The latest addition to the expanding Roland Boutique has been announced: the D-05 Linear Synthesizer. This compact reproduction of Roland’s D-50 Linear Synthesizer celebrates the 30th anniversary of the influential keyboard and recreates the inspiring D-50 experience for music creators of today.
Originally debuted 30 years ago in 1987, the D-50 was Roland’s first-ever all-digital synthesizer and performance keyboard that brought musicians and producers a totally new palette of sounds. With a mix of sampled attacks and synthesized sustaining waveforms, plus built-in chorus, reverb, and EQ, the D-50 provided rich and realistic digital effects used on countless records of the time period.
Boasting precise recreation of the D-50 sound, the D-05 delivers every tonal nuance in stunning detail. It was built with the same Digital Circuit Behavior (DCB) technology as the D-50 and faithfully captures every detail. Roland kept the interface authentic, with a familiar D-50 panel layout and the all-important D-50 joystick, allowing users to smoothly morph between different mixes of Upper and Lower Tones in real time.
The D-05 also includes many modern enhancements, including a 64-step polyphonic sequencer. The sequencer is ideal for performance and music creation and offers the ability to sequence shuffle and gate time along with tempo and patch changes.
Priced at $349, the D-05 is extremely portable and runs on USB power or batteries. Check out key features below or view the full specs here.