XV5080 vs Fantom X question for Artemio

Well you know sound is subjective. I personally have never heard the XV5080. But I own an XV-5050, and I've played an XV-88(or whatever the keyboard equivalent was called).

I think the FantomX sounds better than those. I don't know how much better..... the XV-5080 is believed to sound better than the XV-5050, and XV-88.

But....... I think many of the effects in the XV-5080 has been brought directly into the FantomX...... most notably the reverb.

To me......... it sounds like you may need to buy yourself another XV-5080.

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thx for your comments thunderkyss. yes i've considered another 5080. it is a special machine. is there someone who owns or really knows the 5080 and fantom x? please chime in.

i own an XV5080 and to my dissapointment the Fantom x didn't measure up. the pianos, Hammonds and AC Brass were slightly better than those of the Triton Extreme and Motif ES, but inferior to the XV5080's.

You can get those 1000 xv sounds and use them as card banks in the Fantom X for free.

U da man! thx for your reply. isn't the xv5080's engine and effects processors different than the fantom x? that could be the difference i'm hearing. so, adding the 5080 sounds to the fantom x might not sound as good as they do in the 5080?

Even though they are supposed to sound exactly like the original, for some reason they don't. At least in my experience. I agree with you, there is something about 5080 that is almost impossible to describe but undeniably present and unique. That something makes it very difficult to emulate it. 5050, for instance, is pale and lifeless compared to the 5080.

Well, if you are not impressed by the Big Three you may want to check out Kurzweil workstations, Alesis Fusion or Clavia Nord's one of many incarnations (depending on your needs).

Or you can get 5080 with the keyboard - it is called XV-88 like Thunder said. And it's pretty cheap these days.

BTW, pitted againt 5080 I think X will still win. By decision, definitely not by knockout.

Also, IMHO stock organ sounds are by far the weakest in X compared to those of MRES and Extreme (they pretty much suck in 5080, too). The fact that you liked them more emphasizes the subjectivity of auditory perception.

Good Luck!

Frankly, I never had a chance to play with any XV, so I can't really answer your question. But from the numerous demos I've heard, and from what others say, Fantoms sound at least the same if not better - think about that the new X series have a newer 128-voice chip, it sounds much fatter and crispier than the S series for example. Plus there are new MFX and the amazing Step LFO. And yes, the whole XV sound set is there for download from Roland, so you won't miss anything.

Where did you play the Fantom X?

'Cause if it was at a GC or someplace like that, it's really not fair to judge a synth with probably messed-up parameters, crappy monitors, a noisy environment, who knows what the effects were set at? ... etc. etc. etc.

... and then compare it to your XV5080 -- which IS a great synth -- but which you've probably set up painstakingly to YOUR taste in sound.

And then there's the tweak factor ... Fantoms aren't really meant to be used AS IS ... You're ALWAYS going to get a sound you like much better after tweaking, layering, panning, setting proper volume levels, which is all VERY easy to do on the Fantom ... but that takes way more than two hours.

And were you A/Bing the two synths or going from memory?

Of course, you may have already taken all these points this into consideration ... but it doesn't hurt to say it for the noobs passing through.

thx again everybody!
to get a true head-to-head comparison i need to hear from somebody who has loaded patches from from an XV5080 into a fantom x and visa versa. that would be a huge piece of info for me.

this a great site! glad i found out about it. thx again! kib

kib, I owned the 3080 for 4 years and the XR is a decided improvement over the Xv sound engine. True, there are a handful of Xv stock sounds you can't live without but you gain so much more by going Fantom X or XR

The Efx on the Fantom or XR are different . The Fantom Efx have movement

I notice you have an abundance of rack modules and a lot of overlap. Like to own the Triton rack and an Extreme is overkill, IMO.

GregC

hello!i own both XV 5080 and fantom X7.in my opinion the fantom x is a better synth than XV,but XV has some nice classic roland sounds.i tried the XV sounds to fantom,some sounds are exactly the same as XV but some others not.Anyway,if u want the XV5080(exept sample playback) synth engine get a fantom FA76.u can transfer your sounds from the XV to FA76.i owned FA76 for a year and its have a very good keyboard action too!(i think better than X7) but try one more time the fantomX.

At one point I owned : XV88, Fantom (FA76), Fantom S, and Fantom X. The XV88 is the keyboard equivalent of the 3080, not the 5080 but it is basically the same synth engine. The Fantom added a few things in the effects area but also is pretty much the same. Roland was touting backward compatibility: you could load JV1080 patches into any of these synths, plus new features.

In terms of sound the output of the XV88 and the Fantom seemed noticably louder than the Fantom S or X. The effects are improved some on the newer models. Otherwise the Fantom S and X sound better to me as if they present a little more detail within the sound. This is subtle though. XV88 patches played by the Fantom X sound pretty much like they would in the XV88.

I liked the keyboard of the original Fantom a little better than the newer ones also. Not enough to make me want it over the Fantom X though.

My feeling is that the 5080 would be preferable if you work with multi samples a lot. Fantom X is poorly implemented in this area. I have yet to get it to even load Roland samples.

Where it matters most for me is in sound creation and this is where the Fantom X really takes off. No other keyboard is capable of the things it can do sonically (including Kurzweil).Just my opinion of course.

"My feeling is that the 5080 would be preferable if you work with multi samples a lot. Fantom X is poorly implemented in this area. I have yet to get it to even load Roland samples"

SNAP! Can't you hassle Roland with this trrstrl? I've emailed my findings to Roland UK and the response has been very pro-active, but, the more people complain, the more pressure they'll have to fix it.

Steve

Could you say in a bit more detail what the problem is with the Fantom's multisample implementation?

thx,

-illiac

I guess more specifically I should say importing Roland S-700 series multisamples is long drawn out process that I haven't had success with. There are too many steps when it should just be a convert with the Fantom X editor and then send to the synth via USB 2 step process.

As to creating your own multisamples, that actually seems easier, assuming you already have the samples to work with.The confusing part to me is that both the XV5080 and the MV8000 can import with less hassle, and I think the 8000 can import Akai samples as well. It's just disappointing that it hasn't been implemented better.

Back a few years ago Roland's direction with sampling was to approach it from the loop sample area. This was probably a good idea in some ways as it has become very popular because of programs such as Acid and now Ableton Live. The trend has been to go in this direction. Some people still like the option of loading multisamples because you are not stuck with the phrase that is used in a loop. Sample libraries are still a little better than the onboard ROM that synths have.

It is actually nice that Roland has tried to add the option, even if it isn't implemented particularly well. Maybe they should have kept their line of "proffessional samplers in development along side the phrase based stuff.It is too bad that you have all this RAM and can't completely take advantage of it. If they don't want to compete with their SRX cards maybe Roland could release some Compact Flash cards with "ultra real" multisamples or specific analog synth emulations. Although this is another subject, sample ROM on a modern synth should be in Gigabytes, not megabytes.

The Fantom X is still the number 1 work station for me. I do have my wish list though...