Buy Another Jupiter 80

I am tempted to get another Jupiter-80 too but I have two Jupiter-50s as well. I have plenty of Jupiter power so I feel I could put that $2400.00 into new and different pieces.

I am still sitting on the fence about the JD-XA. I like the cross over concept but really have not been too motivated to act.

The new Boutique line is more in line with what I am looking for soundwise though they are smaller than I was hoping for. They are refreshing to me, emulating classic synths I love with no Supernatural sample playback sound engine, just ACB without the need of a computer to run like my Arturia Vst synths.

About the Jupiter-80, I agree I like the sound and Massive/impressive size. I am still tempted to get a second one but my reality to me says explore new things. I am hoping Roland will do another Jupiter built like the Jupiter-80 but with the addition of more hands on controls.

If the price drops further on the Jupiter-80s I may not be able to hold back any more and get that 2nd one.

i am quite honored to own a Jupiter 80. even though i am very intimidated by this machine, each morning i just stare at it in awe as i brush my teeth! :)

i am honored to have my juno 60 i purchased in 1987 and the only other keyboard i ever wanted was the Jupiter 8. since i cant currently justify/afford a near excellent/top shelf condition Jupiter 8, the 80 was the next logical step for me. sold a lot of equipment to get it...

If you haven't noticed, all the great deals on pre owned Jupiter 80 synths have dried up. I would like to add a second one but there are 2 problems - getting it past the wife and finding space in my cramped studio.

I have the distinct pleasure of owning two Jupiter 80s. One stays at home and the other is for live work. I am however, thinking of selling one and getting the big Kronos as I also use an A90 with an Integra but want something that's all in one box and easy to edit on the fly. Also, it would be interesting to get to grips with another manufacturer's way of doing things.

TJ80 wrote:

I have the distinct pleasure of owning two Jupiter 80s. One stays at home and the other is for live work. I am however, thinking of selling one and getting the big Kronos as I also use an A90 with an Integra but want something that's all in one box and easy to edit on the fly. Also, it would be interesting to get to grips with another manufacturer's way of doing things.

Don't get me wrong I can understand why you might want a Kronos - it's a powerful instrument. I had an OASYS and I can say (for me) it was without doubt the most complex keyboard I've owned and attempted to edit. Now that could be just me - but I would advise caution to anyone who might think that the Kronos is 'easy to edit on the fly'. Fine if you're talking about the control surface manipulating presets - but starting from an INIT; good luck!

Hello Cello

Thanks for the advice. No, I am not daft enough to edit programmes in a live scenario on a Kronos any more than I would attempt live tone and layer editing on the JP80. The 1000 page manual is enough to put anybody off!

My intention, as you correctly assume, would be to use the top level control surface. I need to go into my local PMT for a good session on the Kronos, rather than watching Mr Rudess on You Tube extolling its benefits.

Do you have any experience of Korg's take on a vocoder? I use an V synth XT for such duties and suspect that the Korg isn't anywhere near as advanced in this respect.

One for the V synth thread perhaps.

TJ80 wrote:

I need to go into my local PMT for a good session on the Kronos, rather than watching Mr Rudess on You Tube extolling its benefits.

It's funny you mentioned that. Every now and then I watch a ton of synth videos online and then want to try out these things. Lately I've been watching the Kronos again just for fun, and I went into Guitar Center yesterday to play around on the Kronos 2.

Now, this happens every single time with the Kronos - I don't like it! I can't put my finger on the reason. I loved the Triton back in the day. The Kronos interface is fun to work with, the touch screen is nice, the presets are fun to jam on. I don't know. I always leave with a negative feeling. It's really weird.

Another funny thing @Cello. I was reading some old threads on other forums and I came across a post by a user named cello who had an oasys and was considering a Kronos or a Jupiter. In refering to the JP 80 he said something along the lines of "Oh god it's a Roland" and I got a good laugh seeing that because of how your mind must have changed since then!

Macska wrote:

Another funny thing @Cello. I was reading some old threads on other forums and I came across a post by a user named cello who had an oasys and was considering a Kronos or a Jupiter. In refering to the JP 80 he said something along the lines of "Oh god it's a Roland" and I got a good laugh seeing that because of how your mind must have changed since then!

cello? never heard of 'im! ;)

Yes, I was a true-blood Korgie of nearly 30yrs at that point, so the thought of getting a Roland was not one that I looked at positively. Two things changed that - 1) trying the JP-80 and it blew me away and 2) how badly Korg treated its high-end customers. For years I had foolishly been blind/deaf to the competition. And the JP-80 was so easy to use, so powerful/creative and fresh to my ears I haven't looked back, £13,000 later!

I admire now how Roland is doing so many different things - the JD-XA, AIRA, Boutique; contemporary re-interpretations of classic gear/approaches.

@TJ80 - I had a Korg MS2000B and a Radias, as well as the OASYS, which had vocoders. I hardly use the function to be honest, but 'noodled', so my opinion probably isn't that valid. From what I read others say (more experienced than me in such things) is that the V-Synth is top of the tree for limitless vocoding possibilities, so my view would be you've probably already got the best possible :)

Interesting, thought provoking comments. I have always been a Roland fan from my Juno 6 and onwards, so the Kronos would see me straying onto the Korg path for the first time. I am going to try one out again on Monday, however, as I think has been discussed before on here somewhere, I will wonder over the build quality, especially compared to the JP80.

Ref vocoders, thanks for the advice. I think I will keep my XTs and the GT certainly isn't going anywhere!

@TJ80:

I'm an OASYS owner (and love it still) - and also a JP80 and V-Synth GT owner. For sure, the V-Synth GT is the best hardware device for vocoding and vocal design - if you have the vocal design card for the XT you have the same capability.

However - the OASYS / Kronos vocoder has one _very_ interesting feature - you can use any sample set on board as the synth sound to vocode

So - if you use a choir multisample and vocode it using your singing voice - it sounds extraordinarily like a singing choir. It's a stunning effect. Mike Conway ( a well know OASYS user over on Korgforums) produced a DVD on how to use the OASYS and demos it. There may be a Youtube demo from him too.

So - the OASYS offers a half way house between traditional synth vocoding (robotic voice) and the Vocal Design. The difference with Vocal Design (and why it's so good) is that it take the voice in and uses a technique called Realtime Convolution to essentially merge three elements on the sample-by-sample level - your voice, the notes you play, and any multi-sample. In such convolution, each and every sample of your voice is multiplied with every sample within the multi-sampled (choir) sound - 44,100 times a second - so in essence your voice is bring imprinted onto the choir sound in realtime at a resolution of 44,100 times a second. Hence why the V-Synth (and VP550) sound like an actual choir; and why it goes well beyond traditional vocoding. As I'm sure you know - you don't have to sing the notes you want to hear - just speak them in and play the notes on the keyboard and those notes sound.

On the OASYS, it's you vocoding a choir sample set in a more traditional vocoding (frequency bands of your voice broken up and modulating the choir sample) - so you need to sing the notes you want to hear the choir singing - so in that sense it's traditional vocoding - but - the sound you're affecting is a choir so it sound intriguingly convincing - not quite vocal design - but fabulous, and very distinctive in its own right.

So the OASYS / Kronos offers another approach to vocoding (I don't believe is available from Roland's Vocal Design card - but I'll happily stand corrected on that) - but either way, the OASYS / Kronos offers very power vocoding.


I have to say also that I do not find the OASYS difficult to use. I find its Operating System very straight forward and extensive. What are tricky are the AL-1, STR-1 and MOD-7 synth engines. But that's only because they are so deep and expansive - the synth engines on OASYS / Kronos are extraordinarily well specified, endless in scope and offer an extraordinary palette of sounds. In my opinion they are are definitely worth checking out. And while they are deep to program, remember the large touch screen and very well specified control surface offer the optimum assignment of controls for real time performance / tweaking.


@macska: Thank you SO much for that tit-bit on Cello and Roland. :-)

Cannot wait for the next debate to use that to GREAT effect :-) :-) !!!

Hello knolan and thank you for your advice.

I think it's going to be the case of working with the Kronos' vocoder and comparing it with the XT/GT and seeing what works best.

My ethos behind getting the Kronos is to strip back my live function band rig to just one keyboard that can cover most things and thus avoid midi connections, sending programme change messages etc. However, the XT may creep in somewhere!