The Roland JD-XA was a bomb
And not in a good "It's the bomb" kind of way,
I mean in a Hiroshima, Boston Marathon kind of way.
The BAD way
Still one has to wonder if Roland cared as they pushed an obviously disabled child out the door to fend for its self, showing favor to the loveable (and still being improved on by Roland's engineers with the last update having been only weeks ago) but frustrating ADD-afflicted littler brother, the JDXI. Roland's corporate policy starts to take shape like a pack of flesh-eating zombies out of the mist.
They play the numbers, and they stick to their sceduals. That means if it's time to realease something, out it goes! Whether it works will be dealt with down the line, and if it neither works nor sells, well they have other products that will do both so who cares?
To answer my own rhetorical question.......YOU! Should care.
But instead of reprimanding Roland for what was obviously substandard products being brought to market, branded consumers who's egos are identified with the products they buy, launched into damage control and did Roland's job for them.
Time makes fools of us all, however, and with some time gone by, there are few left willing to defend that which should never be defended, still sometimes I'll read a post which amazes me,
Are people still making excuses for the sequencer?
Like they crippled it intentionally just to make sure you used it as a pad evolver/motion sequence and not as a real sequencer?
Riiiiiight that's why there are 8 external MIDI tracks too, because they don't want you to use it as a real sequencer.
You lose, it's been documented, they screwed up and can't fix it, it was supposed to be a real sequencer and they blew it, the end
And you JDXA defenders need to understand you can quote spec after spec after spec ("It's Analog AND Digital!! OMG! You can cross mod the two, SWEET JESUS!") and it still won't matter, the sound is the sound no matter how many digital to analog cross mods and getaway disguise FX you try and cover Roland's tracks with.
They have you running around in a maze of Cross-over tech and pseudo-mod loop de loops
but one thing never changes: It still sounds like $750-1000 synth,
I went in the store yesterday to give it another shot (I have done this MANY times) although the youtube examples haven't really gotten any better (Just because you're playing a song I like doesn't mean the synth is awesome) and left with the same impression I've had over the last two years:
Meh......Put "Meh" sound together with a broken sequencer and you've got something I would pay LESS than the JDXI (Which IS an excellent group of features and collectively they make up a great synth, big fan of the JDXI)
The Emporer has no clothes, Roland rushed this out the door and screwed themselves in the meantime, in a purely sonic sense it lags behind everything else, I A-B'ed with several other synths yesterday to confirm the drop in overall quality (It beat the GAIA, sounds WAYY better than the GAIA, I'd say better than the Ultranova and Micro Korg as well. But it DOESN'T sound better than the Volca's (Bass, Keys, FM) in fact, if you buy those three volca's you'll have a much better sounding "Cross-over" Synth and only have spent $300, once you start getting into the Mopho X 4's and Prophet 6's then forget it, the JDXA isn't in that league
Personally, I find it all very disappointing, because I think it looks F%^King sexy
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