Roland XP 80 software for Mac

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sold my 1998 Roland XP80 years ago and just found all my disks with hours of sequenced tracks.

Q- How can I get these tracks to play without an XP80? *can the Roland XP80 keyboard software be downloaded to a Mac?

whatis an emulator? Google searches keep pointing me in that direction
 

happyrat1

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If the files are standard MID files then any MIDI Player Software will do the job.

Assuming they use a GM sound set you can find all sorts of GM Soundfonts on the web and hopefully find one that's similar or better than your old Roland's.

An emulator, in the most basic terms, is a piece of software that emulates some sort of hardware.

Typical emulators are VST instruments that run under a piece of DAW software.

Again, if your files are standard MIDI files then you would be able to load them into a DAW and play them with Virtual
Instruments.

If your files are in some weird proprietary format then you would have to first find some sort of converter software to export them as MIDI files.

If any of this terminology is technobabble to you then I'd advise googling each term to learn the definitions. This is the only way you'll learn what it's all about and how to accomplish what you want to do.

Gary ;)
 
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Welcome to the forums. Since you have your tracks saved on floppy discs for the XP80 , you might as well take the easy way and find a decent work XP80 to buy. As an alternate inexpensive course of action , just discard those floppies and consider that they probably aren't any good after all these years. Good luck, Don aka B3
 
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The sequencers in the XP-60/80 workstations used the same hardware and software operating system firmware as their MC-500 line of standalone hardware sequencers. which wrote (saved to) and read from the Roland proprietary Super-MRC file format. Unlike the standalone sequencers, those in the XP workstations would also play (read from) the Standard MIDI File (SMF) file format, but would not write (save to) the SMF format. Giebler Enterprises in Phoenixville, PA wrote a software program for two-way conversion between the SMF and S-MRC formats. For more information about them, see:

https://rolandus.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201940399-SMF-to-S-MRC-File-Conversion-Software

Here is a way to get files from an MC-500/XP disk to a disk that is readable by MS-DOS/Windows:

http://members.optushome.com.au/uws/MC5002SMF.html
 
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SeaGtGruff

I meant to play that note!
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The biggest problem might be finding a disk drive to put the disks into! Those things are about as rare as Betamax players these days.
 
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Welcome.

Ask around if anyone you know has an old PC with a floppy disc drive, you could then copy from your floppies to a low capacity USB thumb drive which your MAC will see.

Does you MAC have any software that can play a MIDI file?

Is the operating system of your MAC up to date?

With a lot of MAC software they need an up to date OS to run so you cannot necessarily install new software on an old MAC.

Garage Band is a free App and it has some inbuilt VSTs that you could use with the MIDI files.

Installing Logic Pro will give c6 Gb of VSTs alone or Main Stage will do the same but without the DAW function.
 
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Welcome to the forums. Since you have your tracks saved on floppy discs for the XP80 , you might as well take the easy way and find a decent work XP80 to buy. As an alternate inexpensive course of action , just discard those floppies and consider that they probably aren't any good after all these years. Good luck, Don aka B3

I’m still finishing tracks from 25 year old floppy discs! There are some corrupted files on them, but most are still Loading.
Also, I’m planning to get the Fantom 7 this year, and this reads .svq (Roland format). The plan is to create 1 disc from the XP (to preserve the originals) and copy it to USB stick to use on the Fantom
 

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