MusicRadar

The 8800 can handle sequencing, synthesis, sampling, audio recording, effects processing, mastering and CD-writing.

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• Review
• Manufacturer's Description

Roland have such a proud recording, synthesis, sampling and effects processing tradition that it’s no wonder each of their digital multi-trackers has spawned more features than the last, culminating in the MV-8000 Production Studio in 2004. And now Roland are at it again, and the fruit of their labours offers a staggering range of functions under one roof.

The top panel gives a pretty good indication of some of the joys that lie beneath. If you allow your eye to wander over the fascia you’ll be immediately struck by three things: a set of 16 Akai MPC-style pads in the bottom left-hand quarter, a collection of eight short-throw faders and a recessed, angled colour screen whose output can be sent to a VGA monitor via rear-panel connection.

It’s a layout that screams ‘play me!’ and after a short boot-up time, that’s exactly what you’ll find yourself doing. The 8800 earns its tag of ‘Production Studio’ by having a shot at pretty much every stage of the recording process, with sequencing, synthesis, sampling, audio recording, effects processing, mastering and CD-writing all available ‘in-house’.

Making music

In terms of song creation, the MV-8800 is split into two primary modes: ‘Pattern’ and ‘Song’. Pattern comes first and tends to be looped phrases of a few bars in length. Plenty of these ship with the MV-8800 itself, but the freedom to create your own will appeal most. Notes can be input into patterns in a number of ways, the most enjoyable of which is to bash your sequence out on the velocity-sensitive pads. If you’re using one of the library drum kits for example, the individual hits are mapped to each pad, so all very straightforward.

Alternatively, you can input notes from a MIDI keyboard, or individually in step time. The library of sounds is one of the major updates from the MV-8000, as the 8800 ships with source material from a number of Roland drum machines, including the TRs 808 and 909. Alongside these you’ll find a collection of pianos, guitars, effects, basses and the like - so you’re making music right out of the box.

This library is pre-installed for you, but the 8800 also ships with CD-ROMs of additional content, and a further support library is bound to grow over the coming months. The quality of the sounds provided is excellent, but while it would dramatically inflate the unit’s cost it'd be good to see Roland implement a fuller, XV-style sound module into the 8800 for an even greater range of possibilities.

Sample mania

But perhaps that's just our laziness - after all, the MV-8800s second primary function is as a sampler. To make a recording, simply attach your chosen sound source to one set of inputs on the unit’s rear - both quarter-inch TRS inputs and phono ins are available here (DJs take note). Roland provide their own library of sampled phrases and loops, and the ‘recycled’ nature of these means that you can shift a pattern or song’s tempo and they will BPM-match automatically, meaning the creative process of pattern-building flows even more smoothly.