Roland JD-Xi

It's love.. true love.. and lust.. had this 2 months now and man, I can't sing it's praises enough.. I've had groove stations before and analogue and digital synths.. SH-2 and EG101 amongst others.. nothing is as much fun or as versatile as this.
Sounds... plenty.. and for the most part all very useable.. not many synth preset lists can say that … and all extremely tweakable with the intuitive pot controllers... easy to record / save patches sounds and patterns to a user destination...
sounds are grouped into Keys / Bass / Strings / Pads / Lead / Sequences / FX / Brass.. easy to navigate / find what you want quick..
Drum sounds are all grouped into great kits.. 606, 707, 808, 909.. the fabulous CR78.. they're all here.. and you can move any sound to any "pattern"
I do a fair bit of dance / ambient.. but also a bit of rock and even irish trad.. I use this on everything....
It's easy to get started out of the box and not a steep learning curve... but there's so much more under the hood I've barely scratched at yet.
Not really used the vocoder much so can't comment on it.. except to say the thing itself is sturdy and solid, as is the xlr socket.
Mini keys... not for some, but my first synth was a casio CZ 101 so I'm used to them...
Midi and audio straight into my Cubase... easy>
Mad Fun... Great sounds... so much synth in such a small footprint, insane.
SHIPS with good quality white on black overlays to make reading the panel easier... that said, I don't mind the red on black... and after a while you know what buttons do what anyway.
Rave on dudes. killer machine.
Oh... Only minor gripe... the tempo dial, I find it can be quite easy to bump accidentally while accessing other buttons and parameters.. But once you know that, you're just more careful ;-)

This itty-bitty little keyboard looks like something that You?d give a child to learn a bit of music.

However..

This small-form keyboard is a full-fledged 4-part Synth+ Rythm-machine!

It is ab-so-lutely amazing how much functionality Roland crammed in it petite housing. 3 full-on Integra like synths, 1 analog monophonic synth with sub-occillator with a bunch of creamy filters, ànd.. as cherry on the pie, about EVERY classic Roland drumcomputer as samples (that can be filtered and mauled to Your heart?s content..in real-time..) Just because ?they could?

Only disadvantage are the tiiiny keys (with velocity sensitivity !) but, attach a Midi-keyboard with full-sized keys, and it starts to réally shine.

Important: Download the latest patches and firmware. It adds much broader functionality to the sequencer and drums.

Be aware, though. The thing is completely geared towards Dance in all it?s iterations with basses and drums that make Your woofers cry for mercy and tweeters scream in agony. No violins, or endless saxes, guitars or classical organs, just very useful ( fully editable) sounds for about any type of dance/hardcore( a great overdrive, fuzz and digitizer on-board) LOVE it!
Combined with a very comprehensible sequencer, You?ll make Your hard-house or your Wub-wub track in no-time short. But it also excels at weird swooshy, dreamy ambient stuff.

For this price a no-brainer for anyone dabbling in modern dance-styles.

I have a full-size hammer-action piano synth already so this little number nicely fits the electro gap in my repertoire. I find the smaller, snappier keys fit this genre better than weighted keys. I certainly find it easier to play the luxurious drum samples on this machine; its keyboard provides a very positive and direct connection to the sounds.

Of course, to test it I just got stuck in and ignored the user manual. The layout is quite simple to understand and twiddling with the knobs proved a good way to explore the functions. I've never used an arpeggiator before and in no time I was arpeggiating like a pro. Well, it's not that hard, as I found out. Easy on a machine that just lets you do what you want with no menu-diving.

This keyboard sits with the Mininova and Microkorg in roughly the same category and price point. I agonised for a while over which one suited me best and I decided that, pound for pound, the Roland had the best set of features. One deciding factor was it has 16 sequence pads above the keyboard. And it has 128 polyphony. Sounds good to me!

I bought it for making music, inspiration, pad sound in live gigs. It's my first synth.
Looks fantastic, high quality material. It's really nice that it comes with matte sticker/skin which makes synth to look less glossy and more professional I would say.
Piano keys are the thing that need to get used to but it doesn't feel cheap at all.
Navigation and controls were clear for me and there are many free videos and tutorials online.
Features part is to big to describe. What can I say is that it is super inspirational tool for making music. It's quite limited for one man band (4 tracks and too few bars can be recorded internally) live performance shows but it definitely can do that.
SOUND!!! It's amazing. Straight away sounds as a record. All frequencies are awesome. And I found almost all sounds usable.
Its super nice that this fantastic machine is so small, so lightweight and sounds so good. Well done Roland!