The last two day I was at the Musik Messe in Frankfurt Germany. I was there together with my friends Hans and Eugene and we had a great time. There were two new synths on the Messe that I was very interested in. The Korg Kronos and the Roland Jupiter 80. Unfortunately we didn't get to play on the Kronos, but Roland CE was so nice to give us a private demo of the Jupiter 80 and we even got to play with it ourselves. I had read a lot of things about it before we left. Most people start with comparing it with the Jupiter 8. Well I can tell you it has nothing to do with that classic. So forget that association right away! If you are looking for a Jupiter 8 buy a Jupiter 8 ;) Some people also call it a rompler. Well it is FAR from that either. Roland pushed the marketing especially though with their Super Natural technology. And I can tell you it does sound great. You get very realistic piano's, guitars etc. It also holds something that resembles the AP technology from the V-Synth GT. It plays a natural legato like effect in between notes when that make it sound very real. It is emulating the playing style on these acoustic instruments. I love that in the V-Synth GT, but there you can also combine it with the synth engine.
OK Cool thing with the acoustic instruments, but to be honest I was not interested in that so much. When you know my music you know I don't use much acoustic sounds. So I was especially interested in the VA synth engine. And I was very pleasantly surprised by that. The VA engine is much like the one in the Roland GAIA. And I already liked that sound a lot and also the layout of it. In the GAIA you have 3 one oscillator synths that you can stack all with their own LFO, Filter, VCA, two envelopes and an effects sections. Well you can stack 8 of those in the Jupiter 80 without any polyphonic restrictions. So that gives you 27 one oscillator synthesizers in a stack :P I can tell you the sound power coming from that is amazing. You can also create sounds that are so incredibly alive. I just loved it. The GAIA has some restrictions when you use oscillator sync for example the synth goes monophonic. Well you don't have these restrictions in the Jupiter 80 we were told.
You can also chose to combine the VA sounds with wave sounds or the super natural technology. The synth has four sections. Drums, Solo, Upper and Lower. In both upper and lower you can stack 4 tones. And a tone is like a GAIA or super natural sound. In solo you can use one. You can stack them or make keyboard splits to play those sections on different parts of your keyboard. A very cool feature is that you can use the highest not you play always on the solo section. You don't need to set a split point for the lead sound then. It is not a workstation by the way like the Fantom and we heard this synthesizer doesn't share any technology with the Fantom either. Everything is newly developed. I must say it sounds great and I was really impressed. I will buy one for sure. I just think it was badly marketed so far by Roland. The Jupiter name gets a lot of discussion going and I'm sure Roland did that on purpose. Even negative attention is good marketing because everybody talks about you. Analog synth purists won't like this machine for sure, but I don't care. I liked it a lot :) Thanks again Roland for the demo!
The last two day I was at the Musik Messe in Frankfurt Germany. I was there together with my friends Hans and Eugene and we had a great time. There were two new synths on the Messe that I was very interested in. The Korg Kronos and the Roland Jupiter 80. Unfortunately we didn't get to play on the Kronos, but Roland CE was so nice to give us a private demo of the Jupiter 80 and we even got to play with it ourselves. I had read a lot of things about it before we left. Most people start with comparing it with the Jupiter 8. Well I can tell you it has nothing to do with that classic. So forget that association right away! If you are looking for a Jupiter 8 buy a Jupiter 8 ;) Some people also call it a rompler. Well it is FAR from that either. Roland pushed the marketing especially though with their Super Natural technology. And I can tell you it does sound great. You get very realistic piano's, guitars etc. It also holds something that resembles the AP technology from the V-Synth GT. It plays a natural legato like effect in between notes when that make it sound very real. It is emulating the playing style on these acoustic instruments. I love that in the V-Synth GT, but there you can also combine it with the synth engine.
You can also chose to combine the VA sounds with wave sounds or the super natural technology. The synth has four sections. Drums, Solo, Upper and Lower. In both upper and lower you can stack 4 tones. And a tone is like a GAIA or super natural sound. In solo you can use one. You can stack them or make keyboard splits to play those sections on different parts of your keyboard. A very cool feature is that you can use the highest not you play always on the solo section. You don't need to set a split point for the lead sound then. It is not a workstation by the way like the Fantom and we heard this synthesizer doesn't share any technology with the Fantom either. Everything is newly developed. I must say it sounds great and I was really impressed. I will buy one for sure. I just think it was badly marketed so far by Roland. The Jupiter name gets a lot of discussion going and I'm sure Roland did that on purpose. Even negative attention is good marketing because everybody talks about you. Analog synth purists won't like this machine for sure, but I don't care. I liked it a lot :) Thanks again Roland for the demo!
Posts
