At a show full of “now shipping” announcements (typically products that were announced at Winter NAMM and are now available), Roland really stepped up with a few exciting new product revelations.
SP-555 Creative Sampler
Up first, Roland’s, SP-555 Creative Sampler with performance effects showed promise as the latest advancement in the company’s line of phrase sampling/pattern sequencing workstations. It promises all the features of the Roland SP-404, including tap tempo, lo-fi sampling mode, built-in mic and analog audio I/O (see photo below), plus a truck load of new editions. For instance, the SP-555 comes with Cakewalk Sonar LE software, and it’s USB connection sends both MIDI and audio to a computer, so you can record it’s output easily into the Cakewalk DAW.
On Compact Flash cards up to 2GB (12 hours of sample time), the SP-555 can sample external sources, as well as sample/record its internal live audio, meaning you can record your own pad playing, resample with effects or record loops with the Loop Capture feature. There is also enough internal memory for about six minutes of stereo sampling.
There are 16 Velocity-sensitive pads to which you can assign samples, as well as 37 digital effects taken from Roland’s Fantom line of workstations. Effects include Voice Transformer, delay, isolator, Super Filter, amp aimulator, step ring modulator and DJ FX Looper; the SP-555 can also save cusom effects settings.
Unfortunately, Roland does not like to give out prices or availability dates in advance, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
HD-1 V-Drums Lite
Many hip-hop and other producers have been known to flex their own drumming skills for sampling and recording, rather than relying on just programming. With Roland’s new HD-1 V-Drums Lite, you can have the best of both worlds, for less money than V-Drums have ever costed before. With this compact, all-in-one electronic kit, you can record drum parts via MIDI into a DAW and then assign your own samples to the parts and edit the arrangement of the parts from there.
In addition to 4 drum pads, 3 cymbal pads and 2 pedals for hi-hat and kick, the HD-1 comes with a small “brain” that holds 10 V-Drums kits, including the classic TR-808 kit. They are now available for pre-order at a list price of $999.
Boss RE-20 Space Echo
Although available as a plug-in emulation, lovers of the classic vintage Roland RE-201 Space Echo tape delay box never had a great hardware emulation to tinker with until now. The Boss RE-20 Space Echo effect pedal rebirths the tape delay has a faithful imitation in stompbox form. It includes the original 12 Space Echo modes, emulation of the tape flutter and magnetic head saturation and a longer delay time than the original. While the RE-20 doesn’t have quite as many emulation settings as the Universal Audio plug-in model, it does sound great and authentic.
Boss ME-20 and ME-20B guitar/bass multi-effects processors
Boss also came out with two new multi-effects floor pedals intended for guitar and bass. A distinguishing feature to each box is a mini-jack Aux In, for playing along with tracks from an iPod or other source. There are also 30 user memory locations on each box for storing combinations of the onboard overdrive, delay, chorus, phaser, flanger, tremolo, rotary speaker and EQ effects.
Sonic Cell
Finally, Roland showed the Sonic Cell, which appears to be a boring black box at first, but is actually a fairly intriguing and versatile device. The Sonic Cell is a USB audio interface, and it has a built-in bank of high-quality synth sounds. In addition, it has two expansion card slots for any of Roland’s reknowned SRX synth cards. Sonic Cells also includes audio playpack capability for WAV, AIFF and MP3 files (plus Standard MIDI files). These diverse features add up to a useful portable device for recording and performance. The built-in audio playback is convenient for playing backing tracks on stage or rehearsing along with recorded tracks.
