Manufacturer Roland Price US$2,195 Timbrality 6 + 1 Drum part | Dates 1993-1996 Polyphony 24 voices | |
Oscillator 6MB of PCM ROM with 195 waveforms (expandable to 16MB), 4 waveforms (tones) per patch | ||
The Roland JD-990 Super JD is a module version of Roland JD-800 synthesizer with expanded capabilities, which was released in 1993. JD-990 is a multitimbral synthesizer utilizing 'wave-table' sample-based synthesis technology. It is equipped with 6 MB of ROM containing wave-table, four sets of stereo outputs that are assignable to individual, internal, instruments, and standard MIDI in/out/through ports. JD-990 has a large LCD display and programming takes place through a keypad on the front panel of the unit. The unit can generate multi-timbral sounds reminiscent of the vintage analog synthesizers but is also capable of generation of modern digital textures. There are several expansion boards available for JD-990 that can be installed in the provided expansion slot in the chassis of the unit.
The JD-990 had the following features which were not available on the JD-800:
- Expanded wave ROM (6 MB vs. 3 MB)
- Ability to use an 8 MB expansion board from the SR-JV80 series
- JV-80 patch import
- 4 additional outputs
- True stereo engine
- Individual panning of each tone in a patch
- Oscillator sync
- Frequency cross-modulation (FXM)
- Matrix Modulation
- Modulation of the same destination from multiple sources
- Oscillator structures that allow ring modulation and serial dual filters
- Additional LFO waveforms: sine, trapezoid and chaos
- MIDI CC control of parameters
- Tempo sync delay
- Polyphonic portamento
- Analog Feel. Adds a very subtle pitch modulation to the basic waveforms intended to recreate an analogue synth's 'drift'
- Performance memories
- Additional multitimbral slots
- One patch can keep full effects in multi mode
Factory Sounds
The Factory presets of the JD-990 were created by Eric Persing and Adrian Scott.