The Jupiter-8 was Roland's first truly professional analog synthesizer. The Jupiter-8 features 16 rich analog oscillators at 2 per voice, eight voice polyphony and easy programming! At eight voices you can get some pretty thick analog sounds. Easy and intuitive programming via front panel sliders, knobs and buttons for all your tweaking needs. The legacy of the Jupiter synthesizers is due to their unique voice architecture and design, creating sounds that were so unreal and amazing that they have to be heard! No other synths in the world can create analog sounds as cool and authentic as these.

The Jupiter-8 was the biggest and fattest of them all (Jupiters and Junos)! It was one of the first synths to allow its keyboard to be split and layered - it's eight voices of trance heaven! Cross-mod, oscillator sync, a great LFO and a classic arpeggiator are also on-board. There's also a killer resonant analog low pass filter, same as the Juno-6 / 60, with the added option of choosing 2-pole (12 dB/oct) or 4-pole (24 dB/oct) modes as well as a separate high-pass filter. Unfortunately for the earlier models, tuning was very unstable but that seemed to be resolved in later models. Unlike its smaller counterpart, the Jupiter-6, the Jup 8 does not feature MIDI, only Roland's DCB sync can be found on some models. However, MIDI retro-kit's are available from various companies. Patch presets can store keyboard splits, arpeggiator settings, voice assign mode, hold, portamento and modulation settings.

The Jupiter-8 has been used by Tangerine Dream, Orbital, Future Sound of London, Moby, Duran Duran, Underworld, Vince Clarke, Überzone, Jean Michel Jarre, Roxy Music, OMD, A Flock Of Seagulls, Depeche Mode, Rush, Meat Beat Manifesto, Banco De Gaia, Josh Wink, Thomas Dolby, Howard Jones, The Cars, Prince, Gary Wright, Jan Hammer, BT, Adrian Lee, Heaven 17, Kitaro, Elvis Costello, Tears for Fears, Huey Lewis and the News, Journey, Moog Cookbook, Toto, Yes, Devo, Freddy Fresh, George Duke, Greg Phillanganes, Jonathan Cain of Journey, Greg Johnson & Kevin Kendrick of Cameo, Stevie Wonder and Simple Minds.

Chew2Bacca

August 3, 2010 @ 1:13 pm

Only people who can't afford them, or didn't buy them right, [beep] about the price; it just makes the individual sound sour grapes. And your motorcycle? is off-topic. If you think you can get $7k worth of cheap modern gear to sound as good, and your programming skills are as good as your word skills, then please post a link to a relevant musical example that you've produced - otherwise, get back on your bike and pedal your [beep] home - thanks!

Reginator

July 31, 2010 @ 9:19 pm

I'd be a happy soul if Roland brought back a 100% "True Analog" Jupiter 8. Moog brought back the Minimoog. Dave Smith has the Prophet '08. I'm sure an updated version of the JP8 would sell like hotcakes.

I own a JP-8080 and it's a pretty good synth but it has sonic limitations that I have to work around. It would be nice to be able to push it without clipping the digital signal inside the unit. I've never played the Jupiter 8 but I'm sure I could run it through it's sonic paces effortlesly!

Roland - bring it back!!!

Curator

July 31, 2010 @ 9:09 pm

Shot up in price in the last 2-3 years after becoming fashionable again. Nice sounding polysynth that is now suddenly 'the best' sounding in line with the price rise(funny that!)..but in reality not for everyone..quite brassy sounding , nowhere near as lush as say an OB-X, and nowhere near as punchy as a Memorymoog.. a good all rounder though, split function is great, full of features..definitely one of the nicest looking old polys out there.

Heather

June 29, 2010 @ 2:17 pm

VAC (Velvet Acid Christ) used this too!

Stu

June 25, 2010 @ 6:03 pm

I agree with what pretty much everyone here is indicating. The Jupiter 8 sounds explosively brilliant, unlike anything else out there. BUT @ $5,000 it's not THAT great. Perhaps if you find a spanking new, never been played condition one with original manual, case and whatever else comes with, and you are a rich collector MAYBE. But for mere mortal men like me who enjoy making unique sounding music and playing synths, there are other much less expensive options out there to get cool sounds. The prices need to come down quite a lot if anyone expects ME, Mr Average Joe to pay more than what my motorcycle that gets me to 100MPH in 6 seconds cost me. Theres a LOT of good stuff out there you can get with that much money.

<14131211109876>

 

Post Comment!

Your Name: (Required.)

Email Address: (Required, not published.)

Image verification: (required)

Message:

 

Posting Rules:
Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

I have read and understand the posting rules.