The Roland U-110 is a synth module (sample playback or "Rompler" type) produced by Roland Corporation

Roland Corporation

is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on April 18, 1972, with ¥33 million in capital. In 2005 Roland's headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. Today it has factories in Japan,...

 in 1988.

General information

Roland's answer to the E-mu Proteus

E-mu Proteus

The E-mu Proteus was a range of digital sound modules and keyboards manufactured in the late twentieth century.-History:E-mu Systems came to prominence in the early 1980s with their relatively affordable Emulator sampler, and subsequently pioneered sample-based synthesis technology with the Proteus...

, the predecessor of the more successful U-220 module and U-20

Roland U-20

The Roland U-20 is a musical keyboard and rompler released by Roland in 1989. There is also a 1U rackmount version, the U-220. It is the successor to the U-110 rackmount, released in 1988....

 keyboard and the ancestor of the prototype T-110, the U-110 was Roland's first dedicated sample playback synth. It used ROM

Read-only memory

Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...

 to store sounds rather than loading them from disks into RAM

Ram

-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...

, hence it was not a true sampler

Sampler (musical instrument)

A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...

 as it could not sample sounds.

The U-110 contained a base 2MB of sounds stored in ROM. It could be expanded with up to 4 Roland SN-U110 sound library cards, unlike the more popular Roland U-220 that could only accommodate two. It had six individual outputs.

Specifications

Feature	Value
Polyphony	31 Voices (Certain sounds, such as V-MIX and Dual/Detune sounds, reduce this to 15)
Sound Generator	DC-PCM Sound Generator
Base Sample ROM	2MB Consisting of 99 Sounds (mainly pop/rock no synth sounds (except synth bass))
Patch Storage	64 Internal memory locations
Expansion	2MB of extra sounds can be added by using up to 4 Roland SN-U110 PCM Cards
Outputs	1 Stereo mix output and 6 individual outputs (different output modes are available) also a headphone socket is attached to the mix output
Multimbral	Yes. 6 Parts splitting the polyphony with each part i.e. no dynamic voice allocation
Midi Implementation	Good. All parameters are configurable using Sysex and Sysex dumps are easy to carry out. Midi IN/OUT/THRU available on the device.
Effects	Basic Digital Chorus and Tremolo
Filter	NONE
Display	16x2 LC Display
Control	6 Front panel buttons and a volume dial for the mix/headphone output.
Demo Songs	There are 4 on-board factory demo songs which demonstrate the sound capabilities of this unit quite well.

Test mode

Tests carried out; 1. S-RAM

Static random access memory

Static random-access memory is a type of semiconductor memory where the word static indicates that, unlike dynamic RAM , it does not need to be periodically refreshed, as SRAM uses bistable latching circuitry to store each bit...

 Check,
2. LCD Check (display switches on all pixels),
3. KEY/LED Check (pressing down a key will blank out that keys name on the display and if there is an LED in the key that will light up as well if working),
4. Battery check

Battery Check

"Battery Check" is a song by the Swedish punk rock band Millencolin from the album Home from Home. It was released as a single on July 3, 2003 by Burning Heart Records in two versions: One with the album version of "Battery Check", sung in English, as the lead track, and the other with a Swedish...

,
5. MIDI Check (using a midi cable connect midi in to midi out on back of unit. Midi message light will flash and a graphical representation of data flow

Dataflow

Dataflow is a term used in computing, and may have various shades of meaning. It is closely related to message passing.-Software architecture:...

 will appear on the display),
6. Wave ROM check,
7.ROM card check,
8. DAC Offset Adjust,
9. DAC MSB CHECK,
10. Sound Check (By pressing <- and -> you can cycle though the modules voices. if working a tone should be heard from headphones or other connected output device

Output device

An output device is any piece of computer hardware equipment used to communicate the results of data processing carried out by an information processing system to the outside world....

(mix output) also pressing [dec] or [inc/enter] checks the effects),
11. Output check (this checks the individual voice outputs use <- or -> to change the currently selected output and check to see if a test tone is emitted from that output).

List of SN-U110 ROM Cards

Card Number	Name
SN-U110-01	Pipe Organ and Harpsichord
SN-U110-02	Latin and FX Percussion
SN-U110-03	Ethnic
SN-U110-04	Electric Grand and Clavi
SN-U110-05	Orchestral Strings
SN-U110-06	Orchestral Winds
SN-U110-07	Electric Guitar
SN-U110-08	Synthesiser
SN-U110-09	Guitar and Keyboards
SN-U110-10	Rock Drums
SN-U110-11	Sound Effects
SN-U110-12	Sax and Trombone
SN-U110-13	Super Strings
SN-U110-14	Super Acoustic Guitar
SN-U110-15	Super Brass

External links

• Vintage Synth Explorer's site on the U-110 http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/u110.shtml
• U-110 Manual [ftp://ftp.roland.co.uk/ProductSupport/U-110/01_U-110_OM.pdf]
• Vintage synth explorer http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/u110.shtml
• Synthmania's site contains the demo songs on MP3 http://www.synthmania.com/u-110.htm