top of page
IMG_4394.jpeg

Roland D-50 Linear Arithmetic Synthesiser 61 Key Synthesiser

Launched in 1987 the Roland D-50 Linear Arithmetic (LA) Synthesiser was Roland's first fully digital synthesiser.

Roland had previously released synthesisers that were digitally controlled but the tone generation used analogue techniques.  Synthesisers like the Roland JX-3P and Roland Juno-106 followed this design philosophy.

However, the Yamaha DX7's fully digital operation and tone generation became a game changer for musicians and it took Roland 4 years to develop and release their response in the form of the Roland D-50.

The Roland D-50 was the first in a line of D-series synthesisers.  The Roland D-10 and Roland D-110 were released in 1988.  This keyboard and sound module respectively had a reduced implementation of LA synthesis, but came with an additional rhythm generator.  

 

The Roland D-20 keyboard was also released in 1988, and in addition to the features of the Roland D-10 it had a sequencer and disk drive to save data.

A key feature of the Roland D-50 was that it had on-board digital effects that could be applied to the patches.  Another feature of the D-50 that made it popular with studio based musicians was that Roland issued the synthesiser in the form of the Roland D-550.  The rack mount had the same capabilities as the keyboard version of the instrument but with a slightly trimmed user interface.

Programming the D-50 was painful.  Like many of the digital synthesisers of the time the programming parameters were buried in a 2 line LCD display menu structure.  If you didn't own the Roland PG-1000 programmer or another programming device / computer programme then creating a patch was a long and often frustrating process!

bottom of page