The lineup is a series of

General MIDI General MIDI (also known as GM or GM 1) is a standardized specification for electronic musical instruments that respond to MIDI messages. GM was developed by the American MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) and the Japan MIDI Standards Commi ...

(GM) based

pulse-code modulation Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amplitud ...

(PCM)

sound modules A sound module is an electronic musical instrument without a human-playable interface such as a piano-style musical keyboard. Sound modules have to be operated using an externally connected device, which is often a MIDI controller, of which the ...

and sound cards, primarily intended for computer music usage, created by Japanese manufacturer

Roland Corporation is a Japanese multinational manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment, and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on 18 April 1972. In 2005, its headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefect ...

. Some models include a serial or

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

connection to a

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

Products

Sound Canvas

The first Sound Canvas units (SC-55 and SB-55) were sold in the winter of 1991, in some cases also sold as "Edirol" rather than "Roland" as the brand name, mainly with the SC-88VL.

Sound Canvas Personal Computer Products

Computer Music Products

Sound Canvas and Keyboard

The following combine a sound canvas module with a built in MIDI keyboard

Studio Canvas

Studio Canvas was a series of PCM sound modules with built in audio interfaces (some models only) sold under both Edirol and Roland branding. The samples contained in the ROMs of these units do not in all cases mirror the original SC-7 / SC-55 GM/GS samples. GM2 is downward compatible with GM.

Virtual Sound Canvas

There is also the VSC, Virtual Sound Canvas, range of PC software which provide GM and GS synthesis on Windows PCs. Many versions of Cakewalk's

Sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...

software came bundled with a copy of VSC, though from Sonar 4 onwards they ship with the improved TTS-1 softsynth, which Roland has sold previously through its Edirol subsidiary as the HyperCanvas.

Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth

Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth, included in instances of

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

as an integral part of DirectMusic, and on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

since

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was Software ...

, incorporates sounds from the Sound Canvas series licensed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

from Roland in 1996. A four-megabyte file, titled "GM.DLS", contains the sample set in

DLS format A DLS format (from downloadable sound) is any of the standardized file formats for digital musical instrument sound banks (collections of virtual musical instrument programs). The DLS standards also include detailed specifications for how MIDI pr ...

. Under

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a line of discontinued Microsoft Windows operating systems released from 1995 to 2000 and supported until 2006, which were based on the kernel introduced in Windows 95 and modified in succeeding version ...

, Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth is available only if WDM-capable sound driver is installed.

Apple QuickTime Software Wavetable Synthesizer

In 1997, Apple licensed the complete Roland Sound Canvas instrument set and GS Format extensions for improved playback of MIDI music files in

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

3.0. This replaced the limited set of instrument sounds licensed from Roland in QuickTime 2.x.

Discontinuation of Sound Canvas VA

In July 2024 Roland announced that it would not longer be supporting the Sound Canvas VA software from the Roland Cloud service. The Software would no longer be freely available starting September 1, of 2024.

Distribution

North America

*Roland Systems Group U.S.

Europe

*EDIROL Europe Ltd., London, UK

References

External links

Roland Museum timeline

Private Owner On Line Roland Museum

VSC-55 details (archive)

Roland GS history page
{{PC sound standards Sound cards Sound modules S MIDI