Roland D-550

This is an article culled from archive material, circa 1997.

The D-550 is a 2U-high, 15.5" deep rackmount Roland D-50. The functionality is identical, although D-550's are generally more recent than D-50 keyboards and will probably sport a later firmware release, offering slightly improved MIDI features. Programming via the front panel is slightly more tedious than with the keyboard, since there is no joystick or data entry slider, and no soft buttons under the display.

The PG-1000 is the dedicated programmer for the D-50 and D-550. Unlike the PG-800 for the Roland MKS-70, it works by MIDI system exclusive, and requires an external 9V power supply. It has no less than four MIDI sockets: data to the MIDI In is echoed to the MIDI Thru, and also merged with locally generated sys-ex and sent to the D-50/D-550 on the MIDI Out. The parameter in socket allows patches to be downloaded from the D-50/D-550's MIDI Out for editing.

The PG-1000 sports an impressive number of faders, but many are in fact overloaded several times for each patch's four partials, two tones and one common parameter block. Even so, programming is fairly easy, since parameter values are displayed in the backlit LCD, and there are dedicated partial/tone select buttons.

There has been talk, on the Max mailing list and elsewhere, of using the PG-1000 as a generic fader box. This is possible, to an extent, and only requires a sys-ex parser to interpret the fader output, but since the fader functions are specific to the synthesiser's parameters they have specific ranges (0 to 10, 0 to 127, and many others). Such a restriction is not necessarily a bad thing, of course...

D-550's are rather hard to find, since rackmounts tend to stay put in studios and live rigs, but a D-550 in good condition (especially if you can find a PG-1000) is certainly worth owning.