Roland JD-Xi

I bought this in hopes that along with the analog part, which sounds awesome by the way, I will benefit from some nice SuperNatural acoustic instruments such as woodwinds, trumpets, more pianos, guitars. To my dissapointment most of the SuperNatural tones are synth emulations. It only has about 2 FM type pianos, 1 or 2 electric pianos, only one grand piano, 2 guitars. No woodwinds, ethnic instruments or more FM type sounds. As for the ones that are present, they just don't sound that good. You're better off going for a Yamaha MX or some old Roland rompler. The sad conclusion on my part is that the JD-Xi is a Dance Music oriented synthesizer, with a lot of EDM style patches and waveforms, a lot of Analogue emulations.

I have to give it props for the analogue part, which sounds
way expected (the filter is very smooth, the OSCs have a really pleasant sound) and for the Drum Part which is jam packed with acoustic drums, vintage drum machine drums, hits and FX which do sound good. The sequencer is also a big plus but I didn't really buy the JD-Xi for sequencing. Some people say it's a good sketchpad. I wanted it to be more than that.

This is a small synth but very powerful. I think it's great for getting inspiration, great to have fun playing some jams and getting new ideas and great for composing and create music on a computer based studio. The usb interface sends audio and midi to a computer and receives midi information. It works perfectly on a DAW like Ableton Live where it's possible to record audio or make midi clips and a whole track.

In short, JD-XI has great features, digital and analog engines, good effects, nice drums and a very good sound quality. The mini keyboard keys are not a problem because they are very nice to play.

The only downside is the need to scroll through menus to find some hidden features but you can live well with it.