The new Fantom-X Series comes in a choice of three keyboards, but they all have one thing in common: Roland's new sound generator chip. This chip is Roland's most powerful to date, and it not only makes it possible to play expressive 4-tone Patches with 128-voice polyphony, but it also raises the Fantom-X Series' waveform capacity to approximately 1GB when fully expanded - far more memory than any other musical instrument on the market. What's more, the internal wave ROM has been doubled with quality - focused sounds that will please even the most jaded player.

Thanks to the power afforded by the new sound generator chip, you get both. That's because the Fantom-X is the first workstation keyboard capable of handling audio on the level of a digital recorder. This means you can record either short samples for playback on the keyboard, or long, linear takes similar to a digital recorder. And with room for up to 544MB (Fantom-X6/-X7/-X8) or 528MB (Fantom-XR) of sample RAM, there's plenty of recording time available. Samples can be slaved to tempo with realtime timestretching and edited using powerful tools like Wave Edit and Chop. Users are free to load samples in .WAV and AIFF formats and back up data to convenient PC cards with up to 1GB capacity.

When Roland engineers developed the Fantom-X Series, they wanted to fully exploit the potential of the new chip. That's why each keyboard comes with a brand new 128MB wave ROM loaded with quality-focused sounds like vivid new string sections, expressive and fat-sounding drums, rich nylon string guitars and an amazing 88-key split acoustic piano, which uses individual stereo multi-samples for each key and every velocity stage. Would you believe there are over 700 samples used in this single Patch? Many of the instruments were recorded in world-class studios using using vintage tube microphones with the highest quality preamps and converters and were mixed by respected studio engineer/producer Dan Blessinger (Martinsound) - resulting in a level of quality and musicality rivaled by few.

First introduced on the Fantom-S, Roland's Skip Back Sampling has become popular with musicians for its ability to instantly retrieve a performance and turn it into a sample. With Skip Back Sampling, your ideas never get lost because the sampler is constantly recording every note you play-be it on the keyboard or Dynamic Pad Bank-while keeping the musical bars in tact. Speaking of which, these 16 velocity- and aftertouch-sensitive pads now sport twice the polyphony and an improved feel for even more natural drum programming and sample triggering.

Whether sequencing MIDI tracks, triggering samples from the Dynamic Pad Bank, or even recording audio directly to RAM, the Fantom-X Series makes putting it all together a seamless process. Lay down a drum track by combining the internal drum sounds with loops, which can automatically sync to tempo via realtime timestretch. Then record some keyboard parts as MIDI and finish your song by tracking a guitar or vocal as audio. The high-resolution sequencer boasts up to 400,000-note capacity and supports Standard MIDI File (SMF) import and export, making the Fantom-X by far the best workstation in history.

The Fantom-X Series is the first line of workstation keyboards with a color LCD screen. And once you've seen this display's smart, color-coded screens, you'll never want to go back! With all the menus and screens in color, navigating the Fantom-X becomes that much more a pleasure. Even the bitmap images appear more lifelike, adding to the overall experience.

Even without an internal sequencer, the Fantom-XR's 128 voices and capacity for over 1GB of waveforms make it the perfect module for use with a computer or hardware sequencer. In fact, it boasts the same tight integration of audio and MIDI as its keyboard cousins, but with greater expandability. Just MIDI it up to your sequencer of choice, and let the Fantom-XR automatically sync up all your audio loops to tempo using a high-quality realtime timestretching algorithm. You can even record linear audio phrases and play them back from RAM like a digital recorder!

Onboard effects include separate reverb and chorus processors, plus three multi-effects processors loaded with sound sculpting tools ideal for creative sampling. These include algorithms like COSMO Guitar Amp Modeling, Lo-Fi processing, tempo-synced delay, Slicer, Isolator, multiple effects chains and more. (In Performance mode, all three MFX can be configured for full parallel or complete serial use-or any combination in between.) When you're ready to mix down, simply switch on the dedicated Mastering processor with multi-band compression for tight, punchy mixes.