Juno Gi - They Went With A New Screen Then...

In the video the screen is working (for now)

It looks great, just need confirmation that the 8 track audio is stereo ?!?

And when they say 1000 fresh new sounds, do we still get the original G ones? Or are all my songs screwed if I upgrade?

And a price? I can't see one anywhere.

update: called roland au, sales dept are real busy lol, hoping to get price emailed to me.

Got it... $1999 AU, so I guess $1199 US ?

this is a DI upgrade.. there is no audio recording... so we are left holding the bag with ourJuno G

Mystic38, no audio recording? Have you read the specs?

I guess Mystic meant MIDI channel recording/sequencer, the lack of which seems total crazy to me. It's the main reason I have no need to upgrade.

I can see the 'record a band idea', but it only records two audio at once, so no multi-track live recordings will be going on, you'd still have to pre-mix it. And no band records in the studio without some sort of midi sequencing anymore, either one or two channels at once is meaningless.

I don't get it - I must be realy dumb cos surely Roland are full of intelligentz?

I'm not sure what to make of this new Juno-G. From what I can see they dropped the 16 trk midi sequencer and added 4 more audio tracks. The new screen is nice to see though.., but the success of the original Juno-G was that it was an affordable WORKSTATION. I would hardly call this a workstation when compared to the original model.

Let me put it down for you.

If Roland included a simple "idea sketching" sequencer, people would complain that it's too basic, a joke, and so on.

If Roland included a JUNO-G/Fantom-X sequencer, people would complain that it's not advanced or not professional enough, and the screen is too small for it.

If Roland included a Fantom-G sequencer, we'd need to add $200-300 to the price for the screen and other hardware, and then people will also complain because their $1000 laptop has a more advanced sequencer so why should they pay more for this one.

As you can see, then, Roland did the right thing.

my bad, i had come in from the pub.. of course it has audio recording ..just not midi recording (the sequencer).
Even while sober, though hungover, the new product seems pitched as an upgrade to the juno Di, not as an upgrade to the juno G IMO..

@Mystic38,
I'm just stating the obvious, but anyway...
First of all this is a Synth, not a Workstation... (Juno-G is a workstation).

I didn't see anywhere (written) that the Gi is Juno-G update or Upgrade...
We could in fact deduct that because of the "Gi" could have to be some relation with the real Juno G.
Maybe is a wrong choice of letters...

As you can see from the specs, this is a complete different board.

The inclusion of the 8(64Virtual)-track Recorder, is a very nice idea. This is really a fully integrated BR-8xx inside the board.

It Plays 8 tracks at once, not 8 Stereo Tracks, just 8 MONO Tracks
Recording "just" two Tracks at once... well, as you can see from the Demos, that's plain easy to work with this recorder in order to record multi-tracks, this machine works with live sets of 4 elements on two different zones, so...and besides that, don't forget, this is just to capture ideas, although you can do a complete production with it, and also...this is not a DAW nor a workstation, this is just a new synth !!!

And... Roland makes instruments for a BIG variety of users and types of Band, so, not everybody is a Composer / Professional musician that needs a Fantom G...

Just MHO

Interesting points Paulo.

Have they pushed the Juno moniker too far?

I tend to think the Gi may well be the new-breed workstation(not that I have any idea what to do with 64 virtual tracks). I have to wonder tho if we were able to take a poll of users, what percentage would say they use their workstation mainly to capture ideas.

Personally, I've always been of the opinion a workstation was never intended to be a studio in a box, marketing directives or not.

I digress and take it a step further, historically the Juno's have been synonymous with affordability. Does anyone consider the Gi to fit that bill? $1000 rompler?

Historically speaking, the original analog Juno's cost $1000+ when they were new. That would be over $2000 in today's dollars, or about the same as a Fantom-G6.

Why not consider the Juno-Gi to be affordable? (It's more than just a rompler, anyway.)

Paulo makes excellent points and totally digs the concept!

Roland is looking into the future, guys, and the future is people with affordable instruments, and gadgets with synth/sampling/effect apps that they want to record into audio tracks.

It's more than just a rompler, anyway.

Is it really? or are the 8-track(64 virtual) just as hacked into it as they look? More specifically, will there or is there even the potential for sampling. Maybe I need to look at it closer, but at this point I don't see a connection between the digital recorder and synth engine at all.

So I guess I should rephrase, $1000 rompler with a portastudio hanging off the side.

Thanks for pointing out the price of the original Junos tho, I couldn't find any of those numbers when I tried to look it up. I guess the idea of affordability is as shifty as the inflating economy.

At any rate, someone's going to have to point out the value of these 8 tracks to me. It seems somewhat redundant at this point. If a DAW is required and the board is already an audio interface, why would I not use the (virtually)unlimited tracks available on the computer instead?

I assume as a live device you would have audio parts of a song to fade in and out, along with the midi tracks you had converted to audio - no I don't get it either.

If they realy are mono tracks, then isn't it just a 4 track audio like Juno-G had?

Not having a sequencer still makes no logic - it would surely only account for 3% of the cost, yet it turns people off the product. Makes you wonder that if Juno-G didn't have screen problems we would have seen the same screen on the Gi, and therefore a sequencer. After all, improving the Juno G to 64 virtual audio was an upgrade we wanted, along with fresh sounds and faster processing.

Although linking the G and the Gi together would be an awesome set up

Hey! This thread was about the new LCD! (But I acknowledge I go off topic as much as anyone - even in the threads I've started myself)

So to bring it back to the LCD... and to be totally cynical... but having read fresh additions to the old thread i started in the JG forum, about LCD quality...

Have Roland produced the Gi with a lesser spec than the G partly to prevent any demands for a discounted upgrade path?!