My little Jupiter 80 review

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Devnor
Posts: 696
Joined: 20:22, 27 September 2010

My little Jupiter 80 review

Post by Devnor »

Wandered into Guitar Center and up front & center is the magnificent Jupiter 80. I had no idea it was already here. They had another one in the box for sale, ready to go.

Construction: top notch construction. All the buttons were very nice - others should take note. Big sexy brushed aluminum surface and metal end sections just like the Fantoms. On the stand it looks impressive and the colors work well without it being too garish. Nice feeling 76 note keyboard its the G7 action. Big volume knob was a nice feature esp since I was trying to be reasonably quiet.

The screen was quite readable and responded to touch pretty well. Some controls could be adjusted by sliding your finger on the screen although control was not all that fine but if you wanted to zero or max something it could be quite useful. It was easy to choose the registrations either by wheel or opening a list with scroll bar. Touch the scroll bar and now I'm moving thru the list. Touch something now it's sounding. Click on a live set, now you can select which tones you want to edit. Nice workflow. When done, press write and on the registration panel and choose a name & location.

The registration controls - what I freaking great idea. THANK YOU ROLAND. Seriously I move my finger an inch to switch to the next sound. No navigating a touch screen, typing in some 3 digit number or a bank of switches on the upper right panel. Again nice workflow. During my time I had 2 different regs I created there on the spot (for some reason 1/2 the reg locations were empty on this machine). Just switching back & forth going between the sounds.

I only spent about 15 minutes playing one long version of Black Cow trying out all the sounds. Its really noisy in there with a guy testing out Akai drum machines. I didn't do any deep editing or critical listening although they had the JP hooked up to some decent monitors (both Kronos plugged into KC350 but more on that later). Many times I was not "blow away" by the sounds but they were satisfying enough I was concentrating on playing the Steely Dan tune instead of thinking to myself what parameters needed to be changed. This was a pretty amazing experience in itself.

There is distortion in the organ sound...the distortion is built into the basic tone; in this case it was called "rock organ". My cursory examination of the settings didnt reveal any kind of control over the gain. Similar thing in the fantom where the distortion is present in the pcm waveform. With this model selected I guess the SN engine has some effect on the OD levels. I didn't do any critical listening trying to hear nuance in the organ.

Many other patches were just lovely like the flutes & violin, the trumpet patch that makes everyone so upset was big fun to play. Might have to do a Beatles cover or two. Loved the strings and what I mainly bought the machine for....the big poly VA synth. The software is nicely done and it was easy to just dive in and start creating. Amid the noise the piano sounded very good. Acoustic bass was fun and was electric bass harmonics...seriously sick and creative & inspiring sounds. I can't make those kind of harmonics on my stingray. I didnt test any EP or vocal sounds in the short time I had to test drive. By this time there was a couple that clearly wanted to try out the new Roland too.

On the other side of the room was Kronos 61 & 73. I had to go play Kronos again after my enjoyable experience playing the Dan on the new JP80. The vector sticks broken on both but they finally removed the electrical tape off the K61 and replaced the encoder wheel. The buttons give you a little clack like the controls on a VCR. It was sitting in polysix mode and from the same distance I was having trouble seeing the parameters. The RH3 doesn't feel as nice as the Roland's synth action (or my nicely broken Fantom X8) and seems to have an unsatisfying thud when you press a key (just like Oasys did). Within 90 seconds I didn't want to play the Kronos anymore. In my opinion the Roland is built to higher spec than the Korg product. Everything about the JP80 hardware is nicer than what remained after Korg did what they needed to keep costs low.

Now I'm super-psyched about my new synth. It seems Guitar Center got them 1st. There's a roadshow with Scott Tibbs demoing the board but the closest one is 4 hours away. Now I don't have to make the drive -but I would have loved hearing Mr Tibbs demo and Q&A. Seriously Roland you did an incredible job designing and executing this new instrument. I'm mighty proud to have this one enroute to my studio very soon.
Bruce Lychee
Posts: 168
Joined: 21:56, 24 June 2011

Re: My little Jupiter 80 review

Post by Bruce Lychee »

I just came back from the Scott Tibbs clinic. Excellent presentation and great guy. I didn't think I would, but I walked out with the Jupiter. I also have the Kronos 88 and would be glad to offer whatever insight I can into the two boards.
Chrisk-K
Posts: 239
Joined: 15:42, 25 June 2011

Re: My little Jupiter 80 review

Post by Chrisk-K »

How good is PWM in the VA section of the JP-80?
Bruce Lychee
Posts: 168
Joined: 21:56, 24 June 2011

Re: My little Jupiter 80 review

Post by Bruce Lychee »

I just set it up and haven't played around with the synth edit parameters, but I definitely underestimated the synth section before Scott's demo and our conversation. His real time cover of the Tron theme was spot on and sounded incredibly fat. His demo focuses on many of the acoustic elements but he spent plenty of time covering synths afterwards.

We spoke about the V-synth GT as well. He called that his baby, but said despite the unique things the V can do, the Jupiter's synth engine is more advanced. It certainly sounds amazing. He went through all the classic Jupiter sounds as well paying everything from Howard Jones to ELP and they really sounded perfect.

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Mystic38
Posts: 1105
Joined: 14:04, 24 August 2009

Re: My little Jupiter 80 review

Post by Mystic38 »

Congrats Bruce!..

Will look forward to some of your detailed comments on the synth section, And hopefully some discussion on programming and editing.
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