Roland MC-101

I paired this little monster with the MPC Live and just did a run of two whole song productions and I have to say, I am very impressed. The four sliders and control pots make a world of difference during live performance, even though they are super tiny (I didn't even realize how small the box really is).

The sound quality is amazing and it's packed with legendary sounds from the Roland line, featuring Juno sisters, Jupiter, SH-101, some Oberheim mayhem and instruments from the XV lines from back in the day. You can not edit the presets other than superficial touches to Attack, Decay, Release, Cutoff, Resonance etc. No direct access to the oscillators or LFO:s.

Yet.

The grand idea behind the new ZEN-Core is to have a universal sound editor that can take a patch made to an older synth and then inject it to the ZEN-Core with almost 1:1 replication. So, in theory, once Roland gets their editor out, a massive world of sonic possibility opens up with this synth.

Only gripe I have is that there is only one stereo out. I might have to buy another one in the future.