From: beltran@ns.network.com (Tony R. Beltran)
Subject: Re: Hardware Sequencers
Organization: Network Systems Corporation
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 92 15:09:03 GMT

I use an MV-30 (Studio-M) by Roland.  Though it comes with 512 KB of ram,
it can be easily upgraded to 1 MB for about $25US if you do it yourself.
The difference is 50,000 v.s. 150,000 note capacity.  The MV-30 lists
for $2695US, though it seems to sell for approx. $1795US.  Basically,
this is a 16 track sequencer with what I guess is a U-220 with D-70
filters.  Its builtin synth is 8 voice multi-timbral and 30 voice
polyphonic.  It has two card slots which PCM cards from most of the
D-70/U-220 series synths.  This excludes the patch cards.  There was
only one set of cards made expressly for the MV-30.  I have these,
the U110-11 sound effects, and the U110-01 organ/harpsicord card.
When using sounds from a ROM card to build a patch, you simply tell
the MV-30 what kind of card it is and it will give you access to all
its sounds.

The MV-30 also has a master volume fader and 8 other sliders to handle
the 16 tracks.  These sliders can either be for volume (controller 7)
or panning (I forget the midi controller for this).  In addition, if
a track has volume or panning data in it, you can extract this into
the special 17th track where the slider-generated data resides to edit
it. The MV-30 does automated mixing in which it has a screen showing
the sliders and their movements in real-time.  You can record the
movements as part of the mix and edit these like any other data.

The recorder supports both linear and pattern recording in both step-
and real-time modes.  This thing is very much like an extremely dedicated
laptop.  It has a large LCD display that, in conjunction with its user-
friendly panel layout makes me reach for it more often than my computer
nowadays.  It boots from floppy.  It uses 3.5" disks which can read and
write midi file formats 0 and 1 in IBM PC 720 KB format, or in its own
native mode and format.  The MV-30 has two built-in programmable effects,
reverb and chorus which also does flange, etc.  It has three sets of
stereo outputs: mix and two dry sets.  The mix set can also be dry.
You can dynamically change what goes to what output dynamically, effect
settings and which effects are used when dynamically, etc.  

Personally, I have been extremely happy with this thing.  The more I use
it, the more I like it.  As far as sounds go, it has 220 internal PCM
samples and the two cards slots previously mentioned.  These are not
useable until you program a patch.  There are 128 patches in a bank,
and only one bank in memory at a time.  A song knows what bank it uses
and will tell you if the wrong bank is in memory when loading a song from disk.
You can elect to ignore this or load the right one.  I like the fact that
if I don't like how a patch sounds, I can easily tweak right there.  This
is truly an all-in-one studio.  Whatever compromises were made in building
this, I don't feel hampered by them (at least yet).  I have had mine for
about 6 months.

The MV-30 does have a soft-thru (selectable) and you can turn off the
0xfe (I'm here message).  Since I work full-time and go to the U 2/3
time, I don't have a lot of time for my music.  With this MV-30 and my
FP-8, I can quickly sit down, pick up where I left off last time, and
dig right in with NO hassle.  Saving to disk each time is literally a
snapshot of everything as I left it.  Between the FP-8 and NV-30, midi
is just a local bus which can be largely ignored if desired or messed
with if so desired.

The track layout is:  8 tracks used for internal sounds and 8 tracks
used for either internal or external sounds.  The MV-30 comes with
several banks of patches (total over 1000 patches and several demo songs
showing what can be done).  You can mix and match between banks, etc.
In each bank, the last patch is actually the rythm set which spans most
of the notes on the keyboard.  In this set, you can assign an effect
separately to each note.  Therefore, you can have the gawdawful gated
cliche snare and monster kick drum if that is your bag.  You can mix and
match and build these rythm sets, using any patch you want.  The MV-30
does come with two MT-32 sets that seem to work with all the PD sequences
I have tried so far.  I built a QY-10 set (with the rythm included) so
I can quickly generate a song on my QY-10 and paly it into the MV-30 and
it sounds right immediately.

With the MV-30, you can use assigned notes on the keyboard to trigger
patterns in real time while a sequence is playing.  Also, it has the
equivalent of Cakewalk LIVE where you can assign up to 99 songs in any
order and the MV-30 will play them one after the other automatically.
The only problem is that it can't play one while another is loading.

For editing, you have two levels: song track and note level.  In the
track level, you can copy tracks to patterns and vice versa, move
measures around, etc.  The note level is the microscope level used in
their other units (MC-50, MC500 II, etc).  If you press record in this
mode, you are in step time.

Overall, the front panel and menu function keys are laid out in such
a way that it seems very easy to get around when making music.  It seems
fairly intuitive to me.  I used to have a Yamaha QX5.  While it was a
great sequencer for its time, it (as most Yamaha products seem to me)
was not at all user-friendly.

There is lots more, but this should give anyone interested a basic view
of this piece of gear.  When I set about to simplify my system, I had
this situation in mind.  Fortunately, the MV-30 fit the bill perfectly.
Not to say it is for everyone, but this is one happy camper...

Tony

Xref: sparky rec.music.synth:14306 rec.music.makers:9316