Roland's top-of-the-line musical workstation, like the Yamaha MOTIF an answer to the Korg Triton's success. Unlike the MOTIF or Triton, it's got no sampling capability and there is just one model, with 76 keys, selling at about 2900 euros as of May 2002.
The 1024 patches drawing from 64 mebibytes of wave memory and the high-quality effects (including a 24-bit reverb DSP) are reputed to be the best of the high-end workstations. The user interface consists of a large (though not touch-sensitive) LCD and surprisingly few buttons; it's said to be rather easy to use. Of course there's a D-Beam controller, since it seems to be Roland policy to bolt a D-Beam onto anything (even the VK-8 stage organ has one). Almost sacrilege on a serious keyboard: the arpeggiator has musical styles, somewhat like an arranger keyboard.
The most interesting thing about the Fantom is its sequencer, which is active all the time. It registers absolutely everything done happening on the instrument, and without having to change into a sequencer mode, recording ideas can be done at any moment. | 
