Any Roland D110 users out there? Tips needed :)

[theelectricmike]

Hi There

I thought I'd finally sign up to the forums after oggling this site for ages and ages!

I have a number of vintage synths in my studio, but one that I've been trying to get my head round for ages is the Roland D110. Basically when I got it there didn't seem to be any patches working on it, so I used a sysex factory reset on it which kinda works. I now have some patches on there, but patches 1-30 appear to be the same, the rest are fine.

I've seen a bunch of commercial patches available online, and I was wondering if anyone had any reccommended patches for the D110, maybe any freebies, or commercial ones I don't mind at this point, I'd just like to load some decent sounds on there! The patchman ones look good, but the site is mega old, and I'm worried if I pay for the patches nothing will happen...

I know lots of people will say they don't like the D110, so please refrain from saying 'buy a D50'. I have this now and I'd like to get it working. I may buy a D50 as well in the future though, I'm getting the collecting bug!

[Korgyamaharoland]

Hi theelectricmike,
I also use the Roland D110 and I love this machine. If you know how to program it (which is probably hard), you can have nice and original sounds!
Did you try the Atari Editor with emulator? As far as I know, there are a lot of sounds for Atari ST edtitors.
I take a look at my harddisc at home, if I find some, I´ll send them to you.
Maybe I have sysex sounds, too (for MIDI-OX)

[Mesmerised]

Hi,
the most difficult thing with the D-110 is understanding its data structure!
The Patches in the D-110 (the d-10/d-20 don't have these!) are actually sets of settings for all the 8 (plus R) parts! That's why they're rather empty/generic.
The actual sound patches are called Timbres referring to Tones.
So, you chose a Part in which you call up a Timbre which refers to a Tone (which in turn can have up to four Partials.)
And the settings of all the Parts can be saved into a Patch.
Yes, it's complicated!
Take a look here:
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/69170 ... =12#manual

[ShoutingAtSpiders]

Hi,

I've spent a fair bit of time programming the D-20 and understand it's architecture quite well. if you like these sounds. . .



. . . then, I can send them to you.

One of the things I did when programming the D-20, was to use only the User Tones in the internal memory and mapped the 64 User Tones to Timbres 1 to 64, which allowed me to conveniently make MIDI Program changes between the 64 sounds, like I would on any other synth. All Timbres were set to Single Assign - Last Note Priority to minimise any problems when maximum voices were being used. I also found the D-5 manual had more information on Ring Modulation, than the D-20's manual did.

Alternatively, it looks like I have about 42 D110 sys-ex files, some of which appear to be Factory banks. I don't know what's in them all, but they have names like DRUMS, FLUTES, BRASS, FX, GUITARS, BASS, PIANO, ORGAN, SYNTH, VOCAL etc. I also have a number of D-10, D-20 banks I've collected over the years.

You can have them if you want them.

[malkav30]

Hi,
I'm resurrecting this thread as I'm the proud owner of 2*D110 and one D10, which are my synths of choice to build virtual analog sounds on the cheap.

Both synths are quite different in their use as they share the same memory structure except for the patch section.
A patch on the D10 consists basically of two tones, in the D50 fashion. If you want to reproduce this on the D110 you have to create a patch with two parts on the same midi channel, each part containing the tone you want.

If you dig into the factory presets of the D110, you'll find some even more powerful patches, which leverage the 8 parts to achieve a great stereo panning, using e.g parts 1 to 3 on the left, 4-5 on the center and 6-8 on the right, for a stunning effect that cannot be achieved with D10 patches. You can find such presets on the factory bank n°6.
By the way, the D110 came with plastic cards descripting it's factory patches. You can easily find a pdf of these on the web. It provides some insights on how a big lead sound can be achieved with the D110. Given that the D10 is already a pretty capable synth in this field, you can only dream of what you can achieve with the D110 and a little patience.

One thing to keep in mind though. The D110 is a powerful beast, but from my experience, the so-called resonant filter can be very noisy when pushed, to a point where it becomes painfully glitchy. I didn't encounter the same glitches on my D10, and my two D110 have the same noisy filter, so I assume this is a difference in design.

As for the D-10 banks, I have found that Valhala had released cards for both the D10/20/5 series AND a separate D110 series. I assume that theses specific cards contain D110 formatted patches, which would be very instructive to analyse. If anyone has sysex or atari-format dumps of these, I would truely appreciate the sharing. I can provide the sysex dumps of the 3 official roland cards (only D10 patches though) if you need.

[Andympeck]

Hi. I recently purchased a D110. I was after the sound "Warm Pad fade" present on the D10. I assumed the D110 would have this sound/patch as the D110 is (more or less) the same unit in rack mount form.

However, "Warm pad fade" isn't present in the factory patches.

Is there a way to sysex the D10 patches into a D110?

Thankyou in advance.

[manednews]

I recently bought one of these units and have been going insane just trying to get it to play standard midi files. It does play the demo songs without a problem, but when I try to send midi out signals to it I get nada. Everything on my outputs (from PC sequencer) are midi channel 1 sends and are functioning fine on three other keyboards. What am I missing? I've set the midi channel to 1 on the part listed but nothing. Can someone enlighten me please?

[Hofha]

manednews
The Roland D-110 is a sadistic beast. This happens to me everytime I use this machine. You may have figured it out by now, since it's been a year. If you are getting a green light (MIDI signal received) and the numbers [1-8+R] on the front panel blink [turn black] (when in 'Play Mode') on the right front panel when you press a key or send a signal, it means the D-110 is making and sending the sound but something is not on with what is receiving the sound or your cables aren't connected to the right sockets.

You have to set the output socket for each part. one at a time. It defaults to MIX out (the two output sockets on the right) for all of the 'Parts'. Either plug your cables there or change the output socket of each 'Part' to the ones where your cables are. The option to set the output of the 'Part' isn't under the 'Part' submenu, it's under the 'Timber Edit' submenu. Maddening.

My battle right now is with the pedals. Has anyone ever used Sustain and Expressions pedals with the D-110? I'm Raging against the machine because I can't get both to be 'ON' (not necessarily active) at the same time. Some piano skills transfer to synth playing if you (pay the heavy penance and) learn to program this thing right. It seems the Expression pedal's behavior is linked to the envelope settings which can be a creative opportunity. And the Sustain Pedal behaves like a 'Hold' on some 'Tones' and a real Sus Pedal (where the harmonics play against each other and decay) on others but I don't know why. I'm gonna make this thing my b!tch sooner or later.

[Mesmerised]

Which trap got me so many times that I put a sticker to the back (before I start taking the synth apart) is the fact that the Outputs 7/8 do not work when the FX section is set to on!
So if you get no signal on 7/8 out - that's why. They're not broken. Yes, it's in the manual somewhere...

[meatballfulton]

There is some information on the oddities of how the D110 responds to the sustain pedal in this archived article.

The D110 has a time/level style of programming the EG, rather than the ADSR style. There are five times and four levels, the last being the sustain level, the last time (T5) is the release time.

In addition it has a no sustain mode! This is used for emulation of instruments like pianos that gradually fade out even though the pedal is still being held. What happens is that at the end of T4, the envelope arrives at the sustain level but the envelope immediately enters the release stage even if keys are held or the pedal is engaged. This is meant to be used for any percussion sounds, but can be applied to pianos and other sounds.

For a piano-like sound, another way to program it would be to set L3 and T4 to taste, L Sus to 0. T4 then defines how quickly the note will decay. T5 is set for a much shorter value than T4, that way if the keys are relased prior to the end of T4, the sound dies out more quickly.

There are many other digital synths that have similar features, sometimes called a "second decay". A simple ADSR cannot be made to do this beyond the rather crude method of setting sustain level to 0, letting the decay provide the fade out and release the cut off of the note that happens when disengaging the sustain pedal on a piano.

From the D110 manual (click to enlarge):

[Mattew96]

I have to note, the PG-10 is a super worthwhile addition... also, I own a D-5 and three D-110s. Guess what, with the right MIDI setup you can use the D-110 as a voice expander for the low end D-series keyboards. Simply set the D-keyboard to "local mode off", then chain the output from the keyboard through each of the D-110s, making sure to turn the D-110s passthrough modes on. Finally, link the last D-110 back to your D-series keyboard and voila, you have an insane number of D-series voices.
My D-5 and D-110s are currently in storage so I don't remember the way I managed to put the PG-10 in sequence with all the modules, but note that it is possible to have the PG-10 update all of the synths at once, so that your 128-partial monstrosity keeps all voices up-to-date. Also note that this works best in multi mode not performance mode, but I've successfully used both with some creativity.

Also note if you do get the PG-10, that there are only some "live update" parameters, any change you make to the filter cutoff will only affect the NEXT keypress, for example, but I'm pretty sure things like the LFO change speed live. I can't remember now. I was a little disappointed by this at first but it's not the worst thing ever.

Please note that I am an UBERFAN of the low-end D series and I actually think the D-5 is an underappreciated sleeper, especially if you want to gig with D series sounds. It is a very fun and light performance keyboard with some fun tricks up its sleeve and a beautiful VFD. I wish the PG-10 had a VFD.

[FoxGaming7]

Hi, sorry to resurrect this post again, but I just recently bought a D-20 from 1988 and was wondering if anyone has any ROM Cards for it. I have the PN-D10-01 but I'm looking for some non-factory ones like the David Garfield, Bo Tomlyn, Sound Source, and Valhala, etc., cards.
Thanks!

[Mr_Mojo_Risin]

Which trap got me so many times that I put a sticker to the back (before I start taking the synth apart) is the fact that the Outputs 7/8 do not work when the FX section is set to on!
So if you get no signal on 7/8 out - that's why. They're not broken. Yes, it's in the manual somewhere...

Thanks for pointing out this very strange design quirk. And a minor correction... these are actually on Multi Out Jacks 5/6 since 7/8 do not exist (... "somewhere" is on Page 44 of the D-110 Owner's Manual)

[Mesmerised]

Thanks for the correction - absolutely right.
Just noticed this myself several days before while re-cabling my studio.