January 2015 - Roland U.S. Blog

Monthly Archives: January 2015

New Product: Super UA Audio Interface

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Premium Build and Audiophile Sound

Roland Super UA Audio Interface

Roland Super UA Audio Interface.

In a vast sea of compact audio interfaces for personal music production, Roland’s new Super UA stands far above the rest. To start, it delivers the state-of-the-art in fidelity, offering native support for both 1-bit DSD and 32-bit PCM playback and recording at rates up to 24-bit/192 kHz. It also looks and feels great, with sculpted controls, all-metal construction, and a versatile modular design that makes it easy to use as a grab-and-go mobile interface. Adding in a high-performance headphone amp, built-in switching for multiple monitors, and much more, the Super UA is destined to become the next interface for your personal music rig.

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New Product: MX-1 Mix Performer

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The Mixer Reimagined as a Musical Instrument

Roland MX-1 Mix Performer

The Roland MX-1 Mix Performer brings your entire electronic music rig together.

If you’ve been looking for a more powerful and flexible way to mix and control all your electronic music gear live and in the studio, your wait is over—the MX-1 Mix Performer has arrived! Combining a mixer, control surface, audio interface, and step-based effector into one portable device, the MX-1 is the perfect command center for your rig. It seamlessly brings together your AIRA gear, synths, drum machines, loops, DAW tracks, and more into a single performance-optimized mixing instrument that’s ready to be played.

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New Product: JD-Xi Interactive Crossover Synthesizer

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Hybrid Synth with Analog and Digital Sound Engines, Vocoder, and More

Roland JD-Xi Interactive Crossover Synthesizer

Roland JD-Xi Interactive Crossover Synthesizer.

If you’re a synth fanatic, the JD-Xi Interactive Crossover Synthesizer is a cool new hybrid keyboard that you’ll love! It features a true analog synth engine for authentic lead and bass tones, plus two digital sound engines that power Roland’s famous SuperNATURAL synth sounds. There are a ton of great drum kits on board as well, plus a four-track pattern sequencer for putting together songs and loops. This compact powerhouse also comes with a high-quality gooseneck mic for exploring rich vocal textures with the built-in Vocoder, AutoPitch, and Auto Note functions.

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New Eric Johnson Tone Capsule

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Mod Your Blues Cube Amp with EJ’s Signature Sounds

Eric Johnson’s style and sound are legendary in the guitar world, as is his meticulous pursuit of great tone. Now, Roland Blues Cube owners can infuse their amps with EJ’s expert tonal sensibilities via the Eric Johnson Tone Capsule. This user-installable circuit re-voices the Blues Cube Artist and Stage amps, changing the sound and response characteristics to provide custom voicings tuned and approved by Eric himself.

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New Product: BOSS VE-1 Vocal Echo

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Sound Like a Pro Wherever You Sing

BOSS VE-1 Vocal Echo Panel

Make your vocals sound great with the BOSS VE-1 Vocal Echo.

Whether you’re a pro stage singer or just singing for fun on YouTube videos, every vocalist benefits from enhancing their sound with high-quality reverb and studio effects. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have a sound engineer with us to dial up great sounds every time we perform. The VE-1 Vocal Echo solves this problem, providing a compact, all-in-one solution that lets you sound your best everywhere you sing.

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New Product: BOSS BB-1X Bass Driver

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A Powerful Tone Enhancer and DI for Bassists

BB-1X_Marquee

With the new BB-1X Bass Driver, improving your bass tone has never been easier. Far more than a typical stompbox, the BB-1X incorporates powerful BOSS technology to make your sound big, bold, and punchy. It functions much like a preamp, allowing you shape your tone without altering the fundamental core elements of your bass and amp sounds. The BB-1X also includes a uniquely tuned DI output that ensures the FOH engineer gets a great sound for delivering your personal tone to the main PA.

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Synthesis: Learning the Language of Sound

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Can You Play What You Hear?

By Professor Loudon Stearns, Berklee College of Music 
Teaching and studying synthesis builds sonic awareness and essential skills

Teaching and studying synthesis builds sonic awareness and essential skills for players and producers.

As a professor who teaches music production at Berklee College of Music and Berklee Online, I have grown more and more sure that an understanding of synthesis is essential for keyboardists and producers alike. Synthesizers are a constant presence in contemporary music, and even when we hear organic or acoustic sounds, they’re often performed within software that uses synthesizer parameters to control or modify them. Most importantly, though, learning synthesis gives us a language for timbre and a way to understand sound.

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