SRX DANCE TRAX

Name: SRX DANCE TRAX
Price: 69 USD
Author: Roland

by Roland · Synth · SRX dance expansion synth

Not rated yet

SRX DANCE TRAX brings the dance and electronic sounds of Roland's SRX and SR-JV80 wave expansion boards into a plugin.

It has 567 patches and 2,238 waveforms; it comes with Roland Cloud membership.

Best for: Keys & Synths, Bass, Sound Design. Genres: Electronic & EDM, Pop, Hip-Hop & Trap.

Keywords: preset-driven, sound design, basses, polyphonic, 90s, retro, sample-based.

What it does

SRX DANCE TRAX brings the dance and electronic content of six titles from Roland's SRX and SR-JV80 wave expansion boards into a plugin, running on a JV/XV-style engine.

Patches: 567 patches, including hundreds of individual kicks, snares and other drum sounds.
Waveforms: 2,238 in total: the 1,083 standard waves of the engine plus 1,155 SRX waves.
Engine: one part with 128-voice polyphony and deep synth editing parameters.
Effects: 78 multi-effect types, three chorus types and five reverb types.
DCB modeling: Roland's Digital Circuit Behavior modeling, aimed at capturing the detail of the original hardware.
User banks: save your own sounds in unlimited user banks.

Roland's page offers it through Roland Cloud membership and does not show a price.

Source: Roland product page

When to use it

SRX DANCE TRAX is a ready-made library of late-90s and early-2000s Roland dance sounds, closer to a preset player with light editing than a full synth. Compared with Serum 2 or Pigments 7, it gives you far less room for sound design but delivers period sounds, including a large drum set, straight away. Against Omnisphere 3 it is much smaller and narrower, but focused on one era of club music. It is also cheaper and easier than tracking down the original expansion boards and a compatible Roland module.

Best for: retro house, trance and club sounds, rompler basses and stabs, and SRX-era kicks and snares.
Genres: house, trance, techno, drum and bass, pop and hip-hop.
Look elsewhere if: you want to design modern sounds from scratch; Serum 2, Vital or Pigments 7 suit better.
Tip: Lord Reverb found the drum sounds the strongest part, so try it as a source of kicks and snares, not only synth patches.

What producers say

Reviewers see it as a quick, authentic source of late-90s Roland dance sounds with a low ceiling for sound design.

Lord Reverb rated it 3.8 out of 5, saying the kick and snare library "alone justifies loading the plugin" but that "the sound design ceiling is low".
Sweetwater user (4 out of 5 from 1 review) first wrote it off as outdated, then found it "great" for sketching ideas and close to the JV-1080 hardware.
Criticisms: limited editing and sounds that are dated by design.

Where to buy

Plugin Boutique: $69
Roland: see store

Tutorials and reviews

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