The SCC-1 has a 44.1kHz output sample rate. This says nothing about the actual sound quality of the DAC. Until 2000, Roland intentionally made nearly all of their products output 32kHz, even if they were using DACs capable of sample rates of 96kHz.

The instrument samples used by the SC-55 and variants were all originally 30kHz. The most you can do to improve sound quality is to buy a SC-55mkII, which is the cleanest sounding SC-55. All of the sound card variants will be pretty noisy. It also helps to buy some decent cables if you plan to connect it to speakers or an audio interface/mixer. Monoprice is cheap and good.

What about the professional modules (JV series, for example)?

The JVs all output 32kHz, 18 bit and use 32kHz samples, same for the SC-88 and SC-88Pro. The DAC used by the SC-8850 is easily capable of outputting 48kHz in high quality, but it's set to output 32kHz too.
AFAIK the JD-800 and its enhanced rack module version, the JD-990 are Roland's only sample ROM-based professional synthesizers from the 90's that output audio at 44.1kHz.

jv's were 32khz. you had to setup up to the xv5080 to get 44.1khz

Romantique Tp wrote:

The instrument samples used by the SC-55 and variants were all originally 30kHz.

Who or what is the source of this information?

The SCC-1 has a 44.1kHz output sample rate. This says nothing about the actual sound quality of the DAC. Until 2000, Roland intentionally made nearly all of their products output 32kHz, even if they were using DACs capable of sample rates of 96kHz.

The instrument samples used by the SC-55 and variants were all originally 30kHz. The most you can do to improve sound quality is to buy a SC-55mkII, which is the cleanest sounding SC-55. All of the sound card variants will be pretty noisy. It also helps to buy some decent cables if you plan to connect it to speakers or an audio interface/mixer. Monoprice is cheap and good.

Thanks for your reply. I gather then the 44.1khz output rate of the SCC1 would be superfluous as the actual samples are recorded at a significantly lower sample rate, and are simply being upsampled in output to 44.1.

I think Wikipedia is wrong and SCC-1's output rate actually is 32k, I don't see any reason to upsample it to 44,1khz.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Who or what is the source of this information?

None of the sounds from the SC-55 (or any later Sound Canvas) were recorded specifically for it. In the SC-55's case, they come from a variety of Roland hardware from the mid-80's and later, which used 30kHz 12-bit samples. Higher quality versions of these sounds simply don't exist. Samples from that era that returned on for example the S-770 are still in 30kHz despite this sampler being able to output audio at up to 48kHz, storage being much cheaper and it only being to sample audio input at 22.05/24/44.1/48kHz.

nukeykt wrote:

I think Wikipedia is wrong and SCC-1's output rate actually is 32k, I don't see any reason to upsample it to 44,1khz.

Keep in mind that this isn't just a MIDI module in computer expansion card format, it's also a sound card.

Romantique Tp wrote:

Keep in mind that this isn't just a MIDI module in computer expansion card format, it's also a sound card.

You might be thinking of the RAP10 there old boy.

There are definitely frequencies beyond 16kHz (32kHz sampling rate) in the SC-55 MKII.
A simple experiment with a high pitch note and some reed instrument clearly shows a higher harmonics beyond 16kHz.

If the DAC sinc filter was at 16kHz then there would be noting beyond, but it is not.
The harmonics in the spectrum analyzer are actually part of the note and not an artifact, distortion or aliasing.

* The red line on the frequency ruler marks 16khz.

Here is D10 note on Percussive Organ:

Oh right, the SCC-1 is the one that's basically a card version of the SC-55, more or less.

Yeah, in this case the 44.1kHz is probably a mistake.

@James-F: The frequencies above 16kHz are just mirroring and noise. The JVs have this too, even though the DACs are clearly running at 32kHz. Take a look here: http://www.donsolaris.com/?p=404

EDIT:
I was wrong, the SC-55 MKII DACs indeed run at 18bit 32kHz.
As in the article Romantique Tp linked, the filter after the DAC is not as good as todays sinc brickwall filters.
So some frequencies go beyond 16kHz but they are not necessarily aliasing, they can be part of the note.

Romantique Tp wrote:

In the SC-55's case, they come from a variety of Roland hardware from the mid-80's and later, which used 30kHz 12-bit samples.

I was hoping to hear that someone had actually extracted and verified the sample and bit rates from the SC-55 PCM ROMs. Having partially deciphered the control ROM information with forum member NewRisingSun, I'm of the opinion that both 30kHz and 15kHz samples are probably used. Along these same lines, it seems reasonable to think that the W-30 may have been used to construct the actual patches.

Higher quality versions of these sounds simply don't exist.

I believe it was Eric Persing that said it, but Roland's Sample Archive series CD-ROMs supposedly contain the higher-quality (16-bit, 44.1kHz) versions of most of the samples found in the SC-55 and almost every other Roland product of the 90s and beyond. The SC-55 contains 224 "original tones," comprised of some 993 individual samples though, and I've yet to bother doing an in-depth comparison...

It was indeed Eric who mentioned that, but he was referring to the SR-JV80 expansion boards such as the highly regarded SR-JV80-02 Orchestral board. The S-700 series CD-ROMs have most of the content from the stock JV-1080 library and the first 9 or so SR-JV80 expansion boards, but the boards released after 1996 have mostly new content. A few (very few) programs using 80's samples are included in some of the CD-ROMs and floppies for the S-700 series as a bonus, usually with an obvious hint in the name, but all I have spotted were still in 30kHz.

Romantique Tp wrote:

It was indeed Eric who mentioned that, but he was referring to the SR-JV80 expansion boards such as the highly regarded SR-JV80-02 Orchestral board.

It's been 10+ years, but the statement of my recollection definitely mentioned the Sound Canvas, if not explicitly the SC-55, and was likely one of these from ~2002:

Eric Persing wrote:

"At the time, sure....the whole 700 series development and the libraries was pretty much my "baby" when I was full-time with Roland. We had an R&D facility in Culver City and did tons of sampling and went all over the world to make those libraries. Roland viewed libraries differently than I did......more like an accessory or purely as source material and research to be used for profitable "lite" instruments like the Sound Canvas and the JV/XV series."

Eric Persing wrote:

"Part of my gig with Roland has always been to listen to their compression work, and tell them when is too much and give them advise on how to balance sound quality vs quantity of sounds/instruments in a synth or expansion board. Obviously, they compress the Sound Canvas much more than the JV....the JV more than an SR-JV card, which is more than an XV or an SRX series card. It's a graduating scale. They still aren't able to fit stereo samples with multiple dynamics on those ROM based things many times...that's why the CD-ROMs always sound so much better...and their uncompressed too."

He could very-well have been referring to the JV waveforms found in the SC-88 and later, and timewise, that probably makes the most sense, but unless you want to surprise me by telling me that you're actually Eric Persing, or one of the designers of the SC-55, I imagine we're still dealing with assumptions, albeit, educated ones. 😀

The compression that he mentions is very much a sonic detriment of the SC-55 though, whereby, even having uncompressed versions of 30kHz/12-bit samples would be an improvement over the derived versions found in the SC-55. With this in mind, and given the similarities, a split-channel pair of MV-30s with the SN-MV30-01/02 cards and GS instrument banks loaded might be an interesting alternative for anyone looking for higher-fidelity, "SC-55-like" playback.

It appears from discussion on this thread that the stated 44.1 on Wikipedia is a mistake, which of course makes sense to me now.
I really like the sound of the 55 mk2, only I wish sometimes said sound would 'breathe' a little more. Ah well 🤣 I can wish the stars start dancing
in the night sky as is appears the original samples were all 32khz or lower, and it would make no difference otherwise as I doubt
Roland would ever make a 'super high fidelity' uncompressed version of the classic Sound Canvas. I supposed the closest one could
get is to buy a 8820 or 8850 and run it in 55 mode, but even then the soundset is not identical. The Sound Canvas VA sounds
great too, I tested it out on my laptop, but again sounds do not match 100%.

A practical difference is that the SCC-1 has a MPU401 interface. This means you can connect Roland MT-32 and other external MIDI units as well. Depending on the price, buying the SCC-1 can offer greater value 😀