ...
make beautiful music ...
t.

Have fun with your new keyboard, BeBop.

Happy Playing!

Taike

Good luck you made a very Wise choice

Congratulations BEBOP with your decision for the E80, it is a very good instrument,
There are many free styles made for the G70 that can be played on the E80 ( and other E's) as well. These styles are less complete than the factorystyles but some of them are very good.You will find them on the site of the Danish Roland Club.
You should try them.

Hi Bebop,
Congratulations,Great board,

I have had mine four months now and still scratching the surface.Be patient as it an entirely different beast than either the 9000 or Tyros2.
My E80 is used as as master coupled to a Yamaha3000 and Korg pa50 thereby
having endless sounds and styles.
you may find the more live in your face sounds and styles of the E80 as compared to the Tyros 2 require some getting use to,
i did,but now, WOW.

Best Regards Gilbert.





i

Congrats Bebop,

Last week I spent a couple of hours playing the E80 and the Motif XS at the local music store. I was quite impressed with the E80 overall, the sounds, styles, and what seemed to be a relative ease of navigation, particularly since I've never owned or spent any appreciable time with any Roland arrangers. Best of luck and may you have many many hours of enjoyment with it.

Regards,

AJ

Hi K Boarder,
( sorry bebop for going a bit off topic)
have a question, can an e80 play back a g70 style perfectly,or would a fair bit of editing /tweaking be involved??
Reason I'm asking is, I just discovered that Technote has recreated their Technic style range for the g70. If I was to buy a Roland it would be either the e50 or e80,
I don't need another 76 note keyboard.

I've written to Technote, but they haven't answered back yet.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by K.Boarder:
[B]There are many free styles made for the G70 that can be played on the E80 ( and other E's) as well.

HI Rikkisbears,
Technote state on their site that all Roland styles are compatible with the E series.I have just purchased the Ballroom Series for my E 80 and they are really fantastic,in my opinion better than most internal styles.As for tweaking it is only volume to match your liking that you may need to change,this can be achieved on the fly anyway.

Best Regards Gilbert.

I hope it is all you want it to be Bill. I have always liked Roland boards so I am curious to hear how this latest arranger works out for you.

Thanks Gilbert,
I luved the Technote styles on all my Technics keyboards over the years, so I was stunned the other day when I noticed they'd recreated them for Roland. I sold my KN7 a couple of years back & to some degree regretted it ever since, mainly because of the styles.
They have an sd card version for the G70 with the majority of the styles on it, at a fraction of the price of buying individual
disks, but it does say for G70 so I wasn't sure. The card also requires some sort of card adapter because Rolands apparently don't use sd cards, they use different types.

Sounds like my next keyboard may well be a Roland again.

Thanks Gilbert

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gilbert:
[B]HI

Bebop,

the E80 is an awesome board no doubt, just curious to hearing your reasons for changing over from the T2?

is it a matter you think yes its a much better board all round? or is it just something that the E80 has that the T2 does not have?

cheers,
Nick

I hate Roland...

Good luck Bill with the E80..

AJ, how did you like the speaker system on the E80?

We had a few folks that said it was terrible.{hard to believe, since Roland never had a "bad" sound system...why start with the best they ever had]...

I'd like to know that also?

Demo's and reviews are posted over here: http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum37/HTML/015447.html
by
Donnie and Bebop

I have been playing the G70 styles in the Tyros 2 for the last couple of months and I find them to be so much better then any of the onboard T2 styles and most of those that have had sent to me by other people.
Then during the 3 hour demo by our District Sales manager Travis Mitchell who knows this board inside out totally blew me away with all the things it does that nothing I have ever owned does or did.
Then too, I am aware that the Technics People moved over to Roland and designed this board, and my personal feeling is that this is the Technics KN 8000 that we would have bought if Matsu----a hadn't pulled the plug on one of the best keyboards in the business that I had already owned 5 or 6 of them.
The Tyros 2 has never inspired me to play it. that is a bad sign and consequently it has just sat here most of the time. When I turn on a keyboard and hear a style my 70 years of playing music sez, OH, play this song with this style. The T2 has never done that for me but all the Technics did.
I guess I should also say that after Travis had a meeting with Dave Gatt the president of my local Colton music store and Dave walked up to me and asked if I had my checkbook with me. Somehow they were able to discern from our earlier conversations exactly the number that I would be willing to pay for this keyboard I didn't even come to see.
I stopped at this store because they were haveing an inventory clearance and I was looking for a Technics KN2600 to keep in the motorhome, as they were my local Technics dealer.
I might also add that I am open to offers for both the Yam PSR9000 and the Tyros 2 both with hard drives and max Memory installed. Ty 2 has Bose Speakers and Yam woofer also.
Best to all,
Bill

BeBop ... how is the operating system? ... anything like the technics?
t.

Then during the 3 hour demo this board blew me away with all the things it does that nothing I have ever owned does or did.
---------
Any elaboration for the needy?

Fran,

I didn't notice anything but good sounds coming from the E80 speakers when I tried it. To be fair though, I probably had it up maybe half way at most, and never really thought to turn it up more and listen at higher levels.

While I appreciate arrangers that have built in speakers for simple jamming, I'm fine either way, and the lack of them on the T2 doesn't bother me at all. More important for me I guess is how something will sound on my live play and home studio systems.

AJ

The styles made for G70 can be played on the E80 without editing and tweaking.

Guys , i hate to disappoint you all..but the Roland arrangers are all Roland...They use the same systems they have used for years..not a hint of Technics design...Sure people move from Korg, Yamaha etc..but bet your bottom dollar..Roland isn't jumping to their operating systems...especially since Roland already has the best now..

Better put a smiley face here...

Gotta agree with you Bill, I have a number of G70 latin styles I use on the T2 and no matter what I find myself using those vs. latin styles on the T.

I guess it's that CD-vs-Live feel regarding those styles huh? When I demoed the T2 I was quite happy with the board. Although the styles were nice they did seem more CD quality rather than live. I just wanted to wrap up the "keybed" and take that home with me--it felt that nice.

Bill glad you're happy with your new board. The E-80's a beast. Post some demos of that thing when you get it.

Squeak

I like the T2 better than any other board I've ever had or played on for key feel. They really got that part right for me Squeak. I do think both the E80 and PA series boards styles sound more alive, though I think I probably like more of the lead instruments better on the T2.

Really, all three are so good that I would easily take one of each.

AJ

Give me that great Live Roland in your face sound anyday vs the compressed sound of the Yamaha's.....some people dont even know the difference.....but that's not their fault.
I just worry about what I personally like.
The E80 is one awesome ax baby!
Not to mention for me Roland make-up tools etc.. are the easiest & most comprehensive EDITING Capabilities of any KB I've played as of yet and that's alot!

[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 05-08-2007).]

Thank you,
that's great.

best wishes
Rikki

So Donny..what is it...you are trying to say?

just curious guys but what really are the major differences between the E80 and the G70 with OS3?

put the speakers aside, the G70 has more keys for starters.

from all the demos i have heard online i have not noticed a difference...

please enlighten me fellas

[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 05-08-2007).]

I don't have either yet so can't comment from my inaccurate memory.
I don't know anyone that has them both so may not get a comment from anyone on that.
The Roland District Sales Manager Travis that demo's the rig said the E 80 was a G70 on steroids and then proceeded to tell me all the things it could do that the G70 with the upgrade did not.
I have posted above a url that has both reviews and demo's that you can visit.
Bebop

E80... fewer sounds, but better, more recent ones (G70 has a lot of older G1000 sounds for backwards compatibility).

E80... 3 MFX insert effects, on Song, Style or Keyboard Parts. G70.. One MFX on Keyboard only (although there's an easy workaround to get one more, on song/style or keyboard part).

E80... Two Master Effect (3-band comp and EQ) on Style/Song and Keyboard Parts. G70 one Master Effects on main output.

E80... text to style AND song display (with bitmap graphics display, too), G70 text to song only (sigh!).

G70... Main AND 2 direct outputs AND Vocalizer outputs, E80 Main outputs ONLY.

E80... 61 keys G70.. 76

E80 has speakers (and weighs more!)

E80.... 2 SRX slots, G70... one.

Some minor OS differences, nothing major.

Hope this helps....

As also Fran says, no people from Technics cooperated to E-80 development; it was developed by the same team that developed Roland E-series (except E-09) and G-series so far.

To add more details, E-80 has several brand new drum kits with a lot of new drum sounds, it has the same Piano sound of RD700SX/SRX-11 (that replaced the G-70 Piano sound coming from FantomX), and some new Guitar and Bass sounds that G-70 doesn't have.

There is a lot of knowledge on the Danish Roland Arranger site. Diki is one of their experts, he does a very good job on that site.

Yes, and this is the address of the new version of the site: http://roland-arranger.com/

Correct me if i am wrong but i was aware that certain "technics people" were involved with the Tyros 2 actually...

That was my understanding too - I had heard that some of the former Technics team were responsible for the Brass sounds on the T2?

thats exactly what i heard...

Thanks my friends for the update info here.
I was told by the Roland District Sales Manager that did the 3 hour demo for me that Some of the Technics Engineers were involved in this keyboard. He told me the names but that was way last Sunday. You don't think I would remember it that long
I have been in touch with a few people that have the board and they are pleased with it. That is hopeful.
Best to all,
Bebop

Bebop your gonna love it big time the E80 can do it all ......
I even ordered a nice Black
Roland Logo T-Shirt today on Ebay ......Ooops

I'm guessing you're buying an E-80, Donny...am I correct?

Ian

------------------
Common misconception...size and weight equal quality and performance. Don't be fooled.

Chris Halon, formerly with Technics as a clincian and possibly other titles now works for Roland and I would assume has alot of impact on what goes into and how the Roland E series keyboards are designed and programmed.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California www.kayesmusicscene.com
818-881-5566

Donny could have had mine but it's been sold now

How come you sold your E-80 Craig?

I know you got the "new biggy", but I thought you liked the E-80.

Ian

------------------
Common misconception...size and weight equal quality and performance. Don't be fooled.

Craig....Id like to hear why you switched myself ..if you will. I thought you were a T2 man?

As a T2 owner I'm curious, too.



[This message has been edited by Stephenm52 (edited 05-09-2007).]

Hi Donny I am a T2 man, that's not going anywhere (well not until the T3).

I visited a music shop as you do and I played on some of their digital pianos. One of them I liked that much, I decided that the only way I could afford it was to say bye bye to the E80 and pay the difference.
It will be nice to have a piano again in the living room and this one has a CDRW built in and multi track sequencer so I can make my own CD's directly without having to turn the PC on

Ok that explains part of it.... But what are your thoughts, opinions on the E80 Craig......

After sharing my G70 opinions a year or so back on here, which went down like the Titanic, I'll keep my E80 opinions to myself and let you guys decide if an E80 is for you or not

Oh common Craig....we're all friends here

Bebop would u mind please sending me some of your latin styles that have been converted from G70/E80 to Tyros 2?

i have styles that have been straight out converted but the sound selection isnt right, I have tried to get mine as best as possible but they sound no where near as good as the onboard T2 styles. I am curious to listen to yours to see how much different yours are?

i am not in any way bashing Roland styles here, but we all now how styles sound when played through different boards...

Craig is a Wersiplayer now.

WERSI?

Common Craig post a few demos with your new AX...I hear so much about this (Abacus?)or?

Tell us about it .

Sorry Wis but you are wrong there, I do not have a Wersi any more.
I did have the Abacus pro, but it arrived faulty and after a few repairs and 2 months later it went back because the shop I got it from was very poor when it came to customer relations and support plus on boot up the organ sounds never loaded into the instrument
The Wersi had great sounds, bad internal styles which I knew about, it played T2 styles great but the operating system is bug ridden.

The E80 is a good machine and has very good in your face styles, but I kept finding myself going back to the T2 which I prefer anyday over the Roland. It's all down to your own taste and what you want out of a machine.
The digital piano that I have purchased is the Kawai CP136.

Craig thanx for the very Honest opinions which is needed here.....you tell it like it is .....at least you gave it a shot with other gear & that's what its all about M8...
congrats with your new KB ...enjoy & make music!

Craig did you have OAS7 on your Wersi and what did you think of the sounds overall?

Also how well did it convert or play T2 styles ? There is so little info that we can get about this fascinating instrument ! Sorry i just hijacked he thread ! just mail me with your answers Craig.

I did have the OAS 7 yes. The sounds are very good and have a lovely warmth to them. It's hard to describe, but it's something only Wersi can do. They have that certain sound which tells you it's a Wersi straight away. There are the few exceptions as on all keyboards but not many bad sounds at all. The internal styles are quite bland, typical organ stuff and not in the same league as top end arrangers, but they are more than passable and certainly not like the ones you hear in the MS
The T2 and Yamaha styles do not need converting if you buy and install the OAA software which isn't cheap. I saw this in action and it does a very good job of playing them back. A little bit of tweaking is involved for some and although they still sound better on the T2 itself as expected, the OAA is leagues ahead of the other style convertors eg. EMC Styleworks doesn't come close to this.
It's a shame mine had faults as the machine was growing on me, but I wouldn't consider getting another because the VST's which I wanted to use are a right pain to get working. It's far easier if you are into VST's to use your PC and midi a keyboard to it rather than attempt to play them from the Wersi.

Nick G, I sent you an email and a couple of styles.
Bebop

George's post about Chris Halon is reasonably accurate. There is a team of people who engineer these products. Chris' official title is National Product and Marketing Manager for Roland CK. His job at Roland, similar to what his job at Technics was, is to input the US's requests for product development. He is very influential in the design and engineering of products that make it to the US market.
Bebop

I found the 284 page manual, about 20 MB if you want to read/study it. You can read it on line or download and save it. It is a pdf file.
Go to: http://www.roland.co.uk/arrangerkey_room_catdet.asp?ID=E80
click on manual.
Bebop

From our experience with Roland over at the Danish G70 site, I'm afraid that Roland doesn't put a LOT of weight behind what US arranger customers want.

After all, the workstation is king over here, arrangers (despite recent Keyboard mag articles) are still a much smaller segment of the market than Europe. You only have to look at the 'banishing' of arrangers from Roland's regular music shops to the gulag of the CK 'Mom and Pop organ store' limbo they currently languish in to see their 'commitment' to arrangers in the US! If an E80 isn't good enough to display on a shelf next to a Fantom, where do you think their priorities are?

The style selections are another area where it is easy to see Roland's geographical interest. Countless schlager and schlock, very little R&B, Country, Alternative, or styles in any way recognizably American... Until Roland decide quite consciously to start being more aggressive in the US market, marketing AND style-wise, I personally don't see much weight being attached to OUR needs.....

Diki:
Is there anywhere that the above American type styles can be downloaded or purchased that have been created by E 80 owners, etc.?
One place that the Roland Sales Manager, Travis Mitchell told me about is:
cybermidi.com
I am told there is a membership fee of 40.00 but then you can download all the midi files there that are done by professionals, and there are lots of them.

Bebop

Pretty much all the major style houses are European, so once again the same slant on styles (IMHO).

SMFs of US tunes are abundant (or relatively so) but styles are another thing...

While ALL the major workstations have arpeggio patterns in them that scream 'USA', the arrangers have very few (IMO) that feel particularly American. Lots of house and disco, very little hiphop. Lots of schlager, very little 'alternative'. Lots of Latin, very little reggae. Lots of polka, very little Cajun. You get the point.....

Styles aren't everything......these KB's have the ability make your own styles ...but few do it......play along ..use SMF, Mp3's mix it up make it fun its all good !!

After visiting cybermidi, all I found were SMFs. No styles. And nothing model specific... just generic GM SMFs.

As most of the E80/G70 sales are in Europe, most of the styles from users are coming from there, too. So back to square one. I still feel that unless Roland themselves make deliberate inroads into US styles, it won't matter a bit what 'features' their hardware has. Unless musically they address US players, they are going to paint themselves into a corner, with just older players playing older styles. Not exactly how you would go about building a market....

I am pretty sure I was told you can make styles from the midi files you play in this keyboard. You can also remove a track in a midi file that you want to play yourself.
I have just printed up the 287 pages of the manual and will now begin to study it so I will know what I am talking about and maybe even how to turn this keyboard on when it gets here next Thursday
PS: I have had one offer for the Tyros 2 so far that would just about cover the sales tax and freight Anybody have any interest in it and/or the PSR9000 both loaded with everything.
Let me know
Bebop

Hi Bebop,
Technote have redone their Technics style range for Roland keyboards if they're of any interest to you. SD card with 300+ of their styles available for 99uk pounds.

Just out of interest, with my VA7 a few years back, roland included hundreds of their earlier styles on zip disk ( I think), do they include all these earlier styles with the E80 as an added bonus?

best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by BEBOP:
[B]

You can make Styles from SMF using
EMC Style Works Universal easily.....works pretty good with some tweaking...

The Roland G70 and E80 can make styles from midifiles without using EMC styleworks.


------------------
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

George thats good to know ...I wasnt aware of that nice Roland feature!

Hi George,
in your opinion, are styles from e80 & g70 completely interchangeable , or will they need tweaking if you use a G70 style on an E80. Reason I'm asking is the Technote Roland styles card I'm interested in , is actually for the G70.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by George Kaye:
[B]

Hi Bebop,
you could probably even recreate some of your favourite Yammie styles using omb to create a midifile of the yammie style & then use "midi to style" function in the Roland to recreate the style in roland format.
I used to use this method for creating styles for my kn7.
Best part is, you possibly won't have as many hassles as I did with incompatible drum mapping,ie if I'm not miskaken, Roland may have some xg mapped drum kits?? Provided these kits can be used in styles, it should make things easier.

I couldn't find the drum maps & instrument listings in the manual I downloaded..

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by BEBOP:
[B]I am pretty sure I was told you can make styles from the midi files you play in this keyboard.

If you have version 3.0 in a G70 then there is complete compatability according to my Roland Rep. I hadn't decided if I was going to order any E80's only because of how big this keyboard is. It's the widest arranger keyboard I've ever seen and if I put in on display at my store there would be no way I can have any other keyboards on top of it because you would never be able to see the E80's display because of how far back it is.
However, after much consideration, I think I will put a couple in my store. I found a place near my PA gear where I can place the E80 by itself and it should be OK. I like the way the E80 sounds, as I've liked the G70, but the look didn't excite me enough to just go ahead and buy them when I was given a sales presentation by Travis Mitchell, my Roland CK rep. I have a store which is just 20 feet wide and with all the arranger and non arranger keyboards I sell and have on display, it is very important to me to display products as visibly and easy to demo as possible and the E80 made me crazy trying to find a spot appropriate in my store.


------------------
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

George what did you think of the E80 Speaker system?

The main problem going from Yamaha to Roland are the Mega voices. Anything relatively recent uses these extensively in the styles, and there just is NO decent Roland equivalent. If you use Roland's styles for Roland guitar patches, it's OK, and you've got the Guitar Mode, but (IMO) there is nothing on the Roland that can quite get the Mega Voice guitar sounds.

G70 to E80 is mostly transparent, but the other way round can be problematic. Some drum sounds and time-sliced 'phrases' just can't be easily duplicated.

But basically, if you have a Yamaha style that DOESN'T use Mega voices, the Roland Makeup (style/song header editing) Tools are the easiest to optimize a non-native style to work with the voices and drumkits.

And finally.... personally, I don't like many 'song-styles', or styles made from commercial SMFs. I just find them too recognizable, or a bit 'jerky' because there is rarely four bars on the same chord in each section to get a good groove going. Not to mention four bars of major, minor and seventh chords, to provide variation. Not to mention a variety of intros and outros, break/fills, etc..

There's a LOT more to making a decent, easily usable style than grabbing a few bars of an SMF (otherwise, we'd ALL be doing it!)....

I was thinking. Why dont we find the email address for the yamaha, korg, roland style programmers and write to them directly so that they at least are aware that there is a greater need for more for example american styles ?

Steve Mcnally is the styleprogrammer for Korg. I am sure i can find his email address.

Its all about money baby $$$$$

They ain't stupid they know what they're doing dont be fooled

But its worth a try.....

Many of the style programmers read our posts here. Chris Anthony, who many years ago worked only for Generalmusic, has been freelancing for many years now and has done styles for the Yamaha Tyros, Roland G and E series as well. I know several Korg programmers who live throughout the USA and Italy.
I was invited to Yamaha many years ago along with another store owner from the east coast to assist Yamaha in giving examples of songs which contain the types of music the styles should come from.
I do think the majority of manufactures listen to what you have to say and do their best to develop styles they think their customers want.

------------------
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

The problem is there are so many customers and they have all different wishes.

Well, obviously at the moment Roland (and most of the majors) are developing styles for their existing customers. It's easy to see a bias towards, firstly, 'older' styles mostly usable by senior citizens, or players playing FOR senior citizens, and secondly, styles aimed squarely at European players, beer-hall and schlager, and european flavored 'pop' styles.

If arranger manufacturers want to get serious about the US market, they are going to have to make the styles FIRST, and then the sales will come. It's not going to happen the other way around, for sure....

As I've said many times, if arrangers (in the US, at least) had styles developed by the same teams that voice the arp patterns for workstations, you wouldn't be able to keep them in stock! Manipulating a style is FAR easier than trying to string a bunch of patterns together on the fly.

I tried a MotifXS recently, and while the patterns were to die for, hip, contemporary, VERY 'USA", it was a nightmare to try and trigger the patterns and fill patterns while I was still playing other parts...! An arranger is a FAR better tool for manipulating patterns, but until the majors stop giving ALL the good, contemporary patterns to the workstation line, and stop leaving the arrangers with mostly schlock and old folks home styles, this type of keyboard will never increase it's market (and slowly die out due to attrition!).

It isn't all about the $$$.... Sometimes you have to INVEST to get $$$$ in the future....

I see that nobody is using the Roland General Arranger Forum here in the Synthzone, so how about us Roland E 50, 60, and 80 owner/players take it over for our own.
Inviting all current owners and buyers to join us there so we can learn from each other.
I am specifically asking Diki to join us as he has a lot of experience already and can be a great help to us newbies if he will. C'mon Diki give us the benefit of your hard earned knowledge, please.
here is the quick and easy URL to get there.
Graham is getting e 80 in a day or so and is already posting there with me.
How about it? Sound like a winner to you?
we are going to need our own forum as a LOT of people are going to buy these three boards.
See ya at: http://www.synthzone.com/cgi-bin/forumdi...r=38&DaysPrune=
Bebop

Hi Diki,
I usually put any mega voice styles thru emc to convert them to my non mega voice psr1500.
There's free software options available also. I think Michaels Midi Player software converts them also.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Diki:
[B]The main problem going from Yamaha to Roland are the Mega voices.

Well, yes, several softwares (even a regular MIDI sequencer) can edit out the Mega information. But, unfortunately, those mega performance nuances are EXACTLY what make the part so good! The damping of chords, the body knocks and pick noises are what makes me want the styles in the first place!

Diki.....judging by your posts....
sounds like your yearning for a T2?
whats the story? Getting tired of the G70?.....talk to us

http://keyboard.eskildsen.dk/ShowProduct.aspx?productId=17338


Here are some more E80 Style demos MP3

enjoy

Man the E80 sounds awesome!

hurry up and buy one Donny so when u wanna sell it ill be able to buy it off u and save save save

It's just another tool of the trade....
Nick I might surprise you & keep it in my arranger arsenal.....

Donny good luck with what ever u choose to do mate we are only takin the micky out of u

but please pleeeaassseee post some demos!

If & when I get an E80 I will surly post some demos for sure for ya M8.....
hang in there!

Diki, of course you're right (and a very good analysis of the arranger situation in the US, BTW), however it appears to be a vicious cycle; the smaller production creates artificially high prices which (for the most part) only older players can comfortably afford thus defining the market.

I haven't had a Roland arranger since the G1000 so can't comment on their newest TOTL arrangers but (in my mind) only Korg comes close to producing the kind of styles you're referring to (and sadly, not enough of them).

One thing we totally agree on; the styles must come first. No matter what some members say about things like sounds, navigation, harmonizers, etc., etc., in the end it's the STYLES that count most in buying decisions. There is a reason that you'll likely never (well, hardly ever) see a Ketron in the hands of a YOUNG, U.S., arranger player. For THAT market, the styles suck bigtime.

There is no reason that an arranger keyboard can't retain all of it's current (crappy) styles and just add the styles that would make it more acceptable to US markets. There's no law that says you have to play Schlager just because it's included in the style banks. Just bury it in submenus so that a young hiphop artist won't accidently stumble across it and go screaming out of the store. Come to think of it, a super-duper killer-style-producing company catering to all the major brands would be the most practical solution to the problem. We all know that such a company doesn't exist.

chas

well, after all these posts I feel like I am a little confused here.
I have had many keyboards since the first one I bought back in the early 70's.
back then what you bought was what you played.
that is no longer true. I have maybe a thousand styles that I am playing in the Tyros 2 that are the resident styles and home brew styles from every keyboard you can name. I might add that most of them sound better then the Tyros 2 resident styles. The difference then comes down to what and how the newer keyboard will do that theolder ones won't do. I have 8 keyboards still here in the studio after selling three technics and none will do what the new E 80 does. So I bought it. It probably isn't going to sound any different that what I have been playing in the Tyros 2 using the G 70 styles for the last few months. so..................?
Bebop

BeBop, those styles [G70 conversions] you have been playing on the Tyros2 are going to sound dramatically better on your E80...

I love the G70 styles I am using on my G1000..they are pretty much the only styles I use now...But make no mistake, the same styles played on an E80/G70.....are superb..

I have been listening and playing all the top arrangers the last couple months, and to my ears nothing tops the G70 and E80...I am not saying bad things[they are all good] about the Genesys, SD1, Tyros2, and PA1x.....but I have made my choice ..what would be best for me...

Now if I can borrow a few bucks off of DNJ...

YO Fran,
I have also been playing the converted G 1000 files on the Tyros 2 and they really sound good even yet.
I hope you get the E 80 really soon as I know you would be alot of help to us developing our new learning curve, for those of us that have never been in the Roland Camp.
I would be happy to finance your E 80 purchase but I would want a deed to your house cause I know how flakey you Musicians are
Bebop

[This message has been edited by BEBOP (edited 05-15-2007).]

I am seeing and hearing about more people ordering the E 80. I think it is going to be BIG.
My friend Alex traded his E 50 for an E 80 and that sez a lot to me because his experience goes back as far as mine does.
I hope to hear from many more of you that are getting the E 50, 60, or 80 and have or getting the G 70. come and post in the Roland Arranger Forum and we will make that forum our own.
My E 80 is due to arrive tomorrow. Hope it is on time
Best to all,
Bebop