One of the most famous synths of all time, Roland's first digital synthesizer and mega successful in sales, involved in a variety of popular musical compositions and soundtracks of the late 80's and 90's. It was one of the first to open our eyes to the real power of the digital music and became the object of lust for many generations of musicians, and is still being bought and resold for decent money. It is the most recopied and revived instrument by the Japanese company itself. D-50 is a digital synthesizer with the LA - Linear Arithmetic - engine. On September 9, 2017, to celebrate the 30th birthday of the synth, Roland released another reincarnation, this time with no functional compromise. Meet the best-selling (in the foreseeable future) module from the Boutique series - Roland D-05!

The series of FA workstations, which is a budget alternative to Fantom top stations, produced in 2000-2010, till now had only 2 keyboard versions - 5 and at 7.5 octaves. Now Roland offers a new version - FA-07 - 6 octaves. Except the keyboard, the synthesizer is no different from the other models of the series. However the release of FA-07 by the Japanese company actually nails the right to be called the only 6-octave workstation in its price range replacing the slightly outdated KORG Krome 73.

Analog generator waveform is far from being perfect – it’s unstable and suffers from inevitable voltage-brought deformation. Many of the analog filters are unsteady – you might hear some noises, phase shift or self-oscillation. But these very drawbacks make the signal so brisk, lively – well, actually, alive indeed. Digital developments helped to tame analog sound, cut it into samples, increase polyphony, give you a synthesizer equipped with the functions which were simply unobtainable in analog instruments. In 1990s instrument manufacturing companies got highly interested in analog modeling technologies development – they were eager to re-create those smallest details of electric musical instrument circuit behavior.

Should we buy a new one or a second hand unit will serve us well? Here we’ll talk about a never-ending dilemma, designs and pricing, the reasons of purchasing an old instrument or a new one straight after being assembled. We’ll analyze it while having a close up on the Japanese synthesizers (and an English one).