What are the differences amongst the Roland XV Series synth modules?
The XV-5080 is the flagship model and has 128 note polyphony and sample loading capability. 128 note polyphony is way overkill for a wind controller. Being able to load your own samples is cool if you want to get into the intricacies of all that. The XV-3080 is similar to the XV-5080 except that it has less polyphony and no sample loading capability. The XV-5080 and XV-3080 are both 2 space rack units. Otherwise the XV-2020 or, better yet, XV-5050 are great. They respond very well to the wind controller when programmed properly. The half-rack sized XV-2020 is small and sounds very good but offers no front panel editing or patch naming. You have to know what patch you want by its number. The full rack-sized XV-5050 (no longer in production) offers full editing capabilities from the front panel and of course patch names in the display. The editing feature can really come in handy at a gig or session when you don’t have access to the free Roland MAC/PC editors. Note that all XV models hav
