Sound Canvas The first Sound Canvas units (SC-55 and SB-55) were pre-sold in December 1990 with the SC-55 only, and were finally sold in March 1991 with the SC-55 and later in the winter of 1991 with the SB-55. In some cases, the Sound Canvas series models are also sold as "Edirol" rather than "Roland" as the brand name (e.g. mainly with the SC-88VL).
Sound Canvas Personal Computer Products Computer Music Products Sound Canvas and Keyboard The following combine a sound canvas module with a built in MIDI keyboard
Studio Canvas Studio Canvas was a series of PCM sound modules with built in audio interfaces (some models only) sold under both Edirol and Roland branding. 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.
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.
Discontinuation of Sound Canvas VA In 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 1, of 2024.
Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth Microsoft GS Wavetable SW 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 (including the picked bass from SC-88 and the steel-string acoustic guitar from SC-88 Pro; the remainder is from the SC-55) licensed by
Microsoft from Roland on October 22, 1996. A four-megabyte file, titled "GM.DLS", contains the sample set in
DLS format. Under
Windows 9x, Microsoft GS Wavetable SW 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. ==Distribution==