© 2004 musitronics

M.EX D-50/D-550
Expansion Board

The M.EX (pronounced 'em-ex' ) board will change the way you make music with the Roland D-50 or D-550 LA-synthesizer. With a simple installation of the M.EX board, your D-50 becomes multi-timbral, giving you the power to play up to eight tones or four patches at one time. Plus, the M.EX board triples the D-50's memory to store 192 sounds.

The M.EX board adds 10 new displays and 42 new parameters, providing enhanced capabilities for playing live or for use in a sequencer-driven enviroment. All voice-allocation is done dynamically. You can create and save seperate Multi-Mode settings for every patch, giving you instant access to up to 192 Multi-Mode settings.

New functions and parameters for the D-50 provided by the M.EX board:

• KEY-MODE: In addition to the 9 regular Key modes, there are two new modes: Multi-Mode and Multi-Dual-Mode. The D-50's effects section still only provides 1 digital reverb, 2 chorus units, 2 equalizer and 6 LFOs; however each of the 8 Tones can be individually assigned to the upper and lower effects sections. In Multi-Mode, you have 1 chorus and 1 EQ, while in Multi-Dual mode you have 2 chorus and 2 EQs.
• MULTI-MIDI: Each of the eight "Instruments" can be assigned to any MIDI channel, or turned "off". Volume and panning can be controlled individually by MIDI.
• MULTI-TONE: Each of the eight "Instruments" can be assigned a tone between "Lower Tone 11" and "UPPER Tone 88". You can adjust the tuning of each Tone by +/- 24 semitones.
• TRANSMIT CHANNEL: The D-50 can now transmit on two seperate MIDI channels. Both the lower and the upper keyboard ranges are assignable to independent channels, turning your D-50 into a true master keyboard controller.
• INTERNAL LINK MODE: When set to "Local on", both MIDI keyboard-transmit-
  channels of your D-50 can be assigned separately to any of the eight MultiTones. Thus, for instance, you may use a DUAL sound (2 Tones) in the lower register of your D-50 while at the same time playing a QUATTRO sound (4 Tones!) in the upper keyboard zone. You can create big layered or fat solo sounds by assigning the same MIDI channel to several Tones.
• KEY WINDOW: Each tone can have its own and high split point settings. This means you can freely map up to eight "zones" across your keyboard.
• SPEED SYSTEM: We can add the Speed System for free. This system increases the timing of the D-50/D-550 with 35%. But you have to exchanche a quartz. (soldering required). If you order the D-50/D-550 M.EX expansion, please let us know if you want the Speed System or not.

In the Download area you can find two soundsets featuring individually programmed multi- and layersounds for the M.EX expansion board.