Roland has spent a lot of time hyping the ‘Super Natural’ acoustic emulations of its new Jupiter 80 synthesizer – which has left a lot of Synthtopia readers wondering how it does with traditional synth sounds.
You can see our earlier posts for a full overview of the Roland Jupiter 80 – but check out these audio demos, which focus on more ‘synthy’ sounds, and let us know what you think of the Jupiter 80’s more traditional synth sound palette.
Roland Jupiter 80 – Quando Arpgeggio
Roland Jupiter 80 – Reso Bump
Roland Jupiter 80 – Super Saw
Roland Jupiter 80 – Penthasonic 1
Roland Jupiter 80 – Stacked Lead
Roland Jupiter 80 – Cassini 1
Roland Jupiter 80 – JP-8 Strings
Roland Jupiter 80 – PS Puncher
Roland Jupiter 80 – Cozy Van Beddy
Roland Jupiter 80 – Before The Storm
Roland Jupiter 80 – Brass Hold & Sweep
Roland Jupiter 80 – Canadian Spring
Roland Jupiter 80 – Celo Bass
Roland Jupiter 80 – Attaboy Lead 3
sounds VA.. as VA tends to
Oh My! This does not sound like a Roland Analog Synth from the 80’s.
wow…why buy this when a vst will sound exactly the same…..what a waste of time and money…
what is so difficult about rebuilding something real and analog……moog seems to be able to do with no problem…as well as a bunch of other people…….ROLAND WAKE UP!!!!!
Hey, that superNATURAL superSAW is what we all have been desperately needing!.. The only problem is, when another manufacturer will hit the market with ultraRealistic ultraSaw, sales will go low-low…
Moog is a legit company with headship adequate to set their priorities right, that's it. Moog, DSI, and Waldorf are the companies I would support – for their innovation and dedication. Talking about corporations (Yamaha and those mentioned below), Korg deserves a hard-earned penny most. What for Roland, they seem to have lost their entire grip on reality. 🙁
my first bit of Roland gear was mc 202 when they where new, I have had a lot of their low end gear, Juno 106 ,alpha juno,sh101. I now have and use a Roland jp 8080 which I think is stunning.
I think manufacturers forget users want simply but good gear to mide up. Gear is made with multi timbral modes but only stereo outs, so mixing is tricky or none existant. I would love to see Roland improve on the jp 8080, The demos sounded dreadful of the jupiter 80.
Maybe korgs monotribe will encourage Roland to do something of value. I wonder how many tb 303's or an equivalent roland could have sold cause of all the copies made ( I have an xoxbox)
One comical thing I use mackie mixers , they have loads of mic preamps. If your making dance music you might occasionally use one mic, I would love to see a desk aimed at the dance market.Cheaper cause it doesn't need any mic preamps/phantom power etc.
It is amusing to see the market going backwards to half copy old machines, when will Roland take a gamble on another juno 106.Synths are not fetish items(not for me anyhow) buying old analogue gear is expensive and new gear like Mac beths have no memories.Moog is very dear and after buying myself one it broke down!!! spent four months with out one and a six months not being able to use it. Simple cheap gear …………is my preference.
£2500 for a keybaord that doesn't sound as good as most VSTi. I know this is aimed at 'live' players that don't want to have a laptop in tow, but I sugest that the ratio of live players to synth used in the studio (or bedroom) is about 1:1000 and Roland are about to find that out in sales….expect a price drop sub £1000 very soon….Its so disapointing when the world was expecting VSynth 2
This is sad. What were they thinking?! This, instead of V-Synth 2? Especially when this is as expensive as V-Synth.
Wow! Largely underwhelming. I expected the sound to be pretty good, just thinking the price and configuration were something very few people would need or want. But these sound demos aren't very good! Or more specifically, they are completely "typical/average".
These demos don't sound so hot, but i was really digging the acoustic instrument sounds coming from it. I think it looks and sounds like a wicked performance synth. It's not analog, but maybe they wanted it to be more dynamic then a few voices and limited sonic palette, without becoming so lame as to resort to VST's. There, did i insult everyone, yet?
Its not Roland's fault if people go all balmy over the lesser points. Its YOUR fault if you buy this one looking for a "pure" synth. Its clearly a LAYERING synth with the goal of more, detailed LIVE playing. The Jupiter name is the real issue, not the JP-80, which is, IMO, a more live-oriented V-Synth GT. The V-Synth is more for modifying and programming with closer-to-unique sounds in mind. The JP-80 clearly aims at the acoustic side of the matter. Someone clever could play just those two and punch through like Eddie Jobson did with U.K. In fact, I can see a bit of Yamaha CS-80 in the JP. Its not for wild new Reaktor sounds; its for digging in and burning in real-time. I've played a real JP-8. Sure, its meaty and fun, but I just can't see why all the fuss over the JP-80. Do YOU wanna drop $5000 on a new, fully-analog JP-8? If it retailed for a penny less, I'd eat a bowl of MIDI cables like spaghetti.
Rolands new Super Typical engine. Now merely 3000€.
Fire the guy, who thought that this would be a good idea ASAP. After that, also ASAP, go back at the drawing board and bring us the two things we want:
V-Synth 2 and
Real Jupiter successor.
With 3000€ you could make pretty awesome V-Synth successor nowadays. With that much money you could even make analog monster synth. Or make a workstation with V-Synth(Fantom V), that has analog filters. Or make something, that is even marginally interesting.
Being as someone is rather indifferent about the whole JP-80 debate, I'm interested in seeing just how many of these things sell. I would assume that if the number is well below Roland's expectations, they would hopefully consider a different approach.
I know their angle is to "not repeat the past" and I say if that works for them, then fuck it. But if it doesn't, I think they could take a few pointers for Yamaha and Korg considering the amount of luck their having with a lot of their new releases.
GAIA was a step in the right direction. If they can capitalize on a simple idea like selling a modder friendly tb-303 or a scaled down vsynth… you bet your ass those things will sell.
You dont have to reinvent the wheel, just take some of the best things from the past and work around those. Look at AKAI… theyve been selling MPC's since 1988 and their STILL selling them. And the reason is because the take a very simple concept THAT WORKS and keep adding to it.
These synth sounds don't sound nearly as good as I expected. It's going to be hard to beat Yamaha and Korg (Kronos) in this market segment with those synth sounds sounding so thin.
Spent time today noodling on J-80. Don't know what all the fuss is about, to be honest. The keyboard left me cold. Had no charactor and certainly did not grab my attention. I kept walking away from it and coming back and still I felt the same. At the rear of the shop was one of the first gen V-Synths which still sounded far more amazing than the J-80. Think I'll stick with my Access Virus, Andromeda, Korg M3, Kurzweil K2000.
No, very few would have money to buy new analogue Jupiter-8, but we all could go to music shops and play it there for free!
Not impressed, yet another characterless VA…
Is there really a market for this now and at this price? How many GAIA units can you buy with the same money? How many cool keyboard controllers and softsynths can you buy with the same money (including a laptop to run them) ? Vsynth GT 2.0 can do unique things to sound, what can this do that (conceptually) a GAIA cannot, since this is basically a multilayered GAIA with samples and a touch screen but NOT the usefull knobs and sliders? When will manufacturers realise that hardware keyboards need only be in two versions: either sample playback romplers for stable live use or real analog. Everything else is covered by softsynths.
When I heard the sounds on this page (first), my thought was, “This is an evolution of sounds that go back to my D-50.” The sounds are more clean and pure, better quality, but they didn’t seem that much different, especially given the 20 years that has passed.
But, when I clicked the link and watched the video showing the acoustic sound capabilities–well, that’s just amazing. The violin sounds totally realistic, and the ability to control variations such as plucking is phenominal. Ditto for the guitar. Also, the way the pitch bend wheel controlled trumpet trills instead of a plain pitch bend–that’s intelligent use of the technology. Make the tools control the sound in a why the instrument was meant to sound, not an artificial adaptation.
This instrument is not for the pure-synth guy. But for the synth guy who wants to tap into realistic, playable and controllable instruments, possibly layering that with synth–this is the tool for the job.
I don’t understand how Roland’s currant technology sounds so bad, todays processors are super fast, memory and sample storage cost pennies, it should sound light years better than vintage stuff from the 80’s.
They need to bite the bullet and use expensive D/A converters that sound musical, maybe a higher output voltage is needed, there’s no good reason to use crappy 16 bit 44.1kHz junk, 32-bit 196KHz is needed to beat that VST sound.
The emphasis needs to be on quality not quantity!
Even aimed at the live market – it can't be that exciting… It weighs nearly 18kg. I use my V-synth live at about 15kg and that's bad enough. Difference being that V-Synth is a different beast and great for mangling audio and synth osc's. If they are aiming at the live market – I think they should be thinking far more conceptually. But hey – if they're sellin' them, then they're doing something right.
Much fewer will have money enough money to buy THIS!
And analog synth ABSOLUTELY wouldn't cost 5000$!!! Alesis did analog MONSTER synth for 2499$ in 2000, so no wonder, that people got mad about making their hopes up and then putting the promising name into crap by releasing a cheap keyboard with very limited synthesis possibilities.
Polyphony16
Timbrality16
Oscillator2 VCOs per voice
1 sub-oscillator per VCO
LFO3 dedicated LFOs and S+H
Synthesis typeAnalog Subtractive
Filter2 per voice
2-pole resonant multimode – SEM-style
4-pole resonant – Moog-style
Attenuator3 6-stage envelopes
Memory4 x 128 patch internal memory
SRAM expansion card slot
EffectsAnalog distortion + digital fx unit
= 2500$ I would prefer to use.
No one else has the balls, so Alesis, bring Andromeda back. We are more ready now than in 2000. FU Roland, eat your own shit!
I've gotta defend the V-Synth GT a bit here. If people REALLY want to do sound design and not "just" tweak analog knobs, this is a serious contender. Its a serious FEEL synth. Its only real lacks are the spartan amount of onboard RAM (and it WILL read a USB stick as added memory) and the limited group of sounds that can be effected with the SuperNatural components. Those aren't design flaws, either, just aspects to work with. Perhaps a junior V-Synth would be a good idea, but that might be hard to manage. It goes against the grain of the CPU required to generate those sounds at all. I find it odd that so many like the V-Synth, yet are dissing the JP-80. They are actually rather similar at heart. Mark my words: someone will eventually pop up who really wails on a JP-80 as a signature thing and the discussion's tone will change because someone will show off the synth's best angles.
Fungo –
Using the Jupiter 80 name for this synth is a clearly a decision that rubs synth lovers the wrong way. It's kind of like if Yamaha introduced a CS-8000 and it was virtual analog.
Also – the production on Roland's audio and video demos seems dated, which reflects poorly on the synth.
That said, just about everybody I've talked to that's played the Jupiter 80 has come away impressed.
roland what have you done just wasted a lot of time and cash makeing a synth that is just rubbish and the same with the sounds i have had most of rolands synth but i wont buy this one, like a guy said if you are going back in time go back and make the jp6 & jp8 had one wish i never sold it!! see how much they are makeing i know they would sell better than the jupiter 80, i think there would be lots of buyers out there me for one wake up roland.
well… I really like the look, sound and idea behind the jp-80. Probably will buy one and to be honest I dont think £2,499 is a bad price for it.
@TIM
Thats EXACTLY what this synth is about. The realistic instruments are crazy on this thing. This is definitely not a synth purists dream, in fact I think they missed an opportunity to put a great analog control board of knobs and sliders on the face. BUT for realistic instruments and layering enormous combos, the JP-80 is AMAZING.
To everyone else. Im not sure who put together the samples on this page, but they certianly do not do the board justice. The patches I have played with on this machine were intense and soo much bigger than anything else I have ever heard on any machine period.
Roland has crammed their highest tech into this board. If you want an analog synth, then go get an analog synth, but if you want a synth that can do ALMOST everything, the JP-80 will do it.
Instead of complaining about this thing, try composing strings on it. Then if you’ve still got the same underwear on I’ll be very surprised. I played one note on this thing in the shop and bought one the week after. Very powerful tool for composing strings etc….
There are much too many depressive,destructive,boring and absolutely ridiculous asses.
And its all over the internet to the issues of electronic instruments,
The JP-80 is a wonderful tool.
I gave back my stupid and awfully sounding Korg Kosmos for the JP.
And I am happy.
The OS 2.0 ist just great.
My second and third keyboards are the Yamaha motif XF 8 und a Yamaha Tyros 4.
Have a good time.
People if you want realistic analog software synth look no further OP-X PRO-II is the best sounding software synt that I ever heard period.Look it up on youtube and tell me do you agree.I don’t know why is this software unknown to so many people but when you hear it you will be amazed.No I do not work for them I just won to stop dispute about analog VS software synth I think if the software is properly made they should sound identically to analog.People who claim otherwise are lying or fooling themselves.I bet they could not tell the difference between them in double blind test.There are many software synths out there but this one is very well made I couldn’t tell the difference between this one and real hardware analog synthesizer and I’m involved in music 25 years.I don’t see why would anybody paid 3000$ for this Roland when you could just get cheap midi keyboard and this VST and you are ready for some serious music.