Roland SRV-3030 24bit Digital Reverb

When I first got it, I was pretty disapointed with the tone of the reverb. A lot of people say it sounds thin. But it wasn’t doing that. What it was doing was sounding very clangy and pingy. There is also a thing where you can ring out the reverb. You know when you have a good vocalist and they hit that one note that just rings the room ? Well when it does that on this reverb it kind of goes ‘skronk’. And I’m not talking about an over. Just hiting a sustained resonant note. Like you do on most instruments. Well then they did a firmware update a little while after this came out that fixed that problem.

Now the reverbs sound smoother and you don’t get that terrible sound when you get within 20db of going over. The top end is still not great. But it can work on certain things like keys. Just not a fan of drums through a bright plate on this. What does sound good is to do a dark plate or dark large room. It has the horsepower to do big long reverbs. And oddly the best way to do that on this box is to do medium sized reverbs, then turn up the compression. The compression numbers are nonsense. Ratio, attack and release are all 0-99. Is it really a 99:1 ratio? I think not.

But the comp can turn any of the reerbs into a bigger fluffier reverb. And with the EQ per reverb and the 2 independent EQs you can boost the low mids and cut the highs until you have an absolute pillow of reverb. The modulation effects are interesting because they can be on the A or B reverb or on the master outs. But sadly not all three or even 2 of those at the same time? The RSS stuff is kind of fun. I used it a few times. What is more fun is how you can get the SPL of the input signal to modulate various parameters. Like the louder you play into it the reverb gets shorter, or it gets less diffuse.

I wish they had set those parameters up with key-listen functions. Because with two reverbs and modulation effect each with a dozen parameters, you could go nuts. IT would be great to key the reverb length off the kick drum, and key the sparseness off the snare. You can also get it to work as a delay if you mess with the early reflections algo. and you can do just plain modulation with no reverb.

At first I didn’t like it. A few years later I started to like it a little bit. Now it’s pretty damn good. The presets are uninspired and bland so that you think it’s a poor product and not worth keeping. You need to edit up your own and then you see the light. Eventually you wander across the nonlinear algorithm and suddenly you’re Gollum with his ring, my precious! This particular algorithm is pretty much what everyone is seeking with all of fancy, expensive shoegazer focused products out there. If Roland didn’t hide it this box may have had an entirely different outlook in life. Plus in addition you can add chorus, phasor and compression to your patches and create some truly immersive and unusual sonic environments. This box is wedded to my DSI PolyEvolver most of the time. Not just because both are blue but because that synth and these far out nonlinear patches are like peanut butter and chocolate. Not a one trick pony however. The small rooms and ambiances are actually quite good and very useful for drums and bass guitar to give that hint of being somewhere in a room of some kind. For those type sound this box really shines and gets picked over ones much more expensive regularly. I took off points for useless presets. Editing the box isn’t as terrible as some reverb units. The menus don’t go very deep at all. What’s tedious is having to edit both blocks separately for stereo patches. Egads!

I have the 3030 without the digital I/O. This is the reason I am selling it, I need digital connections. One overlooked feature of this unit is the compression which allows for some very dramatic reshaping of the reverb bloom.

Some rather wild effects can be had with extreme compression settings. I admit I am not a fan of the reverb sound though. It is thin and doesn’t sit well in my mixes – mostly it gets totally buried. I am a fan of the other effects this unit can do though. The chorus, phaser and resonator are delightful on their own and good for making spacious synth pads.

They also allow for some more creative reverb sounds that are more interesting than the reverb on its own. I find the editing is fairly easy but the resolution of the parameter knob isn’t fine enough and makes for a bit of frustrating fiddling. The unit is also very quiet. If mine had the digital I/O I would keep it. It’s a decent box for unusual effects but for basic reverb duties it has no traction.

I have had 2 of these, both brand new. These units have well documented design problems. First thing I noticed is these units get VERY hot, even after not long being on. You could fry eggs on them. Both units ended up freezing up, or just plain powering off and on by themselves randomly. I returned them. Also the sound is not worth it. Very bland metallic verbs, and editing them did not help much. The older 330 series before them sounded smoother, tho kind of dark and nothing super special. This is opposite of that. My 330 series didnt have technical problems either. For those still willing to chance it on these 3030, there were 2 versions. One with optional digital in/outs called 3030D and one without just called 3030.

Too many people dismiss this reverb and I understand why, the presets suck. If you take the time to really dig in and get your hands dirty, this is a very good unit and very capable. The fact it is 24bit is also a huge bonus as it is generally very quiet. It is a pain to edit, but well worth the effort. The fact they can be picked up off eBay for song makes it a no brainer.

This reverb does not get a lot of love from those that own it, and it is not that it does anything particularly wrong, it is for me at least because it is very uninspiring in use. It does not have the funk of the Roland SRV-2000 or the pristine reverb tails of say the Lexicon 480. In a word, boring.

Over the years, Roland have made some really fantastic outboard gear and conversely dropped a few clangers with some pieces of crap. I’ve bought one of these because it was going so cheap and I really don’t know why I bothered, because I messed around with it for about 10 minutes and put it back in the box. (Best place for it)

For the money but they go for secondhand you can do a lot better. Yes it is nicely built but the UI , is appalling!. Sadly, Roland gave it the SRV prefix, but it’s not in the league sonically or operationally of its predecessors.