Roland D-10 Linear Arithmetic Synthesiser

The Roland D-10 was the second tranche of Roland D-Series synthesisers to be released in 1988.  Three synthesisers were released in this year.

• Roland D-20 - Linear Arithmetic Workstation

• Roland D-10 - Linear Arithmetic Synthesiser

• Roland D110 - Linear Arithmetic rack mount Synthesiser

The Roland D-10 and Roland D-20 were released together in 1988 and the Roland D-110 followed shortly after.  Production of the Roland D-10 continued from the launch date through to 1991.  Finishing a year earlier than the Roland D-20 workstation.

The keyboard had the same key bed as the Roland D-50, a 61-key velocity sensitive key bed.  It uses the same Linear Arithmetic (LA) method of synthesis generation as the Roland D-50.  

In theory the two synthesisers have the same configurable parameters, but to perform this configuration requires extensive knowledge of multiple sub-menus and not all the parameters from the D-50 are available.  These include parameters relating to filters and effects.  The result of this difference is that the synthesiser file structure of the Roland D-50 and Roland D-10 are different meaning you cannot load files created on one to the other.

The Roland D-10 was a LA based synthesiser released after the Roland D-50.  It also included a rhythm generator (same as the Roland D-20).

The Roland D-10 was aimed, in my view, at the mid-tier professional musician.  Either someone that could not afford or didn't need the power of the Roland D-50, but still wanted a keyboard that used LA synthesise and it could take on the road with them.

Many commentators of the time questioned the introduction of the Roland D-10 and you see this coming through to many legacy webpages published currently.  

My view.  It filled a gap.

It was functionally strong enough that musicians could use it for LA Synthesis.  Remember back in the late 1980's and 1990's the Roland D-50's were in demand and carried a premium  long after they were discontinued.  My one criticism of the synthesiser is the lack of floppy disk drive to load and save patches quickly without the musician having to buy expensive Roland memory cards.  My theory on this was that the routines for the disk drive were written to include the sequencer on the Roland D-20 and it would be difficult to maintain two code branches in the limited ROMs of the period.

However, if you were in the hunt for a D-Series synthesiser from this era, I would personally buy the Roland D-20 than the Roland D-10.  Purely on the basis of the floppy disk drive and 8-track sequencer.