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Roland L-CD1 disk image

 

For all you diehard Roland S-550 sampler fans, here’s a disk image (nero .nrg format) of the hard to find L-CD1 CD-ROM. On this 32 year old disc you’ll find the (to my knowledge) complete Roland factory library for the S-550. Despite the fact that it’s ancient, some of the sounds are still very useful. You can also load this CD-ROM into NI Kontakt!!

L-CD.nrg.zip

 

If you’re interested in vintage samplers, you may like this: The Sampler Crunch impulse response library contains impulse responses of 10 vintage samplers, including the Akai S950/S1000/S1100 and Roland S-550/S-750. These can be loaded in convolution based plug-ins, like Logic Pro’s Space Designer, Steinberg’s REVerence, Altiverb, etc… It powers your DAW with the classic sound of 8, 12 and 16 bit hardware samplers.

By Rutger Verberkmoes

Music composer/producer. Location sound recording

62 replies on “Roland L-CD1 disk image”

I just got a Roland S-550, and I’m really grateful that you’ve posted this on the internet. I don’t currently have a system disk, so I’m afraid I’ll be waiting for some disks to arrive in the mail, but after that, this disk image should keep me busy for a while!

Thanks again!

Thanks for the link! So much good stuff on there.

I finally got some DD floppy disks, and I got the unit up and running. Everything seems to work fine. I don’t currently have a TV or a monitor that will work with the unit, so I’ll have to get one of those and a mouse.

Hi! Glad to have found you! Your projects and your philosophy are so much appreciated. I’m a drummer/composer from Italy but I’m also into sound designing and I love 80s from the bottom of my heart. I just bought a roland s330 with mouse and monitor… I own an akai s2000. I’m planning an s550 too.
What 80s samplers do you suggest in addition? Keep in touch!
Keep it up!
All the best

Hi Andy,
Thanx for your comment, always nice to hear something from fellow musicians! I’m very happy with my Roland S-750 (cheaper version of the S-770, the S-750 misses the digital output and hard disk of the S-770), so if you could get your hands on a S-770/S-750 in good condition, I would buy one straight away! The 700 series are really warm, full sounding samplers, don’t expect crunchy 12 bit sounds! I’ve heard stories about sloppy MIDI timing of the S-770 when using drum sounds, but I haven’t experienced any problems (the S-750 was introduced a few years after the 770, maybe Roland improved it over the S-770?, but now I’m speculating;-)
Personally I hope to run into a Kurzweil K250RMX and the E-mu Emulator II, both classic 80-ties samplers, but they are hard to find in the EU.
I hope you will enjoy the sample CD!
Regards,
Rutger

Hi. I just downloaded this CD image and tried to load it in Chickensystems Translator (which also reads CD images). Translator did recognize the patch names within the image and shows the hierarchy. However, it does not show any of the samples within each patch within the image. As a result, I can’t convert them to .WAV, which what I’m trying to do here. Also, when Translator does show the CD and it’s contents within it’s browser, it will recognize everything as “0 bytes” if I were to view it’s properties. In otherwords, the patches show up as empty with no samples or anything!!!! I then decided to burn the image onto a CD (using Nero of course) and try it again in Translator. The results were the same.

Later, I decided to install NI Kontakt 3. After launching the application with the burnt CD in the drive, Kontakt’s browser immediately recognized the CD as a Roland S-5xx CD and shows the name of all of it’s patches. However, it does not show the names of any of the samples within each patch!!!!!! Therefore, I still can’t import or convert to .WAV. According to these applications, it appears as if this CD image contains only patches and no sample data.

Both programs (Translator and Kontakt) seem to work fine when reading/converting an E-MU bank or patch. Therefore, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something wrong with the image or if there’s something I did wrong in the downloading/burning process.

The filesize of the downloaded CD image from your site appears to be 145,507 KB. Therefore, I would think the samples must be in there somewhere in order for the size of the image to be that large.

I’ve read several of the other comments on here and it appears as though others were able to get the image to work. Is there something I’m doing wrong? Please help!!!!

Thanks,

Khaliji.

Hi Khaliji,

Thanks for your reply. Strange, I will check this out. When I posted this image, I tried it myself (using Nero). It worked fine with my Roland SP700 and NI Kontakt.

I’ll let you know…..

Cheers,

Rutger

Hi Khaliji,

Check out the post of Jim, the image should be working……..

Good luck with it,

Rutger

Thanks very much for the disk image. I can confirm that it works great in my Roland S-760 Sampler. I just downloaded, burned it to CD using Nero, and then loaded it up on the Roland S-760.

Hi Jim,
Great to hear it works. Try some of the Japanese/Asian instruments, they still do a great job! Have fun!!

Cheers,

Rutger

Thanks everyone for confirming that it works. That’s great to hear. I guess the software I was using simply doesn’t properly read it. I think I’ll try to import patches on the CD to my MPC4000 or E-MU sampler and see if I can convert them that way. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Roland S-7xx series sampler but that would certainly help too!!! Hahaha. Anyway, I’ll try out the importing with my hardware samplers and let you know if that works.

Thanks again,

Khaliji.

Hi everyone, I finally had a chance to get back to the studio and try this CD out on my two samplers to see it would work. Unfortunately, neither the MPC4k nor the Emu E4XT would read or load the disk!!!! So evidently, these samplers don’t support the Roland S-5xx/W30 format.

I guess I’m just outta luck on this one unless I purchase a Roland S-series. It still baffles me that I can’t get NI Kontakt or Chickensystems Translator to properly read/translate the patches and samples though. I wonder what could be the deal with that? Anyone else ever tried doing that with this software and got successful results?

Anyhow, thanks everyone for your support,

Khaliji.

Hi Khaliji,

Sorry to hear it stil doesn’t work! In an earlier comment I told to burn the image in Nero, but I made an mistake. I actually meaned Toast. Today I tried the image again, downloaded it from the site, burned it in Toast and loaded it without problems in my Roland S-750 and SP-700 using convert load.
The E-mu E4XT only reads Roland S-700 format CD’s, this is an S-500 format wich isn’t supported.

Greetz Rutger

Oh, I see. So I’ll have to burn the CD in a program called Toast? Maybe that’s why it didn’t work for me. Thanks for clearing that up.

Khaliji, just make sure after you download the image that you change the extension from .wav to .zip, and then unzip the .nrg file. I ran into a few complications today with that. However, I succeeded in burning the image to disk. Now, to find a way to read the disk, as my Mac isn’t liking the Roland format.

Hi Tyler,

There’s a program called Translator by Chicken Systems wich can convert (almost) all sample formats known to man! Kontakt can also convert this disk into it’s own format…

I have an S-550 that with several floppy disks of samples that I’d love to open in Kontakt 3…which I use in Cubase.

I downloaded the .nrg file and (apparently) burned the disk image to a CD using Nero Express 6…(I mean there is obviously something on the disk) but neither my PC using XP nor my Mac will read the resulting CD that I made.

Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

Hi Rutger,

is it possible for you to make a disk image with the smfw30 software?

I have no toast and after burning with nero my w-30 says that this is no roland disc.

cu

Marco

Sorry Marco for my very slow response!
Maybe you can contact Miro (see other comment), he’s the maker of the SMFW30 software. I don’t know if that’s possible…
Good luck and let us know if it worked!
Rutger

Hi guys,

I have stumbled on this by coincindence 😉 Nevertheless it is great to know Roland CDs are recognized by Kontakt. I have made a conversion program SMFW30 mainly for Roland W30 but works also with S-50/S-330/S-550. I was considering to add Roland CD creator and now I am sure ;-). Good luck with your music.

regards

Miro

Hello. The same case of Khalaji. I record the CD, I use the Translator and there are no samples, only the name of the patches.
I do not have Apple computer, do not have Toast, none related to Apple. If you can you please make a ISO into a Windows PC, using Magic ISO or Daemon can it work for us. Thank you.

Ernani

Thank you very much for sharing this image, Rutger. Just got W30, and trying to get CD drive to work with it. Testing CD drive SCSI connectivity without W30 is impossible without this CD.

Hi Piotr,
Hope it works!! What CD-ROM drive are you using? And what brand of CD’s?
Good luck!
Rutger

Sorry if this question has been asked / answered already but how do I use this L-CD1 disk image to get all those S-550 sounds into my Roland S-750? I have a SCSI Zip Drive attached to my S-750 by the way. Is there a list of all of the sounds contained on this L-CD1 image? I am after in particular the sounds from the S-50 / S-550 L-506 and L-509 disk sets.

Thanks & regards,

Rob.

Hi Rob,

The most straight forward way is to burn the image on CD with Toast (on Mac). It won’t be easy getting the image on ZIP drives, so I think the best way is to hook up an SCSI CD-ROM and then import them using the convert load function of the S-750.
I will update this post with the sound content of the L-CD1 soon….

BTW, you can find most of the Roland S-50/550 library on the Sgroup site: http://www.sgroup.ca/archive/samples/Roland/
These are the same as found on the L-CD1 CD, but only floppy images. Some of them are damaged unfortunately, that’s why I posted the L-CD1 image.

Just got an old S-550 for $20, got it home, discovered there’s no audio output… at all, from any of the back outputs through an amp or through the headphone jack. I hear a hum and slight static when trying to MIDI trigger it, but that’s all. It also generates an ugly burst of noise when I turn it off. If this sounds familiar to anyone, maybe you can let me know if this unit is truly DOA or if it’s fixable for an “advanced amateur” with a soldering iron like myself. Thanks so much for any info, this is a fantastic site.

Fixed it. There was a break in the circuit board underlying the front panel, right in the lower left corner next to the volume pot. This is due to a little design flaw that causes that board to rub against the metal cover that goes over it whenever the unit is moved. Eventually, the board breaks, and this severs a trace that goes from the PLAY button to one of the volume pot connectors. I’ve now seen this exact problem on two other S-550s locally and read of it on at least three others online — design flaw.

Easy to fix with basic soldering skills. I recommend running a jumper between the relevant contact points on the underside of the board and just removing the corner that has cracked as long as it’s just the one trace occupying it. You could glue it back in place and reconnect the broken trace, but it’s just going to break off again eventually. Also, file down the bottom edge of the board a mm or so to keep it from contacting the metal cover.

Feel free to contact me if you have the same problem and need further details. Also have pictures of the damage on mine, pre- and post-op, if anyone wants to see. Just glad to have a fully functional S-550 again!

Hi – I’ve downloaded this image, burned it to CD as an ISO file, but it does not work. I tried several times. My guess is that the ISO is not specifically Roland-formatted, (?) but I’d love to be wrong about that. I use the Roland S760.
Thanks in advance!

todd

Hi Todd,

Did you use the convert load function on the S-760? This is a S-550 CD-ROM and can’t be loaded directly into the S-760.
Also use normal capacity (below 800 MB) CD-ROM’s. Higher capacity CD’s can give read errors.
What program did you use for burning the image?

Hope this helps!

Rutger

you can access this on the S750/S770 by going to mode/system/option and you can see ‘Area 1’ of the CD, you can go through the Areas and then you have to execute convert.

I’ll check this out.

Meanwhile, I forwarded the link to a friend who has the S550. Here’s what he wrote in response:

Yes. I downloaded this file from that same link about six months ago. I was able to burn the image onto a CDROM just fine. I really had my hopes up.
Unfortunately, the data is Roland proprietary so I can’t use or read any of the data. The only way is to get a special CD-ROM drive connected to the optional SCSI card of an S-550.
(Only a select handful of CD-ROM drives will work)

Hi Rutger – thanks for your wonderful sight. To answer your question, I tried burning this (as an ISO file, I assume) on several apps — Nero, CDBurnerXP, ImgBurn, Any-To-ISO, MagicISO, PowerISO..

I’ve tried a plethora of file openers – Stuffit-Expander 2010, RarZilla Free Unrar, Open Freely, 7-Zip, File Opener, Free File Viewer…

Maybe the problem is Windows 7. I doubt if it’s the CD burner as it works great for everything besides. When I load it in my S760, it always says, “Not Ready” and “Not an S760/Disk”, even after convert loading.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!!
todd

Oh, and this may be important: the image I’ve been trying to burn is an ISO file which is 142 MB. Does that sound right?

Hi Todd,

142 MB is correct (in Windows, Mac = 149 MB), that used to be a huge sample library!
I’ve tested the image again and it worked fine. I used Nero Burning Rom (on a Windows 10 PC), click “recorder” > “burn image”, that should do the trick. PowerISO didn’t work btw. Others I didn’t try…
I don’t have a S-760, but it worked on my S-750 and SP-700, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t work on a S-760.
The CD-ROMs I used were JVC Professional (Taiyo Yuden). CD-ROM drive is an (Sony) Apple CD 300e plus.
Here’s a CD-ROM compatibility list: http://www.rolandus.com/support/by_product/s-760/support_documents/1440

Hopefully this helps, so you don’t have to waste more CD’s:-)

Good luck,

Rutger

Well now, this is really weird. I’ll spare you the long story of my dozens of attempts to burn this as a readable CD.

Based on my research, It seems that Nero treats the “zip” image as an ISO.

I finally got some results in my S760. (Yes, I always convert-load.:-)) Twice now, I have loaded in the CD and only a piano volume came up. That’s it. (“Acoustic Piano”, “Mellow Piano” – about 4 or 5 patches.)

I tried all the tricks, and I will keep on trying. (Using different burners, different operating systems, etc.) This was on a laptop under Windows 7. I’ve gotten the same exact results using various apps. Also, using both CD-R and CD-RW, disks. Strangely, Nero Rom doesn’t work at all.. always fails in the process. I’ll post again with any further results. todd

Yeah, it should be an ISO, that’s correct. The Piano volume is the first one. Normally you can use the right mouse click to scroll down (standing on the down arrow on the right side of the screen, if you use an external monitor) and than you should get another volume.

I respect your perseverance 😉 Hang on, I think you’re getting there!

Well amazing, I got there. I have no mouse connected, and hadn’t a clue about that working with this.

Anyway, after multiple failed attempts again (including Toast Tintanium – MAC G4), I went back to Windows and tried some more. Then it was back to the piano-only (volume 1). I stared around the screen, as usual — I’m using a large external monitor — and just happened to click on something on the top of the page, which reads “Ar[129]. Lo & behold, the whole darn thing went scrolling in. I was so surprised. I’ll have more info soon on this S760 function.

Thanks so much!
todd

Wow, great news Todd!! I really hope you like the sounds after all the efforts you’ve put into it 🙂
If you use the S760 frequently, I’d try to get a mouse for it, makes it so much easier to use.
The original Roland mouses are hard to get your hands on, but I think you can also use a MSX mouse…

Enjoy the samples!!

Rutger

By Post Author

AR [ ] is a designation on the S760 screen. Ar means “Area number.” The number in the brackets is the volume number. Thus, [1] for acoustic piano.

Rutger, I’m part of a Yahoo group called Roland S- Series Samplers.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/RolandSamplers/info

I was hoping I could link this page on your site to the file section.
That would also bring your more exposure to your site, if that’s something you’d be interested in. But I thought to get your permission first.
Kind regards,
todd

I have added new instructions for Windows users which detail the burning process for the Roland L-CD1 disk image.

Hi Rutger, Thanxs for the disk!!!!! Works! Burnt on a vintage Mac under Mountain. Lion & Toast. Actually I’m testing my SCSI2sd V6 with a Roland S-760 and a Kurzweil K2000V3. The SCSI daisy chain contains a vintage CDRom , the K2000, the S-760 and the SCSI2SD Card with a 16GB SD Card, formatted as 2x Kurzweil Formatted HDs, 1x Roland S-760 formatted HD. The Kurzweil cannot read S-750 Disks – not compatible. But the Roland S-760 can convert load these CDs and write the programs to a Roland S-760 formatted Hard Drive (wich is of course just a partition on the SD card of the SCSI2SD device). The Kurzweil K2000 is able to read that Roland S-760 Harddrive. Thats why my Kurzweil can “import” your Roland S-750 Disk! THX!

Hi Rutger,

NIce to see that you still have this great page going. I have a tons of S-550 samples and zip files of S-760 sampples. The S-550 is long gone, but I still have my S-760. I can boot by the OS on a Zip disk, but what is need to copy all these samples onto a zip disk to load to the sampler. I’d like to put the floppies away for safe keeping. I’m using Mac OSX. Thanks!!

This is amazing, one thing I was curious about in regards to this disk image. Is it possible to extract the contents from the nrg disk image and supposedly convert the sample/soundbytes into usable wav files? I sadly don’t have access to a Roland S-550, and was wondering if such things were possible so I can make a personal soundfont based on this.

Thanks.

Hi, thanks for your reply! Chicken Sys Translator can convert Roland disks to almost any format, Soundfont too!

@LegoshiHaru13 – To help save you a lot of time and effort, the Roland S-50 and S-550 RSB libraries have already been converted into WAV files 😎
With the exception of two RSB floppy disks, all samples from the L-CD1 CD are contained in two downloads. You can find all of the WAV’s at this link after searching for the phrase “AKAI and WAV” to find the two download files –>
http://llamamusic.com/s50s550/unusual_samples.html

Thanks again!!! I had been looking for the L-CD1 samples, I couldn’t find them on the site once and only thought the “missing wavs” was the only conversion of the L-CD1 samples

Hi, I have a specific problem. I’ve been looking for a sampled mandolin/koto tremolo sound for a long time, which you can listen to at the links below. I found out it was recorded on an Akai S900, but I can’t find that sample library anywhere. This was recorded by Kornelije Kovač from 1986 to 1988, everywhere it just says that he used an Akai sampler, but nowhere does it say which model. Since that sound appeared in 1986, I’m guessing it was the Akai s900. Can you help me find those samples?

Youtube links:
https://youtu.be/JzunlUjCDaU?si=KAymgUHuit2hJ_h0

https://youtu.be/4aVJh1cG8vg?si=rOQEhbw1V2D-EfSw

https://youtu.be/6BAabuzu5nc?si=nZhsC3pevwVi6biN

Thank you in advance : )

Hi Leon,
I can’t recall having that sound in the S950/900 library I have. Maybe he created it for personal use or for a third party sound library? IIRC there are such samples in the E-mu EIII library, I think on one of the World/Ethnic CD-ROMs…
Cheers,
Rutger

Hi, after a few days of research I discovered that it was used with the Akai S900 and Akai X7000 samplers. It didn’t have its own library of sounds, and I have the E-mu sample library with mamdolin and it’s not that one. I found out that it was Akai’s Quick Disc Akai SL203, floppies 30 A and B. Now I just need to somehow get hold of those samples in any format. I am very grateful for your understanding of my problem, since I asked this question on many forums and only you gave me an answer. It would mean a lot if you could help me find those sample libraries, or maybe you know someone who has them? Thank you once again for your help.🙂
Leon

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