Easy programming and straightforward operation are the hallmarks of Roland's new budget synth - but does the JX1 give up too much versatility in pursuit of simplicity?

ONCE UPON A time, the sophistication of a synth was reflected in the complexity of its front panel - more programming parameters meant more knobs and sliders. Then the synthesiser went digital, and dedicated front-panel controllers were replaced by the 'virtual reality' of the LCD screen. Digital parameter access freed synths from the physical constraints inherent in using dedicated parameter controllers, while software programming freed them from the physical constraints inherent in using dedicated hardware components.

As a result, synths have been able to incorporate more of just about everything (parameters, voices, multitimbral parts, effects...) without necessarily becoming any bigger or any more expensive. It's hardly surprising, then, that the overriding trend in synth design during the past decade has been the emphasis of ever greater sophistication - with the workstation synth being the logical outcome. Consequently, we've all become used to each new wave of synths having more features than the last - in fact, we've come to expect it.

But is more always better? Is it, perhaps, sometimes better to climb back down the development spiral and rediscover simplicity, immediacy and physicality in place of complexity and abstraction? Roland have clearly been thinking along these lines. With their new pro synth, the JD800 (reviewed last month), they've returned to the immediacy of dedicated front-panel knobs and sliders for sound synthesis but haven't simplified this or any other aspect of the synth. They've also opted for immediacy on their new budget synth, the JX1, but in this case by providing both a limited number of features and a close correspondence between those features and the synth's front-panel controls. There's not a lot you have to learn in order to use the JX1, no feature is more than a button-press or two away - and every feature, together with the means to get to it, is readily perceivable from the front panel.

The direction which Roland are pursuing with the JX1 is perhaps best exemplified by the synth's approach to programming: it makes programming simple by allowing only a small number of parameters to be edited, and readily accessible by placing those parameters on sliders.

So who will the JX1 appeal to? Perhaps the beginner who wants an easy intro to the world of synths and programming? Perhaps the seasoned keyboard player who wants a straight-ahead performance synth which allows simple but practically useful sound edits to be made with the minimum of fuss and delay? Well, boys and girls, let's find out...

EXTERIORS

WEIGHING 12.9LBS AND measuring 3.5' from pointed end to pointed end, 11.5" from front to back and 2.5" from top to bottom, the JX1 is carryable, if not quite a lightweight - guitarists still have the edge in the compactness and portability stakes (or rather, their guitars do). Apparently, Roland don't make a carrying bag for the JX1, which seems especially unfortunate given its unusual shape. Pointed ends may be some kind of fashion statement, but they seem a bit out of place on an instrument which is trying to be as portable as possible.

But, pointed ends aside, it's the JX1's keyboard which contributes much to determining the size and weight of the synth. However, Roland have done the right thing by giving the synth a five-octave rather than a four-octave keyboard, which would have been restricting for performance purposes. The JX1's keyboard is sensitive to attack velocity but not aftertouch, and has a shallow, fairly lightweight action. Roland's familiar bend/mod lever is located in its usual position to the left of the keyboard.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the JX1's front panel is what's not there: an LCD screen. This is not so much a reflection of the synth's budget status as of an operational philosophy which says that the synth's facilities must be both programmable and readily apparent from the buttons and sliders alone - what you could call the "at a glance" philosophy.

Donning our David Attenborough hats, let's embark on a voyage across the JX1's front panel. First up are Volume and Brilliance sliders, both of which affect the overall sound of the synth at the main and headphone outputs on the rear panel. The Brilliance slider, as you might guess, affects the brightness of the sound, and as such typifies what the JX1 is about, namely allowing you to make simple but very useful changes quickly, without fuss - just the sort of control you want when you're playing live or working to a tight schedule in a studio.

Next up are four Edit sliders, which affect eight synthesis parameters for the currently-selected Tone (patch). Where a Tone uses two source sounds, both are affected by slider edits. Two buttons above and to the right of the Edit sliders allow you to switch between two sets of four parameters: cutoff, colour, attack and release, and vibrato rate, vibrato depth, reverb level and reverb time. These parameters are clearly labelled above the sliders, and the two associated buttons have built-in pinpoint LEDs which latch on when each button is pressed, so that you can see at a glance which set of parameters is assigned to the sliders.

In fact, the JX1 makes much use of this concept of using a pinpoint LED to indicate when a button is "active". The 32 (2 x 16) Tone buttons which dominate the front-panel layout each have a pinpoint LED built into them, as do the Preset A and Preset B buttons to the left of them and the Transpose, Reverb, Chorus and Octave Down buttons above them. These indicate variously which Tone is selected, and whether the JX1's keyboard transpose function, reverb effect, chorus effect and dedicated octave-down transposition function are on or off. Incidentally, the on/off states of the latter three are stored with a Tone when you Write it into memory using the Write button - the one you can hardly miss because it's coloured pink.

Colour coding is also used to help distinguish different functions taken on by the Tone buttons while Tune, MIDI, Velocity Sense/Bend Range and Transpose buttons are variously held down - only in this case the coding is by coloured strip above each Tone button, together with appropriate labelling. The built-in LEDs also come into their own here. For instance, when you hold down the MIDI button the top row of Tone buttons become MIDI channel selectors, allowing you to set a channel from 1-16, and the LED of the relevant button lights to indicate the currently-selected channel. In similar fashion, the top-row buttons allow you to set a downward transposition value of between one and 12 semitones in conjunction with the Transpose button, while the bottom-row Tone buttons allow you to set a master tuning in the range 438-445Hz in one-Hertz steps, select one of four degrees of velocity responsiveness and set a pitchbend range for the bend/mod lever (1-7 or 12 semitones) in conjunction with the Tune and V Sens/B Range buttons. The Tune button also has a second, hidden function relating to temperament which I'll explain more fully later. And incidentally, the Transpose and Octave Down functions can be used at the same time, allowing you to transpose a Tone down by as much as two octaves.

Holding down the MIDI button and pressing the Tone button labelled SysEx turns SysEx transmission and reception of JX1 parameter edits on/off. When SysEx is enabled, you can also transmit a single Tone's parameter data via SysEx by holding down the MIDI button and pressing the Write button, or transmit a bulk dump by holding down the MIDI button and pressing the Preset B button. The "at a glance" philosophy takes a break here, because for some reason Roland haven't labelled the Write and Preset B buttons with these additional functions.

"The audio inputs allow the output from another instrument to be combined with the JX1's own signal."

While we're on the subject of MIDI, I should point out that the JX1 is not multitimbral via MIDI - it receives on one MIDI channel (the same one that it sends on). What, a modern synth which doesn't allow you to play drums on one channel, bass on another, piano on a third and strings on a fourth? Roland seem hell-bent on making their new budget synth stand out from the crowd. Whether it stands in front, behind or to one side of the crowd is another matter.

The JX1's rear panel contains the power on/off switch, a 12V AC-power input (an appropriate adaptor is supplied with the synth), a plastic hook around which the power lead can be looped in order to secure it against accidental disconnection, a stereo headphones jack output, Left/Mono and Right audio jack outputs, Left and Right audio jack inputs, a sustain pedal input jack, MIDI In, Out and Thru sockets, and two holes into which you can slot a metal music stand which comes supplied with the synth. The audio inputs allow the output from another instrument or a cassette machine to be combined with the JX1's own signal and routed to the synth's headphone and main audio outs. The synth's volume and brightness controls have no effect on the incoming signal, however.

TONING UP

AT THE HEART OF THE JX1 are 64 ROM Preset Tones organised as two Groups of 32 Tones, so that they can be selected directly from the 32 front-panel Tone buttons. Pressing either the Preset A or Preset B button selects a Preset Group, while pressing both of these buttons together calls a Group of 32 Memory (user-programmable) Tones onto the Tone buttons. These Tones allow you to store edited versions of the Presets or themselves. The JX1 has no card slot for accessing further Tones, but Memory Tones can be sent and received individually or as a bulk dump via MIDI SysEx.

Each Tone button has a particular instrument or type of sound associated with it, as indicated by the name displayed above it. For instance, pressing the button labelled Piano calls up a piano sound, pressing the button labelled Syn Bass calls up a synth bass sound, and pressing the button labelled Fantasia calls up an evocative pad sound. You don't even have to think about patch numbers - unless you're trying to layer JX1 sounds with sounds on another MIDI instrument.

In order to preserve the association of sound with button, an edited version of a Preset Tone (from either Group A or Group B in each case) can only be Written to the equivalent Memory Tone location - Strings to Strings, Piano to Piano. Similarly, an edited Memory Tone can only be Written to the same location, thus overwriting the previous version.

As well as being able to play Tones individually, you can layer any two Tones from within the same Group by holding down one Tone button and then pressing a second. The two Tones selected in this way are known respectively as the Main Tone and the Sub Tone. The LED of the Sub Tone's button flashes while that of the Main Tone's button remains lit, so you can check at a glance which is which. Roland have come up with an interesting method of layering Tones via MIDI, using patch changes 0-95 to select individual or Main Tones from the Preset and Memory Groups, and patch changes 96-127 to select a Tone from within the Main Tone's Group as a Sub Tone.

The JX1 is 24-voice polyphonic, though the actual number of notes you can play depends on the Tone - around half the 64 Preset Tones use one oscillator/source sound (and therefore one voice), while the remainder use two. If you layer two Tones which both require two voices, you're of course down to six-note polyphony.

Front-panel edits affect only the Main Tone, while both Tones use the Main Tone's effect parameter settings. In this way you can edit one Preset or one Memory Tone within the context of another, then Write it. If you want to layer two Preset Tones from different Groups, or layer a Preset and a Memory Tone, you must copy the relevant Tone(s) to the Memory Group - bearing in mind that in doing so you might overwrite a Memory Tone that you've programmed for another song. Surely it would have been less restrictive to have allowed you to change the Group while holding down the Main Tone's button, before selecting the Sub Tone.

However, because the Tones in both Preset Groups use the same or similar multisamples and waveforms, rather than completely different source sounds, in practice the restriction on Groups isn't quite as bad as it might seem. And because you can program sounds with minimal effort on the JX1, the fact that you can only store one edited version of a Preset isn't as limiting as it would be if programming were a complex process - if you can remember how to set up a particular sound on the sliders, you can do it fairly quickly.

The JX1's approach to layering Tones means that, instead of working out your combinations in advance and programming them into the synth, you can select them spontaneously. Here, the Tone-button labelling makes life easy by allowing you to see at a glance which buttons you need to press in order to layer, say, piano and strings.

The JX1 provides no means of balancing the levels of your two layered Tones, an omission which I found irritating at times. Nor does it provide a keyboard split function as an alternative to layering, so there's no way of playing one Tone with the left hand and another with the right. Surely this would have been easy enough to implement in the JX1's operational style, by including a Split button for switching the function on/off (with built-in LED indication), and allowing you to set the split point from the keyboard while holding the button down and select the two Tones as you do for layering. As we're talking performance synth here ie. an instrument for players, surely a Split function should have been a natural inclusion.

"Perhaps the most striking aspect of the JX1's front panel is what's not there - an LCD screen."

EDITING

THE JX1'S APPROACH to sound synthesis involves keeping things simple by making only certain parameters available for editing, and by assigning these parameters to four front-panel sliders, as described earlier, so that they can be edited with minimum effort and maximum speed. Being able to alter the filter cutoff point, attack time and release time of a sound in an instant by nudging dedicated (or should that be semi-dedicated?) sliders is great for quick fine-tuning of sounds.

The inevitable flip-side is that, because the remaining parameters aren't available to you, you may not always be able to edit Tones in the way, and to the extent, that you want to. What's more, your slider edits operate within ranges predetermined by Roland - for instance, the maximum release time is longer for some Tones than it is for others, while the Colour parameter seems to be limited to adding mild resonance to a sound.

Roland have also made a number of choices about what effect the edit sliders have on each Tone. These apply mainly to the envelope attack and release times, which variously affect the pitch, filter and/or amplitude envelopes of the underlying synthesis architecture. A single LFO is used to introduce vibrato only, with just rate and depth programmable from the front panel. The onset of LFO modulation is delayed by about a second to give a more natural effect on woodwind and brass sounds, but you can bring in vibrato immediately by using the bend/mod lever. Also, if you zero the mod depth from the slider in order to get rid of the automatic vibrato effect, you can still introduce mild vibrato using the lever.

Effects processing is limited to stereo reverb/delay and stereo chorus, and beyond editing effect level and time and switching the effects on or off there's not a lot you can do; again, the "underlying" parameter values (including choice of reverb type) are pre-programmed by Roland for each Tone.

Another example of pre-programming is provided by the 'Syn Lead 1' and 'Syn Lead 2' Tones, which have been preset across all three Groups as monophonic retriggered with last-note priority - not an unreasonable choice for lead synth sounds. In fact, overall the choices which Roland have made are ones which suit the character of the Tone in question.

Central to the JX1, of course, are the multisamples and waveforms which Roland have assigned to the Preset Tones. Not only can these assignments not be changed, but this "restriction" is part and parcel of the idea that pressing a particular Tone button calls up a particular type of sound. In most cases, a Tone button is assigned different source sounds for Group A and Group B, though they fall within the instrument type or sound description defined by the button's label. Where a Tone uses two source sounds, one or both of these sounds might differ across the two Preset Groups - 'Fantasia A' uses vocal and bell while 'Fantasia B' uses organ and bell.

SOUNDS

THE 64 PRESET Tones are divided into 32 categories, each one of which contains two Tones (from Group A and Group B, as described earlier). These categories are (take a deep breath, now): 'Piano', 'Electric Piano', 'Jazz Organ', 'Rock Organ', 'Syn Clav', 'Accordion', 'Marimba', 'Bell', 'Strings', 'Syn Strings', 'Brass', 'Syn Brass', 'Trumpet', 'Sax', 'Reed', 'Flute', 'Fantasia', 'Syn Stack', 'Prologue', 'Neptune', 'Syn Vox', 'Syn Choir', 'Woody', 'Syn Harp', 'Buzzy, Sweep', 'Epilogue', 'Syn Bass', 'Sawtooth', 'Square', 'Syn Lead 1' and 'Syn Lead 2'. Remember that you can also layer pairs of Tones for further sonic flexibility.

While the JX1's presentation may be original, there's nothing really new in the underlying sound-generating technology, and the synth won't provide you with any surprises on this front. The Tones are a variable bunch as far as quality is concerned. The Saxes, Trumpets, Accordions and Syn Clavs in both Preset Groups strike me as weak. A: 'Reed' (nasal, woody, oboe-like) and A: 'Flute' (soft, breathy) are far more satisfying, however.

Unfortunately for what is essentially a performance instrument, the JX1's Acoustic Piano Preset (B is just A tuned down an octave) isn't very playable. Not only is it a hard, even harsh sound which doesn't respond well to nuance, but the samples move so quickly into a thin, slightly buzzy loop from a more full-bodied attack that the result is a "plinky" effect which I found instantly irritating. The result may be good for cutting through a mix, and for percussive chordal playing, but it's not a sound I could live with on a daily basis.

In contrast, A: 'Jazz Organ' is one of the most successful sounds on the JX1, a rich sustaining sound which can be varied from bright and penetrating to warm and mellow with editing, and makes for a great accompaniment sound. B: 'Rock Organ' is genuine nastiness: gritty, rasping and heavily Leslied, though to my mind it lacks beefiness.

A: 'Electric Piano' is bright and pretty with a percussive tine attack, which is given a shimmering, floating quality by the chorus and reverb processing. B: Electric Piano is harder, also with a percussive tine attack, which has a buzzy edge. Neither sound has much body though, and neither is what I'd consider a good all-round electric piano.

"The JX1 makes experimenting with alternative tunings easy; whether it's rewarding is for you to decide."

A: 'Syn Bass' sounds good with some adjustments to cutoff, colour and attack to make it more punchy. A and B: 'Syn Lead 1' are both bright, brash and brassy, while B: 'Syn Lead 2' is rasping and spiky. Three of the four lead synth Tones are routed through delay instead of reverb.

Among the best Presets are the big, rich, atmospheric pad sounds such as 'Prologue', 'Syn Stack', 'Neptune' and 'Fantasia', which variously combine strings, organ, brass and bell sounds. The JX1's stereo chorus really comes into its own here, helping to give the sounds the breadth and depth they need.

TUNING

EARLIER ON I mentioned that the JX1's Tune button has a second, hidden function. In fact, it's only hidden in the sense that you can't tell from the front panel that it exists, or how to activate it. Reference to the slender manual reveals all, however.

Normally when you switch the JX1 on it defaults to equal-temperament tuning. However, if you switch the synth on while holding down the Tune button, it powers up in quarter-tone mode instead. This mode allows you to bend equal temperament out of shape by flattening any of the 12 notes within a master C-C octave by a quarter-tone. To do this you hold down the Tune button and toggle the appropriate Tone buttons on/off accordingly (lit LEDs indicate flattened notes). Characteristically for the JX1, it's an approach which sacrifices finer details for the sake of straightforwardness and quick, easy editing.

The JX1 stores the on/off state of each note through power-down, so you can be playing in your chosen tuning from the moment you switch the synth on. This tuning is in effect for all Tones, but you can change it at any time very easily (and quickly revert to equal temperament, without turning the JX1 off and on again, by "unflattening" the altered notes).

All in all, the JX1 makes experimenting with alternative tunings easy. Whether it's rewarding or not is a matter for you to decide. If you're interested in exploring non-Western music, you really need to explore the sort of tunings which are used in, say, Arabic or Indonesian music - it's not enough just to toy with different scales.

VERDICT

IF YOU THINK that synths have become overburdened with features, and if you long for a straightforward, no-frills instrument which allows you to pursue the business of playing with the minimum of fuss, Roland may well have come up with just the synth for you.

The JX1 has been designed with an eye for simplicity and directness, and as far as it goes it's a well-implemented instrument. Whether it goes far enough is another matter. Finding the right balance between simplicity and flexibility isn't easy, and I'm not convinced that Roland have found it on the JX1. Personally, I found the programming restrictions, er, restricting, not to mention frustrating. Add to this the variable quality and effectiveness of the JX1's samples and Preset Tones - in particular the dodgy acoustic piano - and the fact that you can't draw on further samples via plug-in cards, and you have to think twice.

Where the JX1 is concerned, Roland seem to have equated simplicity and directness with a lowest-common-denominator approach to synthesis. In contrast, it's worth bearing in mind that, even if you find a full-blown programming system offputting, you can usually buy disks and cards full of sounds programmed by people who don't, and who are therefore able to get the most out of it.

There again, if "complicated" synths are so much wax in the ears to you, perhaps the JX1 is the ideal hi-tech cotton bud.

Price £535 including VAT

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