Roland MC-909

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An MC-909 groovebox.

The Roland MC-909 is a groovebox released by Roland in 2002. It is basically an upgrade of previous models like the MC-303 and the MC-505. It combines the functions of a synthesizer, a sequencer and a sampler.

The MC-909 is, in abstract, a rompler. It means that it includes a series of waveforms already written on its ROM, that are used to create the sound. That feature differentiates it from analogue synthetizers and virtual analogue synths; some purists will complain that this synthesis method makes the MC-909 sound "digital".

The number of waveforms is 693, ranging from vintage synths to strings, drums, guitars and pianos. It can be expanded by adding one SRX card from ten different cards available.

The MC-909's attraction resides in the fact that, unlike previous versions, this machine has the ability of sampling. It can record audio from any of the external audio inputs, SPDIF connectors or to import wav and aiff files from a computer using a USB port. Once sampled, the waveforms are available to be used in any possible way. The sampler can be upgraded up to 272 MB RAM and the samples can be stored in 128 MB Smartmedia cards.

The MC-909 also features an onboard sequencer, and a complex synth engine.

1 Upgrading from the MC-505
2 Criticisms
3 Unsolved bugs
4 External links

[edit] Upgrading from the MC-505

If you are planning to upgrade from your MC-505 synth, you'll get the following:

Sampling ability.
A huge editing LCD screen.
A second D-Beam controller.
Two extra filter modes.
Stereo waveforms for your patches.
Matrix Control, Random Modify and Fat controls.
A mastering stage that features three-band compression and equalization.
Turntable emulation.
Morphing LFO waveforms.
Sample machine gun feature.
Velocity sensitive pads.
Fully editable arpeggios.
Chord memory.

However, you will lose some features, like:

The Megamix function.
The Portamento knob.
The Groove knob. However, the groove/quantize functions are preserved under an editing menu.
The ability to control the individual amount of delay assigned to each part.
The Ad-Lib function from the D-Beam.

Most of the MC-505 functions and sounds are kept or improved, the number of drumkits has been increased. However, the polyphony of the machine is still 64 voices.

[edit] Criticisms

The Roland MC-909 wasn't the commercial success that the company hoped it to be. There were several design flaws that didn't allow it to become the all-in-one dance machine it should have been. First more than anything, its price, close to the US$ 2000 at the moment it was released, never allowed it to become a "popular" machine. As the advertisement stated, it was oriented to "the serious producer."

The second problem was its size. 49 x 38 cm, it defeated the whole concept of a groovebox. Although it included everything that you needed, it was too big to be carried around easily, and laptops offer a lot more functions for about the same price.

Third, the sampler, although powerful, lacks the ability to set keyboard ranges for different samples, making it impossible to create realistic sounds from a set of multisamples (there is a somewhat of a work around for this via an external editor on pc MC909Editor Update V3.1 find here: http://mc909.org/joomla/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,23/Itemid,40/ ). However you can create drumkits with up to 16 different samples, and tech-saavy 3rd Parties not associated with Roland are discovering ways around some limitations.

The operating system also had some bugs and annoying features. Some of them were corrected on the following operating system upgrade, but some others remained unchanged. Although many customers complained, they received little or no answers from Roland], reinforcing the love/hate relationship of the users with their machines.

[edit] Unsolved bugs

No Sustain in Song Mode, resulting in very noticeable audio gapping between patterns.
Until today, an MC-909 user cannot store a personalized RPS set. (Update 5/19/06, there is a workaround for this...go to this site for further instructions.)
Tracks 6 and 13 cannot be muted/unmuted simultaneously (introduced in OS 1.2)
If a part is set to EXT, the internal sound engine will continue to produce sounds. You can work this around by assigning a blank patch to that part.
(OS 1.2) Going into MENU (e.g. USB transfer) resets the 909 to Preset Pattern 1 when you come out of menu.
For a long time, the manual stated that you could import BMP files as background images for the MC-909; however the option wasn't working at all. Update: recently, a 1.22 version of the operative system appeared on a german website. This version solved this bug. The upgrade files are available for download at this site.