Jupiter-X

Wow, it looks the part. It hooks into all the emotional Roland vibes hitting you with stripes of orange, classic sliders, 808 style buttons and vintage styling packed into a large and somewhat imposing form. Without hearing a single sound it hits all the notes that the System 8 miserably failed to do. Is this the synthesizer we’ve been waiting for?

But let’s get the first question out of the way – is it analogue? No, no it isn’t. Right, so once we’re past that revelation we can start to enjoy what it actually is. Roland is staying true to their path of virtual synthesis and circuit modelling. But this doesn’t appear to be ACB (Analog Circuit Behaviour) like that found in the Boutique range and System 8, this is a whole new sound engine they are calling “ZEN-Core” within which can run various model sound generators. I think the idea is that it can pretty much be anything you want.

The Jupiter X can morph into all sorts of legendary synthesizers like the Jupiter-8, Juno-106 and SH-101. But it can also be a digital piano or a workstation synth like the XV-5080. There’s no mention of “plug-out” technology so I have to assume that the ZEN-Core can run all of Roland’s synth models without any of that messing about with plug-out slots.

I guess because it can be all sorts of synths then the fabulous array of front panel controls will change depending on what’s loaded. But as a starting point you appear to have an LFO, 4 oscillators with detuning and mixer, 2 envelopes and an effects section. There’s an arpeggiator which apparently employs artificial intelligence to be inspiring – that sounds a bit weird and seems to take it dangerously close to auto-accompaniment territory.

The Jupiter X is also a drum machine which accounts for those 16 808-coloured buttons. It has all the drum sounds from the TR-808, TR-909, CR-78 and many more. The drum machine can run alongside the synthesizer in its own layer. The synth itself can load up 4 layers of synthesis either working together or independently, and you can split them across the keyboard which again points towards its workstation credentials.

What else do we know? Well, the specs are actually a bit vague. It says it has “loads of polyphony”, over 4000 presets and 256 “scenes”, 90 effects, a semi-weighted keyboard with channel aftertouch. And wait a minute, it seems to have built-in speakers – although that might just be a copy/paste issue from the specs of the Xm which does have speakers – look: