I remember the first time I played the D50 in 1987 and was blown away by the factory presets. The George Michael Faith pipe organ and Enya pizzicato patches blew me away. However I was even more blown away a year later in 1988 when I played the Korg M1 for the first time! Oh my goodness, I thought that I was going to melt when playing the Universe program and hearing pianos, saxes, guitars and drums that actually sounded realistic. The D50, M1 and DX7 were the staples of 80s and 90s music.

I purchased my D50 when it first came out in 1987. I still have it to this day, it has never been on the road for anything and is in showroom condition. It's a fantastic piece of the 80's.

The Roland D50 is the ONLY digital Synth of the 80s digital Synthesizers which i would gladly buy again in addition to my only D50. Difficult to program but my god does it open up SPACE for you when you load the proper presets.There is absolutely no other synthesizer like it which has such a "very-hard-to-narrow-down" sound aesthetic. Hard to put it into words. It's not as dry and glassy as FM synths but also not as cold and harsh as Wavetable synths. It is one of it's kind. A truly emancipated Synthesizer that literally makes you fly, both on a wave of nostalgia but also floating through time and space. No other synthesizer sounds like it. The D50 is eternal.

Nothing sounds like a D-50... I never forget when I, in 1988 at age 14, played my older friends D-50 for the first time and always dreamed of owning one.
Now 33 years later I finally managed to get one in close to mint condition AND ! a PG-1000 - how lucky can one be ? 🙂
Only viewers of this channel will fully understand 😉

Actually, it wasn’t the technicians at Roland who came up with the idea for LA synthesis.  It was Steve Porcaro of Toto, who was already using that technique by layering attack transient samples with his analog synths.  Steve demonstrated his synthesis technique to Roland’s Ikutaro Kakehashi, and the rest is history.

The sound of every late 80s /90s corporate training video!

One of the best synthesizers ever produced in the late 80's.

Some of the presets in the D-50 are timeless and that's why a love it.

Juno 2 - so much emotion

That Juno 2 pad is just heavenly !

I love that 80's sound, it was part of my childhood. A chilhood that I want back so badly I can't even begin to tell.

One fun fact about the D-50 is that the bulk of the instruments in the Amiga 500 Soundtracker were based upon D-50 sounds. So around the late 80s/early 90s, the demoscene was crowded with tracker music using monophonic 8 bit versions of famous D-50 presets, becoming cliches in their own right.

Pizzagogo became "Pizza" and Shamus Theme became "Shamus", both of which were way overused in the demo scene music at the time, at least until musicians got their own samplers and made sure to make their own sounds from their own synths. :)

The Roland D 50 was and still is so loved all around the world, in Spanish music we used a lot, every misician was obssessed with it, it was so popular, l'm from guatemala but l was living in Ft. Myers Fl. back in 1987 when The D 50 came to the world, wonderfull memories from Roland D 50, Yamaha DX 7 fd ll with graymatter, Korg T3, Korg 364, Yamaha SS 55, Roland U 20, and many more, greetings from Guatemala to all of you who love the 80s.

So, 80's. It brought back so many of my memories.

from erasure to don henley it sits right in a mix, black slab of power, fascinating textures, so shiny

When this synth came out and after some time appeared on the TV shows I was hooked. Then I heard Digital Native Dance. I remember thinking what is that?

I still have my Roland D-50, still in great shape and still sounds great.

The D-50 is my “home” keyboard. I played one as my main instrument during the late 80s/early 90s on hundreds of gigs.  Solid build and very reliable. It never failed me. Didn’t always use the sounds live(I owned some newer modules) but 1 of my all time favorites.

That juno 2 patch is amazing!

I just set up my old D-50 after many years in storage. Thanks for re-aquainting me with my old freind.