Roland Integra 7 VS XV-5080

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finally, i took the time to do a head-to-head comparison between the same patches on my XV-5080 and the Integra-7, and while a lot of the patches of course do sound very similar, there are many that differ in more ways than just the FX employed.

I took a sampling of 16 patches (Dawn to Dusk, Vanishing, 5th Sweep, Phazweep, MG Sweep, Ceremony Timp, Dyno Toms, Inertia, Chime Wash, Terminate, Temple of JV, Dimensional, Jupiterings, PhasingPad, Percolator, and MoodRingz) and made the following observations:

First and foremeost, I had said that I wanted to check the difference of one of my favourites, "MoodRingz"...the winner, XV-5080 hands down! The I-7 version sounded more thin and "tinny" comparatively. The other ones that were quizzical were the two drum patches, "Ceremony Timp" and "Dyno Toms". The 5080 versions have only reverb, especially Dyno, where that massive Hall Verb just makes it come alive. Oddly enough, both I-7 versions employed a healthy dose of delay for some reason, which ruined the sounds for me.

On some of the "movement" patches and especially ones where there were nice filter sweeps, the I-7 came alive! This was noticeable on patches like "Chime Wash", "Terminate" and "Temple of JV". On "Inertia", the "JP-8SQ" tone sounded fuller on the XV version. Others like "5th Sweep", "Phazweep" and "MGSweep" sounded very similar. "Percolator" sounded very different because the XV version did not employ delay whereas the I-7 did.