by Blue Monster 65 on Thu Sep 10, 2009 11:12 am
I'm a big fan of two of Roland's boxes - the 505 and the 909. In order to get what you want out of them, though, you need to invest time to learn their inner workings. The 909 has a more extensive synth engine, but the 505 is cheaper. The 307 seemed to be the step between the two (it has a JV-series synth engine) and featured a few more drum samples than the library, but fewer controls. If you can deal with menu-diving a bit, I'm sure that would be just fine.
That said, I've also had a couple of RM1xs. This is also a capable machine, sharing the lack of individual patches with the EMX (they're stored in the patterns). I liked a lot of the preset sounds here, but found overall I could get deeper with the MC-series when it came to programming my own. That's my only bias, though.
There was an RM1x site that featured a comparison of boxes at one point in time. Unfortunately, it seems to be gone like so many others. That would be a good thing to have, though: a site that all-in-one boxes and leaves the rest of the synth world to others. Hmm ...
Good luck with your decision! I would think that whichever way you go (and I know I wasn't very helpful here), you could easily re-sell your purchase and get the other should you decide to.
Scott
