My thought:
I would never purchase this thing over a G or Kronos or in fact Motif or even PC3K. Maybe as a second keyboard, but definitely not as my main and only keyboard on stage.
Regardless how good the Jupiter maybe sounds, at some point, sooner or later, I have to use my own samples. Not to replace the internal, but to add all stuff which is not covered by the factory ROM. And thinking global, I would say that this is an important thing to most live players who play things beyond the usual us/uk pop-rock.
That for the beginning is the main reason why I don't even think about buying this. But it amazes me again how Roland fails to understand some things now for the third time: remember the original Fantom without sampling and its "success". Remember the complainings when the FG was released and how fast they had to implement the ability to load multisampling.
And now they create a completely closed system. Yet again.
Just as a comparison:
Imagine for example you need a specific accordion at one time for one of your show/gig. And imagine there is no accordion in the Jupiter. There is nothing you can do on that part, and this thing is dedicated to live performers.
Imagine you have to trigger different samples, a sampled song intro, or ending, or anything else. Not possible on the Jupiter.
I didn't see a usb connector on the backside for external usb media on it. Does this mean that I can't even load my own patches, without using an external library editor?
Then, why this synthesis structure? There are two live sets which can be combined together and each live set consists of up to four tones.
Great, whats wrong with having one live set with up to 8 tones as it's on the Fantom G?
Korg or Kurzweil didn't change their structure (program vs combination/setup) for over twenty years. And why should they. It simply works.
Roland changes its terminology and structure on every new keyboard: tone, patch, single mode, patch mode...
This would be my ideal Jupiter 80:
having great sounds (as the Jupiter probably has), at least 8 part splits/layers in on single live mode, a lot of memory (at least 500 as on the FG), ability to load own samples to flash, a mature file system, a mature favorite mode with 100 or even 200 groups of 16 slots (not 16 groups as on the FG) where I could program one group for one song and load my own text for each single song I play, that would be my ideal performing keyboard.
Certainly not what Roland has actually presented on the show.
As I said. Great for a second keyboard on stage, but for that purpose I don't spend 3000 bucks.
