This is a thread for people who own/use TR-1000 to discuss tricks, tips and use cases, please keep non-user opinions to the other thread.
Roland TR-1000 Rhythm Composer - The Lounge / Other Gear - Elektronauts
Useful Resources (I will try to keep edited)
Roland (updates*/manuals) Roland - TR-1000 | Rhythm Creator
*Updates via app easier, app downloaded from Roland Cloud
Latest firmware, latest manual anbd ‘Knowledge Base’ (info on sync/latency!)
Reported bugs (1.14 firmware)- thanks [drxcm]
Auto-off when set to 240min never shuts off- always on.
Motion recording - needs smoothing- quite jittery
Lfo not perfectly in sync with sequence Eg S&H waveform on pitch slightly off beat
Track compressor input level / gain reduction graphics unresponsive / absent at times
Imported samples are not arranged alphabetically if imported from USB. But if imported from the App on TR-1000 names are alphabetically arranged
Roll feature is not working correctly. Sometimes this double triggers when starting the roll, and the roll is out of time with the sequencer, lagging behind.
Step note “cycle” feature is not working correctly after a Fill has been triggered. The sequencer loses the correct cycle position. Same occurs when different variations are selected - cycle function ‘loses its count’
Track FX “delay” sync times only go down to 1/16D for the maximum time (manual states slower divisions are selectable, but they are not there). When sync is off, longer delay times are possible.
When in the Menu → File → Sample mode, directory browsing is frustrating. If you enter a folder, then go back to the main directory, it always takes you to the top of the list of folders again, rather than staying on the folder you just exited.
Timing/Latency
TR-1000: Sound latency occurs when synchronized with external MIDI devices – Roland Corporation
Nice Summary (thanks Monopete)
Make the TR-1000 the master clock (All Tracks mode) → problem solved.
The TR-1000 has major latency when it’s a MIDI slave in All Tracks mode. It’s around >50ms. There’s no real fix, and I honestly doubt Roland can improve it much. They are aware of this.
You can make it feel more responsive by switching to Layered Gens mode (down to around 8ms), but then you’re dealing with significantly more jitter (which, to be fair, can have a certain charming groove). The trade-off is that your samples are internally ~8 ms late.
Firmware 1.14 added latency compensation, but it comes with another cost: it starts “lumpy/unstable” on the first beats. Not surprising—there’s no flux compensator in there. The underlying latency is still the same.
Because the TR-1000 is so good and increasingly becoming the centrepiece of my setup, I’ve adapted my studio workflow:
- For arranging/organizing and when it needs sync with my DAW, I run it as a MIDI slave, clocked by my Multiclock, which itself is audio-clocked by the DAW.
- But when it’s performance time, I switch the TR-1000 to master, and it clocks the Multiclock, which then clocks my other sequencers/hardware. The DAW is than unsynced. I use it anyway only as a tape recorder.
