I was lucky to get to spend a few days during July in Los Angeles at the Roland USA headquarters for a Roland University session.   24 of us from around the country, including the editor Stephen Fortner of Keyboard Magazine, actually got to put our fingers on the brand new Roland Jupiter 80.

The Roland Philosophy

Since The Jupiter 80 was announced at Musikmesse this year in Germany, there have been many rumors and speculation about what the heck this new Jupiter 80 is all about. Is it a re-make of the legendary Jupiter 8? Is it an analog synth? Why has it been given this name?

Since 1972 Roland has been an innovative company and its main motto has always been to ‘Always go forward'. Despite the nostalgia of the analog era of keyboards, Roland will never go backwards. Obviously some of us remember the famous Jupiter 8 whose sound has been immortalized on so many hit records but the new Jupiter 80 is an entirely new keyboard based on the most cutting edge technology Roland has to offer. Why would anyone want another analog Jupiter 8 anyway? It was more expensive than the new one and you had to reset the oscillators each time you played it because they went out of tune. Good news, though, the Jupiter 80 can and does sound just like the old one too!

A closer look at the King

Back in the days of the Jupiter 8, people at Roland used to call it “The King”.   Although fundamentally, the new Jupiter 80 doesn't have much to do with the old one, the idea to call it the Jupiter 80 was to bring back the concept of a major corner stone in the industry of keyboards just like when they launched the first “King”.

The Jupiter 80 is a 76-note, semi-weighted synth based on Roland's “SuperNATURAL ®” technology. SuperNATURAL technology is Roland's trademark for maximum expressiveness of incredibly realistic acoustic instrument sounds with no velocity switching effect, no loop decay and really fat multi-layer synth sounds.

The Jupiter 80 architecture is also different from your typical multi timbre keyboard. It's based on the concept of live sets and registrations. There are 4 main elements or live sets contained within a registration. You can conveniently select the different registration banks with your thumb while playing by pressing the buttons situated  right underneath the key bed.

Within a registration you have a stack of 10 possible layers: The solo layer, the upper live set, the lower live set and the percussion layer at the bottom. I say 10 parts because the upper and lower live set can have up to 4 tones each. You can think of a tone as a piano, string or a synth sound.

The interface navigation is crafty and very tactile and is very much designed for the performance aspect. The Jupiter 80 features a large touch-screen color display and all the knobs and buttons are larger than usual. Access and editing of the live sets are clearly displayed with color coded buttons. Another new feature in the Jupiter 80 is the Tone Blender which allows the player to tweak multiple parameters simultaneously across the stacks of the SuperNATURAL technology. The Jupiter 80 can be easily interfaced with a computer and also features a USB host connection which allows it to play back 24/96 audio files from a thumb drive and even record an audio performance.

Who is the Jupiter 80 for?

The new Jupiter is not a workstation or a sampler like the G8 and does not come in an 88 note weighted key version. With a price tag of $3499 this is an instrument for people who want the best quality in sound for both performance or as a very advanced sound designer tool. No one was able to give us a solid date for shipping but we know it's soon, very soon.

We will have them at the MLK store and if you'd like me to call you when it arrives, just let me know at 503-226-3719.

In the meantime you can find more detail information at the Jupiter 80 Website.

Eric Warlaumont. July 2011