Roland D-50 - Legacy

Legacy

The D-50 was introduced in 1987 as the popularity of the Yamaha DX7 was declining, resulting in the D-50 being the most popular synthesizer on the market until the introduction of the Korg M1 the following year. The D-50's synthesizer-on-top-of-samples-and-through-effects innovation was an influence on the M1, which went on to become the best selling digital keyboard of all time. In fact, this scheme was a common method of digital keyboard sound creation for more than a decade, until ROM and Flash RAM were finally inexpensive enough to store entire samples or multisamples.

In the case of the D-50, for sound synthesis, the use of PCM samples can be bypassed completely when using Synth Partials only as the basis for sound creation. This effectively gives 4 DCO subtractive synthesis (resonant filters), which can produce some very analog like sounds that later synths could not do due to their sole use of PCM samples, or 'more digital' sounding synthesis methods (such as FM or PM) as the basis for their sound creation. This digital subtractive synthesis method of sound production gave a similar, but colder and more clinical, sound when compared to the analog technology employed by previous Roland synthesizers, e.g. the previous flagship JX-10.

The presets of the D-50, authored by Eric Persing and Adrian Scott, were well received by artists' community, and most of them can be heard on numerous commercial albums of the late 80s. The D-50's factory presets have enjoyed a long legacy, as patches like "Digital Native Dance," "Fantasia," "Glass Voices," and "Living Calliope" are so common they border on cliché. Some other D-50 presets live on in every machine that conforms to the General MIDI specification, including "Soundtrack" and "Atmosphere".