SRX WORLD

Name: SRX WORLD
Author: Roland

by Roland · Instrument · SRX world-instrument expansion synth

Not rated yet

SRX WORLD brings world-music sounds from Asia, Latin America, Europe and beyond, from Roland's SRX and SR-JV80 boards, into a plugin.

It has 407 patches, 10 rhythm sets and nearly 2,000 waveforms; it comes with Roland Cloud membership.

Best for: Acoustic Instruments, Drums, Keys & Synths. Genres: Ambient & Cinematic, Pop, Electronic & EDM.

Keywords: world instruments, preset-driven, polyphonic, cinematic, classic, hardware emulation, perpetual licence.

What it does

SRX WORLD brings together world-instrument sounds from Roland's legacy SRX and SR-JV80 wave expansion boards, sold as "Globe-Spanning Sounds from Classic Roland Wave Expansion Boards." It covers instruments from Asia, Latin America, Europe and other regions in one plug-in.

Patches and kits: 407 patches and 10 rhythm sets for world percussion.
Waveforms: nearly 2,000 in total: 867 SRX waves drawn from the old boards plus the 1,083 standard waves of the JV/XV engine.
Engine: 128-voice polyphony in a single part, sample rates from 44.1 to 192 kHz, and deep synth-style editing of each patch.
Effects: 78 multi-effect types, 3 chorus types and 5 reverb types built in.
Digital Circuit Behavior: Roland's DCB modeling of the original hardware's digital components and circuitry.
User banks and hardware: unlimited user banks, and control from the knobs and sliders of Roland's SYSTEM-8.

Roland offers it through Roland Cloud membership, and Thomann sells a perpetual licence.

Source: Roland product page

When to use it

SRX WORLD is a broad, light collection of world instruments and percussion for colour and layering, rather than a deep model of one instrument. Compared with Trilian or MODO BASS 2, which go deep on one instrument family, it trades playability and detail for range: hundreds of exotic patches. Compared with Augmented VOICES or other modern sound-design instruments, its sound is plainly that of 90s and 2000s Roland ROM boards, which is either the point or a limit depending on the track. It is cheap, easy on CPU, and it comes with ten rhythm sets that cover world percussion without a separate drum plug-in.

Best for: adding world instruments and percussion to a track quickly, and recreating the world-music sounds of classic Roland workstations.
Genres: pop, electronic, trance and world fusion, plus light cinematic and game work.
Look elsewhere if: you need detailed, expressive sampled world instruments; dedicated sample libraries in Kontakt 8 go much further.

What producers say

There is little published feedback yet; the few store ratings are positive.

Thomann buyers rate it 4.5 out of 5 from 2 ratings; one reviewer said many of the sounds are unique and praised its low resource use.
Criticisms: the same reviewer found that one sound would not sync to MIDI tempo even with the function switched on.

Thomann product page and user ratings

Where to buy

Roland: see store

Tutorials and reviews

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