Roland S770 sampler

Glad I reconsidered though, cos I just listened to a drumloop done with another guys 770, and noticed it sounded alot bigger than anything I got out of mine so far....
Quite sure that mine needs recalibration now after doing comparisons....

As mine also distorts far too easily when sampling.... thought it was just how it was designed, but doesn't seem that way after doing some comparisons today.

Anyway I wanted to mention that the 750/770 don't have apogee converters, contrary to so much internet folklore....

Info here:
http://www.prosper-donge.com/2013/01/04 ... ter-space/

It uses a burr brown PCM64P ...

http://doc.chipfind.ru/pdf/burr-brown/pcm64p.pdf




Like the TDA1541, as used in asr10 & eps16... this D/A was also used in quality cd players back in the day.
Supposed to be one of the top D/A chips

Yep, I always thought the Apogee thing was a bit of a myth. Doesnt matter though the thing sounds fantastic.
What Eric Persing was saying about the sound is all correct. Its not just the filters are great, its just the sound of the sampler - however Roland designed it doesnt matter. Great sound is what its all about

Labcoats wrote:
"Just one little feature (not amazing or anything) but it was so useful. I The Roland's are always sampling. So I would pipe in live TV and if I heard something after the fact you would capture it. How cool was that back then"

I use to do this exact thing with my S550 for years. This feature turned into Skip back sampling on the Fantom, and is key to the way I work today.

The S550 was my first sampler and first truely professional piece of gear. I was only able to get it through a misprint in an add that was sent from a music store back in the day. Still a great moment in my life... Anyways
Growing up I never knew anyone who was into samplers, so I didn't realize how underappriciated these samplers were till the rise of the internet. I have since read about hidden features, and even found the hack mode at one point. I was never able to get any further with it though. I love hidden stuff.
I stared at ads for the S770 in keyboard magazine for years. Never got one, but damn did I want one. Someone should feed that sampler on the daily.
I still have my S550, and I still have it set up. Sad to say I don't use it that much. Once in a while I sample some of my own music into it now just to hear it through an old friend.
Sorry for the rant.

You mean "turbo" board, not timing board, szr?
What makes you think it alters midi timing? I thought it just sped up the software to help with screen redraws and calculations when you have a lot of long samples. I know my S750's screen (on my 1084 monitor) gets very sluggish when I have a number long samples loaded, but this doesn't affect the midi timing at all.
According to David Morley the MIDI timing is amazing without the turbo board.
I own an S750.

I find that I also have to be very careful with the sample input distorting. I thought it was normal behaviour. I'll keep checking this post.

@wudsiba

Have you got any 550 based track to share? Would be nice to hear.

@jimmie

Mine has the board as described in this auction:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Roland-S-770-Tu ... 0797655606

RAS-770 Timing Board installed (which improves timing performance)

Just checked today to confirm what I suspected, I'm also trying to figure out if timing board means that it must be the turbo or not...
As turbo means the processor was upgraded from what I've read.
Anyway I asked Morley about this stuff, maybe he knows more, as he has a turbo himself.. Will post any more info I dig up.

Thanks for the feedback on the input distorting.
I've made note of all the psu/related caps & may replace them, the 4 main psu board caps are only rated 85 centigrade.... not great, esp. as switch mode psus stress caps more... i.e. you'll have even shorter lifespan.

EDIT

Checked the service manual; the timing board was standard issue with the memory expansion board, that's what it's connected on top of.

...Checked pics of s750 innards, has a totally different mainboard & mem expansion board, without a 'timing board' daughter board on it.
Wonder if the midi timing performance is much different 750 vs 770.

Got hacker mode working, tested os v 2.24 & 2.25 (final os)
They took out tetris aka 'hetoris' in the last versions...

...So anyone have an older s750/770 os they can make an image of with this gui version of sdisk
http://fromafarawayplace.com/files/SDISKW17.zip

I'll share a vid of sampler tetis then

szr wrote:...Checked pics of s750 innards, has a totally different mainboard & mem expansion board, without a 'timing board' daughter board on it.
Wonder if the midi timing performance is much different 750 vs 770.

The mainboard, underneath the S770's memory board is the same as in the S750. The S750 uses newer-style RAM so doesn't need a massive RAM board.

The PCB's in my S750 have S770 written on them, so they just used the same board for both models. There are a few component additions to the main board of the S770 which are most likely for the additional digital in/outs and balanced in/outs that the S750 doesn't have.

Yea I've noticed these things too now, now I wonder if the talk about the 770 having hand matched parts is true or not.
Got a replacement knob for the 770, not 100% exact same size, but close enough.

@szr

So you decided to sell this S770, again??

Yea, will need the cash for my off the grid culture plans, also other first pieces to go; a spare maxed 1100, which I already regret, have it on hold for someone already, 770 also on hold... I assumed you weren't going to pay over 400 for it.

...as I noticed prev ebay prices where alot higher than I priced it originally

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/916829/Roland% ... %20100.png

I wish I could have taken one of those samplers of yours to keep for myself, but got to be a bit more prudent with the purchases at the moment. Business before pleasure.

Good luck though.

cheers, might have another few for samplers for sale soon for you to consider.

szr wrote:

Got hacker mode working, tested os v 2.24 & 2.25 (final os)
They took out tetris aka 'hetoris' in the last versions...

...So anyone have an older s750/770 os they can make an image of with this gui version of sdisk
http://fromafarawayplace.com/files/SDISKW17.zip

I'll share a vid of sampler tetis then

how on earth did you manage to get it to work? i've been at it trying to follow the instructions all day and no success.

this thing is giving me massive headache at the moment, the problems i have with it are just so weird.
first of all i got the RAS-770 with full ram but with it it says there's 6355s of sample time and 0mb wavememory, but when i take the board off theres now 22,5s sample time and 2mb memory......
also it doesn't save to the hard disk or a zip

and that's why i'm googling old posts. PEACE

jimmie wrote:The PCB's in my S750 have S770 written on them, so they just used the same board for both models. There are a few component additions to the main board of the S770 which are most likely for the additional digital in/outs and balanced in/outs that the S750 doesn't have.

Has anyone ever considered populating any of the empty areas on a 750? I know the i/o stuff would probably require a lot, and maybe a firmware swap, but the internal SCSI looks pretty straightforward. The footprint for the internal connector has nice clean empty holes. I'm wondering if sticking a 50-pin socket in there and maybe removing those terminators beside it would allow an internal drive (assuming there's power available somewhere).

Thanks,

George

Jidis wrote:Has anyone ever considered populating any of the empty areas on a 750? I know the i/o stuff would probably require a lot, and maybe a firmware swap, but the internal SCSI looks pretty straightforward. The footprint for the internal connector has nice clean empty holes. I'm wondering if sticking a 50-pin socket in there and maybe removing those terminators beside it would allow an internal drive (assuming there's power available somewhere).

Yes, I've been considering it for a year now, but I haven't been able to source a 50-pin header of that size. The spacing between pins is tiny compared to all available 50-pin headers that I can find.
It may be a Roland proprietary connector.
I'll just replace the floppy drive and tap power from that for the internal CF card reader.... but I still need to find a damn header of the correct dimensions. Saying that, I might just make my own connector as my soldering skills have really gotten better this year and I'm confident of making a neat job of it nowadays.

Actually, I got in touch with Roland and they still have parts available for sale for it. I should email 'em to see if that part is in stock... Hmm.