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.

alex

March 2, 2012 @ 11:29 am

for me is one of my all time favorites. jp8, synthex, monopoly the best synths in the world. what happened with roland in theese days. build something like that again like dave smith does.

Mark

February 20, 2012 @ 3:59 am

Bought mine in 2008 for £2k from ebay, Japan. One of my better investments...! A bit daunting at first but now I'm starting to see that there really is no other synth like it. You have to get to know it and it's not right for every track but it is a great synth to inspire musical ideas. Peculiar flutes, alien disco, fat moustache power pop, it's all here. A fruity, fruity instrument and no mistake.

Synthartist69

February 15, 2012 @ 12:57 am

In regards to the Jupiter 80, it is nothing but more Roland Hype. Yes I have watched videos and yes I have played it at GC in Denver. Yeah, it has some cool sounds but nothing mind boggling and definitely does not have convincing Jupiter 8 patches. The so called JP8 patches sound better than a JP8000 but not much like a JP8. It is a huge disappointment in my opinion.... The guys at Roland seem to get more incompetent every year.

tetris

January 23, 2012 @ 4:59 am

Alex - You are an idiot. You also sound like someone who works for a competitor. Korg? Yamaha? Arturia? Funny, I was at NAMM and I heard a story that some big shot in Arturia was bashing the new JP80 with the exact same whine and complaint like you and Roland told him all to shut up. Roland was right considering that they are using their trademark for their emulation marketing.

And you are dead wrong about the JP80. Don't slam the JP80 especially if you don't own it. Remember this: I have owned BOTH a JP8 and a JP80.

garry

December 20, 2011 @ 3:25 pm

the Jupiter 8 is an amazing synthesizer I bought one new in the 80s
had it for years with my Roland tr909 as time went on I also bought a Roland jp8000
to see what everyone was raving on about with its 7 super saw waves and it was strange at first using it as I couldn't workout the osc,s very well but once I got used to the jp8000 it was just amazing I made sounds just as good and better then my
Jupiter 8) you can make every sound possible on a Roland jp8000 with will replicate exact as the Jupiter 8) in the end I sold my Jupiter 8 and keep my Roland jp8000
and never did look back

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