The instrument
The S-50 Digital Sampling Keyboard followed the S-10, Roland's first sampler, a few months later in 1986. It featured a 61-key keyboard, 12-bit (lo-fi) sampling at 30 or 15 kHz and 756 kB of memory for a storage time of 28.8 seconds (at 15 kHz). The S-50 was also 16-voice polyphonic, had a keyboard with velocity, aftertouch and a 16-bit converter. The rack version, the S-550, followed in 1987, and the S-330 in 1988 was a scaled-down version of the S-550.
Details
The S-50 is fourfold multitimbral, has four outputs and an additional output for the mix. The 16 notes that can be played simultaneously can be distributed to the four outputs in 8 different combinations. A mono input that can be controlled with SYS-501 version 1.00 of the operating system is used for recording. Various operating systems can be loaded via disc. The L-500 series discs were offered as a sound library.