Romplers and Synthesizer Pads: Transcript (Patreon)

Transcript from this video: https://youtu.be/rWsY_IyydXE

I love pads.

Long ones, soft ones, weird ones; ones with tinkly bits, ones with crazy bits; spooky ones, pretty ones - all of them.

For me, the pad is one of the apex predators of the synthesizer world: powerful enough to act as an entire queue in a movie, enough to drive the emotion of an entire scene, or smart enough to know when to sit back and let other instruments do the heavy lifting, even though those other instruments would be nothing without the pad.

Growing up in the 90s and 2000s, I heard a lot of pads from a very specific type of synthesizer: the rompler. I may not have known it at the time, but the rompler was unbelievably important in all the music, movies, and video games I came across, so much so that I’m still discovering places where rompler pads made their mark.

This video is about rompler pads and how much I love them. I’ve recorded over 4 hours of pads from synths like the Korg M1, Triton, Roland JV-1080, JD-800, and Emu Proteus. I’ve also recorded pads from some of my favorite modern romplers, like the Wavestate, Prophet X, and Yamaha Montage. Shoutout to ZZounds for helping me get that in the studio.

I’m going to play you some pads and talk about what made each of these romplers special, how they worked, and anything else that seems fun along the way. This is a love letter to Rompler Pads.

Let’s get started.

We’ll want to get some definitions nailed down before we start listening to pads.

What is a rompler?

The term "rompler" is a portmanteau of "ROM" (Read-Only Memory) and "sampler." Romplers typically use pre-recorded samples stored in ROM rather than allowing users to record and manipulate their samples, as traditional samplers do.

They generally have controls like a normal synthesizer – things like volume envelopes, but not always. Some have filters, some have effects, some don’t. Some let you layer multiple samples from ROM, and some combine samples with synthesis techniques.

We will not be talking about devices that let you sample, like the Emu Emulator. Instead, we’ll be focusing on synths that only play back samples from ROM. I also won’t be covering EVERY rompler ever made, including some newer software ones like Omnisphere and Nexus. I’ll be covering the ones I have access to via hardware or software.

What’s a pad?

https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/pad-it-out-10-ways-make-distinctive-pad-sounds/

Pads are sustained notes or chord progressions and carry tonal information. A pad can be a synthesized string section, a choir, or whatever you want it to sound like. Sometimes a pad can even act as a lead, like in this Boards of Canada track where outside the bassline and drums, the pad takes up the rest of the frequency spectrum and harmonic duties: [link to YouTube video]

Flume and other future and neo-R&B artists will use pads in a more rhythmic way, through sidechaining or other programming techniques: [link to YouTube video]

Here is an example of strings being used as pad chords I cooked up.

Any instrument can be used to create pad sounds if it’s sustained and adds to the harmonic, or musical, content of a piece of music. If you want to make a very simple pad yourself, load up your favorite synth.

Turn the attack and release up on your envelope. This will give the sound a soft fade-in and release. You don’t need either of these but it's a great place to start.

The waveform you choose will determine the brightness of your pad. Using a triangle wave or sine will keep it mellow, but uninteresting. Choose a harmonically rich wave and temper it with a low pass filter. Add a swelling envelope to your low pass filter, too. I also recommend adding reverb and delay.

Now you have a basic subtractive pad.

Choosing different waveforms or wavetables and moving through them will add interest to your pad. Some pads only need one note held down to tell their story. Experiment with different filters, waveforms, and modulation to make your pad unique.

Now that we know what romplers and pads are, we can get started with the rest of the video. Don’t forget to give this video a like if you enjoyed it, and subscribe for more stuff like this. Also, if you want, you can support the channel at Patreon.com/redmeansrecording, where I’ll be releasing the almost 4 hours of pad sounds I recorded for this as a treat. Thanks for your support, now more pads."

ENSONIQ ESQ-1
https://www.vintagesynth.com/ensoniq/esq-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq_ESQ-1

https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

Let’s start with the earliest one on my list, the Ensoniq ESQ-1. I had actually put the Kurzweil K250 here and sampled it, but it wasn’t just a rompler, it was a sampler too, so it goes in the trash.

Produced from 1986 to 1988, the ESQ-1 was a highly affordable synthesizer from Ensonique that featured a mixture of digital oscillators, ROM samples, and analog filters. Each of the 8 voices could feature up to 3 digital oscillators, and you could mix and match the waveforms and ROM samples, which is a hallmark of getting some of the coolest sounds from these boxes. The synth was multitimbral, and you could use its onboard sequencer to record and play back 8 tracks at patterns or songs.

You could actually get 9 sounds out of it, as one additional internal or cartridge-based sound could be used independently. Commercial cartridges come with two sets of four banks of voices each, but there are also blank or rewritable cartridges.

Notable users of the ESQ-1 included Steve Roach, Jean Michel Jarre, Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, and Skinny Puppy.

This synth still rocks today, but I would definitely run it through some effects. For better or worse, the only version I could find for this video, the UVI version of the synth, the USQ-1, loads most of the presets up with effects.

ROLAND D-50

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_D-50

https://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/d-50

https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

Only to the second synth in our list, and we’ve landed on an absolute legend.

The Roland D-50 was produced originally from 1987 to 1991. It featured what they called Digital Linear Arithmetic Synthesis and boasted 16 voices in normal mode or 8 voices per split in split mode. It was 16-part multi-timbral, and you could access each voice on a separate MIDI channel if you wanted to.

The D-50 was Yamaha's biggest competition for the DX-7 and is one of the best-selling synthesizers of all time. Between its sound and easier-to-use interface, it’s estimated it sold hundreds of thousands of units.

The Linear Arithmetic Engine, or LA engine, combined elements of subtractive and additive synthesis with sampled waveforms. It featured 16-bit digital oscillators that could create the basic waveforms. Each oscillator was a series of partials, consisting of a waveform, its harmonic content, and its own envelope generator. They called their envelopes TVA, or Time Variant Amplifies, instead of VCAs or ADSRs, just to be extra. Thanks, Roland.

A standout feature of the D-50 was how it used sampled attack transients. The initial transient of many instruments is the hardest thing to get right in synthesis, and while the FM synthesis of the DX-7 got closer by being able to produce a burst of inharmonic content at the start of a sound, it couldn’t hold a candle to the sampled transients of the D-50. Also, I swear to god if you get up in my mentions calling the DX-7 a phase distortion synth or a ROMPLER I will come to your house and change all your internet passwords.

The D-50 was insanely popular, featuring in too many soundtracks and songs to list them all, but some notable examples include Enya’s "Orinoco Flow," Jean-Michel Jarre's "Rendez-Vous," Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence," and maybe even the Kalimba sound in Toto’s "Africa."

It remains a banger to this day, and you can use it as part of the Roland Cloud or track down one of the Roland Boutique D-05s, which I hugely regret selling. The Roland V-synth XT can load a card that emulates the D-50, as well.

KORG M-1

https://www.vintagesynth.com/korg/m1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korg_M1

https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

Wow, from the D-50 to the Korg M1. Not sure we should have peaked this early, but here we are.

The Korg M1 was produced from 1988 to 1995 and is, again, one of the best-selling synthesizers in history, selling an estimated 250,000 units. It was MASSIVE in dance music and defined an entire generation of house tunes. To say the organ bass and M1 piano sound are iconic is like saying Bowser has a fat ass. It’s underselling it completely.

The M1 is a 16-voice digital synth with 16 oscillators and a digital filter. It could be run multitimbrally with up to 8 parts. It featured 4 MB of ROM filled with 144 multisampled sounds. It had a digital filter, the VDF, or non-resonant Variable Digital Lowpass Filter. They must have been smoking the same shit Roland was at the time because they called their VCA a VDA: Variable Digital Amplifier, and it had 3 independent AADBBSSRR envelopes. That’s right, not Attack Decay Sustain Release like a normal boy, we’re talking:

A: Attack

D1: Initial Decay

D2: Sustain Decay

B: Break Point

S: Sustain Level

S: Second Decay

R: Release

Absurd. I love it. The Korg M1 was filled with effects and a sequencer, aftertouch and velocity-sensitive keyboard. It was a smash hit and featured in songs like:

• Robin S - "Show Me Love"
• CeCe Peniston - "Finally"
• Snap! - "Rhythm Is a Dancer"
• Inner City - "Good Life"
• Corona - "Rhythm of the Night"
• Black Box - "Ride on Time"
• 808 State - "Pacific State"
• C+C Music Factory - "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)"
• Guru Josh - "Infinity"
• Crystal Waters - "Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless)"
• Madonna Vogue

While most people remember the M1 for the piano, organ, and string sound that DEFINED house music for a generation, it has some of the most amazing pads and soundscapes I’ve heard in a synth, past or preset. This synth is a gem, and you can grab the Korg Legacy Collection VST version of it to try it yourself. I love it to death.

Kurzweil K1000

https://www.vintagesynth.com/kurzweil/k1000

We left the K250 off the list at the start because it could sample, so Kurzweil did us a solid and released the K1000 in 1988. This rompler had most of the samples that made the K250 famous, 24-note polyphony, and was 16-part multitimbral.

There was a popular rumor that the samples were recorded using members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra! Oh, fancy.

You could stack layers of what Kurzweil called “soundfiles” into a program. A Soundfile consists of a sampled waveform like a piano or string, or a digitally produced waveform like a sine, saw, or square. You would layer these into a program with effects to get complex-sounding patches.

You would be forced to harness all that power on one of the smallest screens I’ve ever seen. You think menu diving is bad today, look at what these poor idiots had to deal with.

There were a ton of expansions for the K1000, which became pretty normal for Romplers, including ROM carts for horns, strings, guitars, and more.

Despite being hard to use, the K1000 has some SERIOUS pedigree in popular music. It’s all over Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral by NIN, early Depeche Mode, Enya, and even Pink Floyd.

These days if I wanted this sound, I would reach for the K1000. I would use the UVI version like we are here.

ENSONIQ VFX

https://www.vintagesynth.com/ensoniq/vfx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq_VFX

https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

Look at this handsome devil. The colors, that teal and white and brushed metal. The logo, the thickness of it. This is a cool synth for cool people.

Released in 1989, The VFX used Transwave Wavetable synthesis, also found in the Fizmo, and akin to the PPG wave and Waldorf Microwave. The VFX didn't have a resonant filter, so you would use these scannable wavetables to emulate a resonant filter in some cases. Check out my video on the Grooves Synthesis 3rd wave for demos and the history behind that tech.

You could sample an acoustic waveform and scan through it to create the semblance of the acoustic instrument it was sampled from. This was a popular alternative to the sampled transients of the D-50.

It had dual multi-mode digital filters and 3 11-stage envelopes. ELEVEN STAGES. We thought the M1’s AADBBSSRR envelope was bad, now we gotta deal with DABDBDSBRBR, or

Delay

Attack

Break Point1

Decay 1

Break Point 2

Decay 2

Sustain

Break Point 3

Release 1

Break Point 4

Release 2

DABDBDSBRBR

The VFX has 21 voices with 1-6 oscillators per voice, 24-bit effects, and was followed up by a version with a professional sequencer and added drum sounds. You’ll find it used by Jan Hammer in his work on the Miami Vice soundtrack, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Enya, and tons of film and television soundtracks. These days if I wanted to use one, I would reach for the UVI one we’re listening to here.

Ensoniq VFX

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq_VFX
https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

Look at this handsome devil. The colors, that teal and white and brushed metal. The logo, the thickness of it. This is a cool synth for cool people.

Released in 1989, The VFX used Transwave Wavetable synthesis, also found in the Fizmo, and akin to the PPG wave and Waldorf Microwave. The VFX didn't have a resonant filter, so you would use these scannable wavetables to emulate a resonant filter in some cases. Check out my video on the Grooves Synthesis 3rd wave for demos and the history behind that tech.

You could sample an acoustic waveform and scan through it to create the semblance of the acoustic instrument it was sampled from. This was a popular alternative to the sampled transients of the D-50.

It had dual multi-mode digital filters and 3 11-stage envelopes. ELEVEN STAGES. We thought the M1’s AADBBSSRR envelope was bad, now we gotta deal with DABDBDSBRBR, or

Delay Attack Break Point1 Decay 1 Break Point 2 Decay 2 Sustain Break Point 3 Release 1 Break Point 4 Release 2

The VFX has 21 voices with 1-6 oscillators per voice, 24-bit effects, and was followed up by a version with a professional sequencer and added drum sounds. You’ll find it used by Jan Hammer in his work on the Miami Vice soundtrack, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Enya, and tons of film and television soundtracks. These days if I wanted to use one, I would reach for the UVI one we’re listening to here.

E-MU

https://www.emumania.net/emu-sound-modules/

https://synthark.org/Archive/EmulatorArchive/Romplers.html

Finally, we get to the synths that provoked me to make this video, and honestly the biggest disappointment of the whole group I tested.

E-Mu was a huge deal in the 1980s, releasing the incredible and incredibly expensive Emulator series of sampler synthesizers, but by the late 1980s, Japan was dominating the market with things like the Roland D-50 and Korg M1. Emu needed a win, and they needed to focus on making more affordable synths.

They took the sample library of the Emulator III, chopped it up, and sliced it into fragments that could be loaded into sets of 4 or 8MB of ROM. They took a cue from the D-50 which companies PCM samples as transients followed by synthesis and delivered unto us their famous rompler, the Proteus.

The Proteus line started in 1989 with the Proteus 1, featuring presets designed for pop and rock. It was followed up by the 1 XR in 1990, the 1 plus orchestral in 1990, the 2 and 2 XR the same year, the 3 and 3 XR in 91, and the Proteus FX in 1994.

The second-generation Proteus modules are where I started paying attention, with their bright colors and evocative names. Starting in 1993 we got the Vintage Keys and Morpheus modules, followed by UltraProteus in 94, Planet Phatt for Hip Hop in 1997, and the Orbit for Techno and Electronica in 1996. The line continued with various iterations, including the absolutely disgustingly cool-looking XL7 and MP7 command station grooveboxes, until 2003, ending with the Proteus 2500, at which point Emu continued to focus on software-based products and exited the hardware synthesizer market.

I had an Orbit rack for a bit and meant to multisample it, but then I realized a ton of people already had. There are a few ways to get these sounds today without hardware, but I’m not very impressed with any of them. These versions I got for Kontakt via digitalsoundfactory.com are probably true to the originals, but they just don’t hit like the other synths on this list, and I didn’t hear the level of polish on the pads here as I do on something like the M1 of Roland JV-1080.

There was a big enough market for these to keep E-Mu in business long enough to eventually be bought out by Creative, but I would reach for D-50 before any of them. Unless I’m trying to make that one X-Files sound. That whistle is straight from the Proteus 2. Good ol’ Whistl'n Joe.

KORG WAVESTATION

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korg_Wavestation

https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

First produced in the early 1990s, the Wavestation uses what Korg called Vector Synthesis and Wave Sequencing to create complex sample-based patches. It honestly sounds great, but is one of the most absurdly difficult to program synths I’ve ever encountered. Even the Korg Wavestate, released in 2020, and Wavestate Native, the VST version of it, are like pulling teeth to me, which is a shame because when the Wavestation family hits right, it knocks it out of the park.

Vector synthesis was a fancy way of saying crossfading. Any two to four oscillator patch on the Wavestation family can be mixed in various ratios using dedicated mix envelopes, in real-time using the front panel’s joystick, or with LFOS, aftertouch, and MIDI.

The synthesis engine was based on the AI Synthesis system used in the M1 family and the following T series synths. The original Wavestation had 32 voice polyphony, up to 4 digital oscillators per patch, a non-resonant, low pass filter, and a controllable amplifier for each oscillator. It also had two DSP effect blocks which helped it feel alive and deep.

Wave sequencing was the other big selling point of the Wavestation, and this is where the programming aspect gets difficult. At its simplest, a wave sequence is a list of PCM waves playing in succession. Each step in the sequence can have a different duration, pitch, tuning, level, and crossfade amount. The sequences can play forward, backward, loop or play for a finite duration, and can be clocked or un-clocked.

On paper this sounds amazing, at the level of modular synthesizers for a complexity of patch, and some presets are astoundingly beautiful, but programming this on the synth is a nightmare. It wasn’t made any better with the Wavestate, and looking at the VST for the Wavestate Native will show you a little of what I mean.

I still think it’s worth picking up the Korg Legacy edition Wavestation VST for the nostalgia of some of these presets, which truly were groundbreaking. The new Wavestate VST is also worth checking out. I mean listen to this pad. This should be illegal it’s so beautiful.

ROLAND JD-800

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_JD-800

https://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jd-800

https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

If the Emu Proteus line was the biggest disappointment, the JD-800 was the biggest pleasant surprise. I had always assumed this beautiful bean was a simple Virtual Analog or even fancy analog like the equally striking Alesis Andromeda. Oh boy, I was wrong.

The Roland JD-800 is a 24-voice, 6-part multitimbral ROM-based digital synthesizer. It was produced between 1991-1993 and has a huge pedigree of famous artists associated with it, including William Orbit, 808 State, Ken Ishii, Astral Projection, Underworld, Faithless, and a lot more.

The sounds are based on the D-50, but updated for the nineties with a multimode filter and TONS of hands-on control. It boasted 3 MB of PCM ROM with 108 waveforms, plus 1 MB expansion cards that included drums, strings, and one dedicated completely to accordion. Because why not?

It used the same Linear Arithmetic synthesis employed by the D-50 and was the first of the Roland instruments to have its core presets developed entirely in the US, as opposed to Japan. The core sampled waveforms and factory presets were created by Eric Persing, who went on to found Spectrasonics, who you may know as the creators of Omnisphere. Eric is what we like to call in the synthesizer business, a bit of a chad.

Each patch in the synth contained up to four tones, and each tone could be considered its own independent synthesizer voice. When using only 1 tone, you could have up to 24 voices of polyphony, and when using all four tones up to 6 voices. There were dedicated layer buttons for turning on and off each tone, and you could mix them in edit mode using the sliders. Also how cool are sliders on synths? The answer: the coolest.

I was blown away by the pads on the JD-800 VST from Roland’s cloud. It’s a shame it’s only available through the subscription service, but definitely worth checking out, because like the D-50, this thing absolutely slays in the pad department. There’s also a hardware boutique version, but I’ve read it loses all the ease of programming the original had. Still, the sound is on point, and the Brothertiger expansion for the VST is good enough to base an entire album around.

ROLAND JV-1080

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_JV-1080

https://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jv-1080

https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

From one Roland juggernaut to another, the JV-1080 is a 64-voice, 16-part multitimbral beast. It was produced from 1994-2001 and was a huge hit with musicians of all kinds, but especially film composers, who appreciated its high-quality sounds and multitimbrality. While not fully confirmed, it’s said to have been used in movies like Titanic, The Matrix, and The Fifth Element. It was likely used in a ton of shows and video games too, including rumors that it was used for Final Fantasy Seven’s iconic soundtrack. The point is, this is a REALLY influential synth, and it happens to have great pads.

It featured 8 MB of ROM sounds onboard and was expandable with up to 4 expansion cards and 2 data cards. Up to 42 MB of sounds was possible by adding any of the JV-80 expansion cards, available in a wide variety of genres. It had lots of effects and tilers, 2 LFOs per voice, and employed the same LAS, TVF, TVA architecture as Roland’s other ROM-based synths like the D-50 and JD-800. Hey, if it isn't broken.

I remember encountering the next iteration of this, the JV-2080, in my first and only year of college. It was in the studio on campus, and as someone who was super interested in synthesizers but only knew software synths up until that point, it seemed alien and arcane. I actually didn’t like the sounds that came out of it then, finding them limp and cheesy, but like a fine wine or cheese, I have grown to love a lot of the sounds this series makes, especially the pads. As an aside, I once snuck into that on-campus studio with a friend’s key and stayed in there all night to mess with the equipment and try to make music, and then when the professor came in the morning, he caught me in there and I was banned from ever using the studio again. And that’s how I met your mother.

I actually didn’t realize until researching this video that the JV-1080 was based on the same architecture as the D-50, but it makes perfect sense. Oh, right, remember Eric Persing from the JD-800 and Spectrasonics? He made many of the most well-known factory presets and expansion board sounds for this box too. Mega chad.

You can get one of these as hardware now for as little as $250 used, and I know a lot of people into romplers that have a bunch from the Roland rack lineup. They're great. I’ll stick with the Roland Cloud version you’ve been listening to here.

This is an iconic synth and worth checking out.

KORG TRITON

https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korg_Triton

Considered a workstation synth as much as an incredibly advanced Rompler, the Korg Triton was Korg’s flagship workstation from 1999 to 2007. The technology and sound were so good it spun off 9 variants, including the Korg Karma, which I still have a perverse attraction to, and the Triton Extreme with ValveForce in 2004.

It featured 62 notes of polyphony, 32 MB of ROM, dual polyphonic arpeggiators, onboard sampling… wait… hold up, onboard sampling? Oh godddamnit that means it technically doesn’t belong here. Look, just forget I said that ok? I really want to tell you about the Triton, so just.. You know.. Forget that. OK? Ok.

The synth engine was dubbed “Hyper Integrated” or HI, synthesis. It had improved multisample over its predecessor, the Trinity, five insert effects per program, dual filters per oscillator that could be in a variety of configurations and could even be expanded with a multi-timbral version of the MOSS engine found in the Korg Prophecy, which is another REALLY cool synth.

As a workstation, it included a serious sequencer, with up to 16 tracks, 100 patterns per song, and 200 songs. The arpeggiator wasn’t just up-down variations; it had pattern recording and playback and could be used polyphonically.

All of this led to some truly magnificent presets, especially with pads and motion synths. While pads are the bread and butter of this video, the motion synth category, or music FX category on the Yamaha we’ll talk about later, sometimes contain super complex patches with layered pads and rhythmic content that I adore.

The Triton had cards that could be installed to expand the sounds, including pianos and keys, loops, orchestral sounds, and one for trance.

At this point in the game, with a synth this complex, the use cases of it are so expansive it’s hard to nail down every example of its use in popular culture, but here are some notable examples:

"Crazy in Love" by Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z
"Yeah!" by Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris
"Drop It Like It's Hot" by Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell Williams
"Family Affair" by Mary J. Blige
"Hey Ya!" by Outkast
"Get Busy" by Sean Paul
"Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera
"Buttons" by The Pussycat Dolls featuring Snoop Dogg
"Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani
"1, 2 Step" by Ciara featuring Missy Elliott

You can pick up a used Korg Triton rack for about 400 bucks, or a used 61-key version for about 700 these days. I bought the VST version from the Korg Legacy collection and it’s great.

ROLAND XV-5080

https://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/xv-5080

Using Vintage Synth Explorer for research for this video is funny because all of the articles are written as if it’s the date the device was originally released. Here’s what they say about the Roland XV-5080

The Roland XV-5080 128-Voice Synthesizer Module is the ultimate sound module based on the best-sounding, most expressive, and expandable new synthesizer/sample player architecture in Roland's history. With a massive 128 voices, it is capable of extensive layering and multitimbral applications! There are true stereo waveforms per tone, expressive Matrix Control, expandability via 4 expansion slots for 64MB SRX-series wave boards (when converted into 16-bit linear format), and four SR-JV80 expansion slots. The sounds include those from the JV-2080 plus many more new sounds and waveforms from the JD-990 and Super JD.

So yeah, this is like a super best of a bunch of Roland Rompler synthesizers, plus extra. It has that 1080 we talked about earlier inside it, plus the 2080 and a bunch of older Roland synths. It was released in the year 2000.

Under the hood, the 64 MB of ROM gives 1083 waveforms, and it was expandable with the SR-JV80-Series wave expansion boards and XP/JV-Series Patches, with up to four slots. It continued to combine the L

One super interesting feature of the XV 5080 was its ability to read Akai sample libraries, something that Native Instruments Kontakt used to be able to do but dropped a few versions back. This opens up a HUGE amount of content that’s otherwise difficult to get working in 2024.

They continued to use the Linear Arithmetic Engine of the D-50 alongside virtual analog modeling and PCM waveforms and included a comprehensive selection of high-quality effects, such as reverb, chorus, delay, EQ, and more. These effects can be applied to both individual sounds and entire mixes, allowing for detailed sound sculpting and processing. This thing had it all.

One nice feature, introduced with the JV-2080, was being able to search for sounds based on category, something that’s incredibly useful on a synth with 1152 factory patches.

The XV-5080 sounds great, don’t get me wrong, but I think I appreciate the sound of the D-50 or JD-800 more. That said, it’s almost worth picking up a used one just for the Akai sample CD integration.

You can use the XV-5080 today as part of the Roland Cloud subscription.

Roland, please, just let us buy these. Please. PLEAAAASE.

YAMAHA Motif

https://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/motif

OK you’re probably saying yo Jeremy what the heck that’s not a motif that’s a montage. Yeah, well, there’s a whole subcategory on this puppy that’s just Motif sounds, and that’s flipping awesome.

I got the Montage specifically to show off in this video as a Modern Rompler, but I didn’t realize it was going to also have all the Motif sounds in there too. Thanks Yamaha!

Also, shout out to zzounds.com for helping me get the montage into the studio. Check the video description for a link to them.

The Yamaha Motif came out in 2001 and, like the Triton and Trinity, was a flagship workstation synth. It featured 62 voices of polyphony, 84 MB of waveform ROM, and the AWM2 sample playback engine. In the Montage, you can see that most if not all of the Motif patches are designated AWM2 patches.

It did have a sampler. The montage has a sampler too. Look, just… you know what? We’re not. It’s just. Look. Fuck.

There’s a 16-track sequencer, a 256-pattern arpeggiator with 128 user slots for your own. They really liked arpeggiators back then.

High-quality multi-effects make the samples sound nice, and Yamaha’s “megavoice” tech applied things like hammer-ons, ghost notes, slides, and fret noises depending on how hard you hit a key. This is stuff we take for granted now in things like Kontakt, but it was a huge deal back then.

Like the Triton, there were rack units and upgrades for the Motif, and it was used in tons of different kinds of music, but maybe most famously producer Timbaland used a Motif E S7.

You can get a used Motif today for between 600 to 1400 dollars depending on which model and how many keys. The Montage, which I’m using here, is considerably more expensive, but after going through most of the presets, it’s also equally impressive.

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS KONTAKT

Native Instruments Kontakt is a romplaer. Well, it’s a rampler. It loads samples into your RAM. They live on your hard drive, which isn’t ROM either. Look, it’s functionally the same, shut up and let me talk about it.

Native Instruments released Kontakt v1 in 2002. Since then it’s grown both in scope, popularity, and capability, and v7 was released in 2023. The biggest innovation in the newest version was putting a store in the plugin. Cool.

Despite that, I’m a Kontakt advocate, and the sheer volume of insanely amazing instruments made for it is baffling. I have made videos of playing one Kontakt instrument pads for an hour, and that is not even the best-sounding pad instrument I have now.

The reason things like Kontakt and Falcon are so powerful is the framework behind building instruments for them. Not only do you get to work at insanely high sample rates and sample lengths, but you also have access to scripting for incredible velocity sensitivity, articulation switching, expressive fading between samples, and high-density round-robin-ing, where the same note played after the same note results in a slightly different sample.

While I’m spending this entire video gushing over hardware sample playback devices, nothing will match what dedicated software instruments can do. Kontakt is my beloved for scoring, pads, weird electro-acoustic instruments, drums, guitars, and more.

Kontakt, my beloved.

SEQUENTIAL PROPHET X

That said, if I had to pick one hardware rompler that could contend with the ingenuity of Kontakt, it would be my Sequential Prophet X.

This synth was released in 2018 and I feel like it got slept on in a major way. Maybe it was the eye-watering price tag, maybe it was the fact that software could do what it did better. I’m not sure. But I’m so glad I was able to snag a used one because it’s one of my favorite go-to's for live weird electro-acoustic sound design.

The Prophet X features 8 voice polyphony through the analog filters or 16 voices with no filters. Each layer has 2 instruments and 2 digital oscillators you can mix together, and you can actually AM and FM samples with oscillators and vice versa, which is rad. Each patch can be a stack between 2 layers, or you can split them.

The sample library on this is extensive, with some beautiful-sounding acoustic instruments and really weird stuff too. Tons of pitched percussion, weird spoken voices, pads, and effects you can stretch across the keys if you want. You can loop samples, modulate the loops, and get really interesting semi-granular stuff out of it.

You can also stack layers with different arpeggiators or sequences to get really dense motion pads.

While the Montage is undeniably more capable, there’s something weird and raw about the Prophet X. It’s inarguably easier to understand, as it’s virtually one knob per function, and that makes making weird patches on it more fun.

The only real downside, besides the price, is the effect engines. I’ve never been a fan of DSI’s effects, and the thing that sucks is if you don’t like them, you’re going to not like them on every synth since they’re virtually the same on every DSI product. If Sequential teamed up with Arturia and gave us the effect block from the Minifreak, I would be in heaven.

Oh, also the presets absolutely stink for the cinematic possibility of this thing. Hey sequential, hire me.

That said, the Prophet X is a truly special synth carrying on the rich tradition of romplers making amazing sounds with little effort.

KORG MODWAVE

I’d like to give a shoutout to what I think is the coolest of the bunch of synths that Korg put out recently: the Modwave. This is a hybrid synth with wavetable and PCM engines, where each part can be a mixture of both, and you can stack 2 parts together, not unlink the Prophet X. There are some truly stellar sounds capable with this thing, and it’s not hard to program like the Wavestate. I was incredibly impressed with the library of potential wavetables and samples on this, with some of the multi-sampled sounds rivaling software instruments.

The Modave is also available as a VST, Modwave native, as you can see here. Don’t sleep on this one, it’s rad.

OUTRO

And that, my friends, is my video on Rompler pads. Did we bend the rules a little bit? Hell yeah, we did. Did we leave some romplers out of the video? Hell yeah, we did. But despite that, I hope you can see why I love the sound of these machines. There’s something incredibly nostalgic to me about the period of synth history where we moved from the humble analog waveform to reaching for the stars, utilizing true ingenuity to start bringing the real world into our patches, and in the process creating the most beautiful uncannyness that is the rompler pad.

Thank you for watching, and thank you to my patrons for helping make this video possible. Shout out to Zzounds.com for helping with the montage, and shout out to my discord for having more collective rompler knowledge than most forums.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane and beyond. My name is Jeremy, this is red means recording, and I hope you have a wonderful day.