rackmount rompler for orchestral and acoustic

[nuketifromorbit]

I'm in the market for an affordable rack mountable rompler with decent acoustic and orchestral sound sets. I'm looking to spend some where between 100 and 250 American dollars. I don't necessarily require stunningly accurate samples and will over look a little bit of cheesiness if the price is low enough. Also I don't plan on doing much patch creation with this unit and would be perfectly happy with "a box of sounds." Any recommendations?

[Ashe37]

I'm in the market for an affordable rack mountable rompler with decent acoustic and orchestral sound sets. I'm looking to spend some where between 100 and 250 American dollars. I don't necessarily require stunningly accurate samples and will over look a little bit of cheesiness if the price is low enough. Also I don't plan on doing much patch creation with this unit and would be perfectly happy with "a box of sounds." Any recommendations?

Emu Proteus 2000?

[Psy_Free]

You might be able to grab a Roland JV-1080 with the Orchestral Expansion card (SR-JV80-2) close to your upper cash limit.

[rhino]

For about $300, you might get a Kurzweil K2000r.

[pricklyrobot]

Yep, I use my JV-1080 pretty much exactly as you described. I've got the Orchestral II card (among others, though I haven't had Orchestral I, so I can't say how it compares) which I quite like.

Looks like the 1080's have come down quite a bit since I got mine. A quick look on Ebay completed listings shows several selling for $150 or less. Don't know if the expansion cards have decreased proportionally (a few years ago they were running $75-$150 depending on desirability/perceived rarity), but even if not, it looks like you could still fit synth + one expansion card into your budget.

[tallowwaters]

I've tried many Romplers, and the only answer I was ever happy with was the Roland JV/XP/XV series. The 1010 is good for just dialing in a preset, but editing is pretty easy on the 1080 because you'll likely want to dial back the tacky reverb/delay they slather over everything.

[SquareWave]

Gear-wise, I've been out of the loop for a good 10-15 years, but this thread got me looking at some of the early 2000's Roland gear. I have always been partial to Roland mostly because of the D-50 - my favorite synth. I am rather impressed with some of the older rack-mount Roland stuff - particularly the JV and XV units. Wow! Sadly, a perusal of the current Roland gear is completely devoid on rack-mount modules of this quality...

How/why did this market completely die???

[nuketifromorbit]

Any opinions of the jv 880, ultra proteus, or sound canvases? Also thanks for all the great replies.

[Alex E]

JV-880 is cool, but the 1080 is only getting cheaper and it's got more cool things inside.

[tallowwaters]

I have an XP-30, which is just a JV1080. You can plink around on it if you're still coming by next week, so you can get an idea.

[fh991586]

The Roland JV series had some units put in rack alone, like the M-VS1 for the Vintage card, so you might find a M-SE1 (Strings Ensemble) or M-OC1 (Orchestra) for 100-150$ if you're lucky. They're usually cheap, but simply don't come up often...

Otherwise, you might try the Roland U-220, which has some nice sound cards (Orchestral winds, brass, etc.) to complement the basic sounds. For all I've read on the internet, the U-110 might not be that much of a good deal (unless there's a lot of cards included in the deal).

[nuketifromorbit]

Well this is kind of out of the blue, but I ultimately decided on the ultra proteus due to its ability to do wave/rom indexing, low cost, and the inclusion of the proteus 2 orchestral rom. In short disregard the statement I made about not wanting to do any patch creation. In retrospect I should have stated that cheesy samples were fine and that I basically wanted something to mangle with outboard effects. I know its hard to edit, but I figured out how to use a freaking akai s2000, so I think I'll be ok. Thanks for the recommendations everyone, even If I basically ignored them.

[madtheory]

IMO you went with the best option, the Ultra Proteus. Their orchestral sounds are great in a not quite real way.

[nuketifromorbit]

IMO you went with the best option, the Ultra Proteus. Their orchestral sounds are great in a not quite real way.

Good to hear. Also seal's demo of the morpheus were enough to make me decide.

[MitchXI]

For a lot of the sounds from the MYST soundtrack, Robyn Miller used a proteus mps +, with the same Proteus 2 sounds. I liked that soundtrack. I like the Proteus 2 sounds.