Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

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flyingace
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Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by flyingace »

After buying a Juno Di recently and really loving it, my daughter has decided she loves it too and won't bring it back! :) so we're giving it to her.

That leaves me with a void to fill. I really liked the Di as well but a few things that were missing, it seems the Stage has.

What say you all? how do you feel after owning? ex-owners: why did you sell? What features do you love? dislike? etc.

Any advice and info would be helpful. I have til tomorrow to decide to accept a great offer from someone selling their mint condition Stage for a great price.

Thanks in advance!
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flyingace
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by flyingace »

Thanks to some advice from another fellow Roland Clan'r, I went ahead and bought the Juno Stage that was on offer to me. After weighing all the pros and cons between it and a Jupiter 50, I feel that the live options available to me with the Stage outweigh the newer SN sounds and abilities of the J50. As I said, I love the Di, I just wanted a little more key room, a little more customizable options and user saving areas, really like the "Di on Steroids" as has been said about the Stage. I'm excited that Roland is supporting the product with the recent update to the OS and that it will work with my Wireless WIFI adapter so I can do Air Recorder on my phone, which is soooo cool!

All that said, I'd still love to hear from other Stage users!
junos2013
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by junos2013 »

Hello , i bought it because of the bread and butter sounds , SRX expandability ,and the huge leap in build quality compared to Yamahas plastic Mox keyboards which where my alternative at the time , also it is more versatile than the Juno Gi i Think, the Jupiter 50 well €1400 synth without programmable arpeggiator and drum machine kind of sums it up i Think.
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flyingace
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by flyingace »

Thanks for that, good to hear another happy Stage owner speak up. After purchasing, I was a little concerned with the USB driver for OSX not being updated to 10.9 but I think I've found a couple of work arounds that will help me. It's not like I'm constantly tweaking in the PC editor on the Di or other keyboards I own (Korg SV-1). Actually, I tend to modify a few for particular songs I love to play that are more in-depth than doing it on the board, and adding more sounds, which isn't all the time.

So I will be booting my mac from an external that I keep 10.8 on and install the driver for 10.8 plus the editor on that to work on the Stage. The only downside of this is that I was originally hoping to use the Stage with my mac using Logic Pro (it runs 10.9 and I'm not going to downgrade) via USB or run it through MainStage or VSTs from time to time for recording.

Does anyone know if buying a MIDI to USB interface will still allow me to do that?
tnicoson
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by tnicoson »

Hey "Snoop" !

See my reply to your recent PM
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flyingace
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by flyingace »

Thanks Ted! I got it, great advice, thanks!

Just an update, between tnicocon and Roland Support, they say that the editor and librarian (and the playlist editor) will all work fine with a quality aftermarket MIDI to USB interface. So a little extra cost but not a problem. :)
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flyingace
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by flyingace »

Update: The editor, librarian and playlist creator work just fine with an M-audio UNO Sport UBS/MIDI interface!
jalbert
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by jalbert »

I find the user interface of the Juno Stage to be excellent. it is easy to set up favorites banks and engage patches like engaging stops on an organ.

Rhodes EP sounds are excellent, organs are adequate for popular music, but a bit limited if you play classical pipe organ. Harpsichord and guitar patches work well for harpsichord music.

Nobody will confuse the piano patches for a real acoustic piano, probably the biggest weakness of the keyboard.

Action is much better and more responsive than a Juno Gi or Di in my opinion.

I think there are too many patches, over a 1000, but most I would never use. Given the enphasis on an easy to use stage keyboard, I would have preferred if Roland had selected a much smaller collection of patches I would be likely to use, but overall, the Juno Stage has served me well.

Cheers,

jalbert
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flyingace
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by flyingace »

I miss my Juno Stage for exactly what you mention. The ease of the interface to do splits and set ups was amazingly easy. I enjoyed the built in rhythm, although limited, for quick stuff. Nice to have it on board. Inevitably I could really only keep one 76 key (between the Jupiter 50 and the Juno Stage) and I ended up choosing the JP50 for it's better pianos and EPs. I have struggled with the interface constantly and having NO editor has been the biggest failing of the Jupiter line, I have trouble getting the sounds I really want loaded and ditching those that I don't want. If I could do it again, I think I would have kept the Juno Stage, bought an Integra 7 and kept a computer loaded with Mac OS 10.8 just to natively run the USB connection and editor instead of using a generic driver through a midi interface. If only roland would have kept supporting the drivers, at the very least, I would have kept it and never looked back.

For better EP and piano sounds, try some of the SRX boards that are still out there. They really are worth it!
jalbert
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Re: Juno Stage Owners Speak UP!

Post by jalbert »

I just sold the Juno Stage, kept a JP-50, same situation. I have 2 fatal complaints with the Juno Stage: 1) D/A convertors are lower quality than on the Fantom-X, so while it has the same sound engine, many patches like pianos and woodwinds lose detail and become tinny and thin as you go up the keyboard. Rhodes and organ sounds, and sounds involving plucked strings are fine, which makes this still a useful keyboard if I didn't have other boards; 2) the preamp in the output stage apparently clips if the keyboard is set to output +4dBu (pro line level) so it defaults to -10dBV (consumer line level) like amateur home keyboards that will be plugged into a home stereo; this results in lower volume than you would expect out of a PA amp. The SRX cards are older samples and I've not found them to be higher quality than builtin samples, but adding variety. The builtin pianos are better than those in the srx cards in my view, and while the srx-12 e.p. Card offers more sounds than builtin, the quality is equivalent. In fact, the pure EP builtin is the same patch as on the srx12. I found the builtin pure EP and tremolo EP builtin to meet my needs for ep's.
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