When will a System 8 replacement launch?

[Elphaba]

I REALLY want to buy the system 8, I'm even tempted by mint units on ebay.com that are 2/3rds of the retail price.

My problem is that I'm disabled, and my meagre savings would be virtually wiped out if I bought it.

I don't have a problem with that necessarily, but I will as sick as a dog if in January or even this summer a 'System 16' launches. I understand from reviews that that arpeggiator and lack of XLR and polyphony are the biggest problems with the System 8 so I'd expect those to be addressed by it's replacement.

And the ARP is one of my 'big' things.

What do you experts think? How much longer is it's 'life' before the new one comes along? I got severely burnt a few years ago when I bought the TD20EXP just months before the TD30 launched...

Thanks

[papasan]

I've owned my S-8 for over 2 years and it's a favorite.

The arpeggiator seems basic but it's capable. It will do chords and a few other tricks. The easy to use sequencer can make up for it's shortcomings too.

The lack of XLR jack is weird. How many synths are there with XLR? I have 10 synths and only 1 has an XLR jack - that's the Jupiter-6.

The lack of polyphony sounds more of a case of someone wishing the machine is a music work station rather than an (virtual) analog synthesizer. Compare the S-8 to one of it's competitors, like the Novation Peak, it only has 8 voices. Not much different IMO.

The System-8 is a very good machine and it has yet to disappoint me. As for what's coming in the future, sometimes we have to decide if wild-ass speculation is real or not and take a chance.

Cheers.

[Elphaba]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I have zero doubts that I would love an S8, it's my fav sounding synth in the market right now, and with the PlugOuts of my two fav old synths, it's just virtually perfect.

But my question is more about is this product mid life, end of life etc, and when realistically will it's successor (or even will it) come out?

[Stormchild]

The arpeggiator seems basic but it's capable. It will do chords and a few other tricks. The easy to use sequencer can make up for it's shortcomings too.

You also get different arpeggiator behavior depending on which plugout you’re using. The S8 version doesn’t have a random mode, but when you switch to the Jupiter-8 it does. As you suggested, you can also just program an arpeggio in the sequencer, which has random playback regardless of which engine you’re using.

I’m still hoping for a bandpass filter. If they’re working on a Jupiter-6 plugout it would be a no brainer to add the Jup-6 filter as a new variation for the S8 filter.

[Stormchild]

I have zero doubts that I would love an S8, it's my fav sounding synth in the market right now, and with the PlugOuts of my two fav old synths, it's just virtually perfect.

But my question is more about is this product mid life, end of life etc, and when realistically will it's successor (or even will it) come out?

I don’t think the current one has any major shortcomings. They can always improve it with software (and indeed there have been a few significant updates with new features). I guess it would be nice if you could use all the plugouts simultaneously (with full polyphony for each one), and a lot of people would like a 61 key keyboard (with aftertouch, which everyone wants but almost nobody actually uses). Maybe more plugout slots too. But these are things that will make it more expensive.

If something like that gets announced tomorrow, I will still be perfectly happy with the S8 I bought a few weeks ago. It’s not going to have a better Jupiter-8 or Juno-106, because they’ve already pretty much nailed the emulations. And honestly if the System-8 was just a recreation of the Jupiter-8 with no modern engine and no plugouts, I still would have bought it, because it’s a Jupiter-8 that doesn’t cost well over $10,000! I was pretty much sold on that alone. The modern S8 engine (which I also love…I think it’s basically the evolution of the Jupiter-8), Juno-106, and JX-3P are all just icing on the cake.

[Elphaba]

I think if I had a wish, it would be 61 keys and aftertouch with a D50 plug out, and more polyphony.

And that's my worry; I'm not alone in this, and if I thought hard enough, I'd believe Roland would release a System 16 with double the polyphony, aftertouch, 61 keys and a D50 + more plug outs.. it just seems obvious.

So then if I blew my one spending opportunity on it, I'd be sick and very upset....

[Manic]

i don’t think we will see a System-16 or something like that soon. Maybe another plug-out synth with a completely different layout, more suitable for the D-50, JD-800 or JV-1080. But it will complement the System-8, not replace.

[papasan]

i don’t think we will see a System-16 or something like that soon. Maybe another plug-out synth with a completely different layout, more suitable for the D-50, JD-800 or JV-1080. But it will complement the System-8, not replace.

I'd agree with that idea. The Alpha Juno, D-50, D-10, D-20, JD-800, etc, have 7 stage envelopes. Something that can't be translated to the System-8 UI easily at all.

OTOH, it would also be nice to see a few more plugouts for the System-8 before it completely goes obsolete ... something like the JP-80x0, Jupiter-4 or Jupiter-6 would be really nice.

[SoundReverend]

If you buy it used on ebay the chances are high you can sell it with little loss if a System 16 comes out. And if a new version comes along it will probably be even more expensive than a new System 8... I would love to see a more robust version as well. Like less plastic and a better keybed, but that would be even more expensive, so I stick with the System 8, sounds wonderful, is a joy to play with and has 4 different sound engines. I also use it with the Roland Cloud, which is nice because you can load the sounds you created into the plugin and free up the System 8 for new tasks...

[andyr1960]

There probably won't be a successor - I bought the System 8 on promise of further Plug-Outs, but Roland have preferred to go down the VST cloud route.

[Stormchild]

The D-50 isn’t a good fit for the System-8, as most of its controls don’t apply to the D-50 and it’s missing most of the ones you do need. If you want a hardware D-50, just get the D-05 boutique. You can program it via MIDI with a computer (which is what you’d be doing if it was loaded into a System-8 anyway).

But if they did want to do a D-50 plugout, it wouldn’t require a System-16. The (poly) boutiques are all 4 voice except the D-50, which supports 16 voices with the same amount of DSP power under the hood. This means the System-8 has enough DSP to handle a 32 voice D-50.

I don’t see anything replacing the System-8. It can already turn into any classic Roland analog synth* other than a handful that haven’t been modeled yet (such as the Jupiter-6), which could certainly be done, as they don’t require any controls or DSP power the System-8 doesn’t already have. I guess you might want to have multiple instances, but then you’re talking about a workstation, which is a very different tool than a performance synth. In any case, you can already have multiple instances with Roland Cloud.

* Except the System-700, which is obviously never going to happen.

[Stormchild]

There probably won't be a successor - I bought the System 8 on promise of further Plug-Outs, but Roland have preferred to go down the VST cloud route.

It’s not a case of VSTs instead of plugouts. All of the plugouts are by definition also plugins (hence the name). The ones that make sense to load into the System-1 or System-8 have a plugout button. The others don’t. There could still be new ones coming (Jupiter-6 is at the top of my list).

[Stormchild]

And that's my worry; I'm not alone in this, and if I thought hard enough, I'd believe Roland would release a System 16 with double the polyphony, aftertouch, 61 keys and a D50 + more plug outs.. it just seems obvious.

So then if I blew my one spending opportunity on it, I'd be sick and very upset....

None of that really makes sense for the System-8.

Not a single one of Roland’s classic synths supported aftertouch. Most of them didn’t even support velocity. It made sense to add velocity, because everyone uses it, it’s expected in a modern synth, and for the classics it can easily be mapped to filter and amp env to make any sound more expressive. Aftertouch, on the other hand, is something everyone feels they need to have but almost no one ever uses it. It’s expensive to provide good aftertouch support. Anyone can throw in half assed aftertouch as a checkbox feature, but it tends to have very shallow travel and it’s hard to get the resistance right, and that makes it so hard to use expressively (with any real sense of control) that pretty much no one actually uses it.

Increasing the polyphony doesn’t make much sense because the Jupiter-8 was their flagship analog synth and it only had 8 voices. And the System-8 is a performance synth. It’s not meant to be multiple synths running simultaneously, because you only have enough controls for one at a time. It’s already a stretch having to switch between the lower and upper parts in performance mode, since moving any control for one part leaves it in the wrong position for the other part.

As I mentioned in another post, things like the D-50 and JV-1080 are just not a good fit for the System-8. It’s not a matter of polyphony. They’re very different instruments that can’t be mapped to the kinds of controls that make sense for a (virtual) analog polysynth. Adding more controls of the same kind wouldn’t help.

61 keys would have been nice, but 49 is honestly fine. I play with both hands and rarely have to shift octaves.

But even if they went ahead and made this imaginary super System-16 that does everything, it would cost twice as much as the current one. So if your concern is based on only being able to afford one synth that costs about as much as the System-8 does, it won’t do any good to wait for a bigger, better one anyway, as it’ll be way out of your price range. (But again, don’t worry, because they’re never going to make that thing, for all the reasons I just listed.)

[humax]

D-50 and JV-1080 are just not a good fit for the System-8

Cause Roland delegated many of D50 and JV1080 features to JD-XA already. So the idea to use System 8 for the same purpose looks somewhat pointless.

[Stormchild]

D-50 and JV-1080 are just not a good fit for the System-8

Cause Roland delegated many of D50 and JV1080 features to JD-XA already. So the idea to use System 8 for the same purpose looks somewhat pointless.

I’m not sure that’s the reason. Both of those are best served by a computer-based editor due to the sheer number of settings. There’s no hardware out there that can provide a better interface for programming these synths. You need a screen that can show multiple pages of controls.