Roland Sound Canvas

The Roland Sound Canvas (ローランド・サウンド・キャンバス) lineup is a series of General MIDI (GM) based pulse-code modulation (PCM) sound modules and sound cards, primarily intended for computer music usage, created by Japanese manufacturer Roland Corporation. Some models include a serial or USB connection, to a personal computer.



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

Edirol
Roland sold GM/GS products under its Edirol brand. 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. The SD line was also sold under the "Roland" brand.

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 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 Synth
Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth, included in instances of DirectX as an integral part of DirectMusic, and on Microsoft Windows since Windows 98, incorporates sounds from the Sound Canvas series licensed by Microsoft from Roland in 1996. A four-megabyte file, titled "GM.DLS", contains the sample set in DLS format. Under Windows 9x, Microsoft GS Wavetable 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 3.0. This replaced the limited set of instrument sounds licensed from Roland in QuickTime 2.x.

Discontinuation of Sound Canvas VA
On 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 1st of 2024.

North America

 * Roland Systems Group U.S.

Europe

 * EDIROL Europe Ltd., London, UK