Roland U220

[Flash Harry]

A mate is selling a Roland U220 ROMpler and I'm getting sick of carrying around my Triton Studio (it's heavy, long, and I don't like bashing it) so I have brought the aforementioned beauty home for a bit of meaningful one on one.
For a late 80's module it's rather fab, the piano sounds particularly are impressive and there are some really nice organs. There's a bit of Fairlight stuff (thank you Australia) which sound like real classic timbres.

I'm not sure about GAS attack, this will pay for itself in two gigs and it's in a 19 inch rack format with midi in/out/thru and six individual audio outputs. I reckon this baby is here to stay.

RTFM - only 160 pages....   

[cuthbert]

Congrats, Mike!

The U220 is a nice (and underrated) tone module - I haven't used mine in a while, but if I recall correctly, it's 6-part multitimbral, with panning and level control for each. You can expand the number of tones with the SNU-110 cards, which are still relatively available on eBay, and fairly inexpensive.

And yup, a nice selection of sounds are included (Jupiter 8 string and brass samples, too).

I used a U220 on 2001 for the strings, drums, sitar, and organ. It was quite the thing in its day.

[64Guitars]

That looks like a nice sound module. I wasn't familiar with it so I had to do some searching.



It has some nice sounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkacf2TKAQQ


Apparently, it has a CR2032 lithium battery on the main board which may need changing once in a while. The owner's manual (page 7) says it should be changed every five years and that you have to send it to Roland to get the battery changed.  But I'm sure you could do it yourself. The service manual should help a lot. You can download it here:

http://www.houseofsynth.com/roland-u-20-u-220-pcm-sound-module-service-notes-and-owners-manuals

You can see the location of the CR2032 in the middle of the top-right quadrant of the main board on page 6. When you remove it, the contents of the working RAM will be lost. So, after installing a new battery, you'll have to perform a Factory Data Load and Memory Initialization as described on pages 15 and 16 of the service manual. Oops! I just noticed where that could be a problem. It says you have to use the "U-220 Factory Preset Card" to restore the factory data, and you have to get the card from a Roland Service Centre. I'm guessing they probably don't have any after all this time and it might be very hard to find. So I'm not sure where that leaves you when the battery dies.

[Flash Harry]

I did a reset on the system yesterday because the display and the manual were not providing the same 'experience'. Roland still have the SYSEX file as midi which you can play out of your favourite DAW into the machine. The instructions are all there.

What I would like is a utility that runs on XP or later that can set up the patches and timbres and tones, the one that comes from Roland makes too many assumptions and only runs in windows 3.1

3.1? It didn't even have an IP stack, you had to buy one. Am I so old?

I'm sure I can change a lithium battery - that was science fiction in the 1980's

[64Guitars]

What I would like is a utility that runs on XP or later that can set up the patches and timbres and tones, the one that comes from Roland makes too many assumptions and only runs in windows 3.1

How about Midi Quest?

http://www.squest.com/Products/MidiQuest11/Instruments/RolandU-220/index.html

It looks like a pretty useful program, and not just for the U-220. It's a universal editor/librarian capable of supporting many MIDI instruments and sound modules.

http://www.squest.com/



It's not cheap though. The "Essentials" version is $149 US. Standard Midi Quest is $249 US and Midi Quest Pro is $369 US.

http://www.squest.com/Products/MidiQuest11/Compare.html


Or you can get an open source universal editor/librarian that runs in Java for free (my kind of price) .

http://sourceforge.net/p/jsynthlib/wiki/Home/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/jsynthlib/

It doesn't list the U-220 on its "Supported Synths" page though. So maybe it won't work. Still, it's "universal" and it's free, so it might be worth downloading to see if it's any help.

http://sourceforge.net/p/jsynthlib/wiki/Supported Synths/


There may be other freeware/shareware universal editor/librarians. Try Googling "universal midi editor librarian" or something like that.

[Flash Harry]

How about Midi Quest?

http://www.squest.com/Products/MidiQuest11/Instruments/RolandU-220/index.html

It looks like a pretty useful program, and not just for the U-220. It's a universal editor/librarian capable of supporting many MIDI instruments and sound modules.

http://www.squest.com/



It's not cheap though. The "Essentials" version is $149 US. Standard Midi Quest is $249 US and Midi Quest Pro is $369 US.

http://www.squest.com/Products/MidiQuest11/Compare.html


Or you can get an open source universal editor/librarian that runs in Java for free (my kind of price) .

http://sourceforge.net/p/jsynthlib/wiki/Home/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/jsynthlib/

It doesn't list the U-220 on its "Supported Synths" page though. So maybe it won't work. Still, it's "universal" and it's free, so it might be worth downloading to see if it's any help.

http://sourceforge.net/p/jsynthlib/wiki/Supported Synths/


There may be other freeware/shareware universal editor/librarians. Try Googling "universal midi editor librarian" or something like that.

I looked at Midiquest, but buying a utility that cost more than the uint - seems a bit skewed.

I'll do some more searching..

[64Guitars]

I looked at Midiquest, but buying a utility that cost more than the uint - seems a bit skewed.

  Yeah, I was thinking that too. Maybe you can find a freeware or shareware editor/librarian.