Kawai XD-5 Owned from June 2000- June 2001, Bought for $200, traded for the REV100 and turntable (not a very good idea)
The XD-5 for me was a bit of a misguided purchase: it wasn't a bad module at all but I bought it at a time when I really didn't have any use for it. So I never really did anything with it. The basic idea is that it's a very advanced drum module (in a very sturdy and weird-looking case) and before the MachineDrum came around it was the best thing out there. There are 256 waveforms- single cycle waveforms, drum samples, white noise samples, 808 (strangely named BOB instead of 808), etc. Some waves are reversed versions of other waves. The problem with is that there's just a 2x16 display and the wave names aren't displayed- so when editing sounds the accompanying wave chart has to be handy for reference. The voice architecture works like this: there are 32 voices (as in partials, or oscillators) that can be used singly (I think), paired, or 4 at a time (with filters either in series or parallel). A pair of oscillators can ring-modulate each other, which can be very interesting. There are very fast ADSR-style envelopes for oscillator pitch, filter cutoff, and amplitude. If I remember correctly the decay times and levels are velocity sensitive and there's a note-on delay parameter too. There are a lot (8?) of different velocity curves for velocity switching/crossfading. The filter is digital 4 pole lowpass with resonance (though only 8-levels). Patches are named and stored as drum sounds (I think there are 64 patch locations) and those are organized into kits- it's a pain to edit all these things- making enough sounds for a kit, setting up the kit and assigning sounds to note numbers, etc. and that's part of why I didn't use it much. I don't recall anything about multitimbriality because I never used it. There are stereo outputs plus six independent outputs and I guess sounds can be assigned to them. I never used that feature either. There's a card slot on the front for storing more patches but I never had one. One interesting thing to note is that the oscillator waves can have a pretty wide tuning range and the output can clip with lots of resonance. Also mine had a fair amount of digital noise in the outputs. All in all it's a very nice drum module, and they're very cheap now. One day I might pick up another...
pictures (didn't have a camera at the time so I put it on my scanner):
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