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Hardware | Concepts | Quickstart | Menu structure | Software
Testimonial
From http://www.sonicstate.com/synth_reviews/rolands330/16/
Rating: 4 out of 5 posted Friday-Oct-08-1999 at 10:44
Din Namhell a professional user from USA writes:
This god damn fucking piece of shit is cool to sample with, but impossible to use. I can't fathom why those cocksuckers at Roland decided to make it so an engineering degree is necessary to turn on the power. This beast has horrible midi interface and a patch/tone system of mythical proportions. (It claims that patches can be created, but I can't figure out how.) There have been days that I've loved it and days that I've wanted to smash it or throw it though a window, but it's all I've got. God Damnit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I guess that's the price for not taking any time to read the manual. It eventually costs you more time.
Concepts of the S-330
There are 2 memory banks of 7.2 seconds each (when using 30KHz sampling rate).
It can play 8 MIDI Channels at the same time. Each Channel can contain a different Patch.
The S-330 contains Wave data, Tone parameters and Patch parameters (p. 12..14).
Wave - Tone - Patch?
- Wave data (=Sample):
Wave data can be edited (= destructive sound editing, like cutting, smoothing, splitting and mixing).
Samples are created and edited using the UTIL Mode.
New samples automatically also get Tone parameters attached, but the Tone parameters are initially set to neutral, so they have no effect.
Each Wave Bank (Bank A and Bank B) is divided into 18 equal parts called "segments". A segment contains 12288 samples which is 0.4 seconds of sound at 30KHz sampling rate or 0.8 seconds at 15KHz sampling rate.
- Tone (max 32):
The "Tone" concept is the center of the S-330.
A Tone consist of Wave data + Tone parameters (= non-destructive sound mangling, like filtering, lfo, envelopes). Tones have numbers that start with the letter T (T01, T02, ...).
Wave data has Tone Parameters. You can create any number of Tones, using the same Wave Data, but different Tone Parameters settings, thus creating different sounds from the same Wave (=memory saving technique). The Tones based on the Wave Data of another Tone is called a Sub-Tone.
All of the 32 possible Tones can be assigned to a different Key (for percussion) or Key-range (for melody instruments) on the MIDI Keyboard.
Tones are created using the EDIT Mode.
- Patch (max 16):
A Tone assigned to one or more keyboard Keys is called a Patch.
The Patch parameters contain performance controlling functions, like velocity and aftertouch sense, volume, output jack assign and MIDI-channel. Patches have numbers that start with the letter P (P01, P02, ...).
Patches are assigned using also the EDIT Mode.
Default Tone and Patch setting
By default, Tone T01 is assigned to all of the MIDI Keys (C0..C9) of every one of the 16 Patches. That means, if you sample your first Wave into T01, all of the 16 Patches will sound the same. Of course you can edit that later. The laziest way, is to make Tone T01 silent (Tone PRM - Level 0), but with this limited memory sampler, I would not choose to do that.
This actually took me a rather long time to find out, because I was expecting to hear no sound before I would ever have assigned a Tone to a MIDI Key. But there was sound all the time. Well, this is the reason.
Select input devices during boot
Hold the cursor key on the front panel while switching on the S-330:
< (left) Nothing connected
> (right) RC-100 connected
\/ (down) Mouse connected
My S-330 is broken, the buttons do not work
(note p.23) When the S-330 starts up in Mouse-input mode, but there is no Mouse connected, the front panel keys do not work properly. The Panel keys act as if they are broken and give strange behaviour.
Reboot holding one of the cursor buttons describben above. Please.
You can save this state (mouse connected or not) to disk, using Disk > Save SYS, so you do not have to press the cursor buttons every time.