Finally got around to this like I promised. That being said, here is an overview of a JV/XP/XV expansion card that was a collaboration between Roland and Spectrasonics, which, perhaps not coincidentally, was founded by former Roland sound designer Eric Persing.
The Roland SR-JV80 15 card focused on the more unusual sounds for music production. Roland provided basic sound effects to the card for this purpose, such as cars starting up and even baby laughter.
However, there are also several semi-musical waveforms, including select material from Spectrasonics' Distorted Reality 1, a sample CD to hopefully be reviewed later. Upon listening to the patches, it impresses me how Persing and Roland were able to take the Distorted Reality samples and process them in a fashion to make them so atypical in soundtrack music (a statement that can be confirmed due to Distorted Reality 1 and 2 being more popular for this purpose). For instance, "Illusion" (played in the video), is a beautiful combination of the famous "Rusty Spoke" and "Iceland" samples from Distorted Reality, throwing in Roland's filters and flanging for a less conventional effect to the sounds.
My major gripe with this expansion card, however, is that many of the more musical sound effects are still not particularly useful for extended use in music because many of the waveforms taken from Distorted Reality were sounds sampled in clustered notes instead of one note at a time: there aren't even many octave-based drone waveforms heard in the presets upon first listen. The only major exception springing to mind is "SpaceshipVsw", a patch that, along with rumbling (and percussion if the velocity is strong enough), makes use of the "Harmonious" pad from DR1.
In short, overall, this is best appreciated as a preview of what Distorted Reality 1 has to offer to composers and sound designers: beyond that, your better shot for unusual Roland sounds is Bank C of the presets from the JV-1080 onward (and occassional effects from the other expansion cards).
However, there are also several semi-musical waveforms, including select material from Spectrasonics' Distorted Reality 1, a sample CD to hopefully be reviewed later. Upon listening to the patches, it impresses me how Persing and Roland were able to take the Distorted Reality samples and process them in a fashion to make them so atypical in soundtrack music (a statement that can be confirmed due to Distorted Reality 1 and 2 being more popular for this purpose). For instance, "Illusion" (played in the video), is a beautiful combination of the famous "Rusty Spoke" and "Iceland" samples from Distorted Reality, throwing in Roland's filters and flanging for a less conventional effect to the sounds.
My major gripe with this expansion card, however, is that many of the more musical sound effects are still not particularly useful for extended use in music because many of the waveforms taken from Distorted Reality were sounds sampled in clustered notes instead of one note at a time: there aren't even many octave-based drone waveforms heard in the presets upon first listen. The only major exception springing to mind is "SpaceshipVsw", a patch that, along with rumbling (and percussion if the velocity is strong enough), makes use of the "Harmonious" pad from DR1.
In short, overall, this is best appreciated as a preview of what Distorted Reality 1 has to offer to composers and sound designers: beyond that, your better shot for unusual Roland sounds is Bank C of the presets from the JV-1080 onward (and occassional effects from the other expansion cards).