Roland jp08 vs Jupiter 8 detailed audio comparison - 720 HD for accurate sound

Published on Jan 31, 2016 SynthBae

"Turn on subtitles CC for extra info about what you're hearing. Sorry the video is not completely clear my camera was playing up but the sound should be good if you are watching in HD, the settings of both synths were of course the same during the tests to properly compare them.

be warned this video is long! I will make a table of contents so you can jump to a relevant section of the vid if you want to see a certain thing compared. Please feel free to add search points in the comments to help other skip to the relevant parts, I will update here.

filter : @ 21:56

Below I will post my opinion of the jp08 vs the real Roland Jupiter 8.

The things I compare between both machines are:
1. all waveforms (square, saw, tri, sine, and pulse width)
2. oscillator crossmod and sync
3. one or both oscillators
4. filter with and without resonance, both 12 and 24 db modes sweeping and static
5. single note and chord sequences

My findings and opinion:
I found on the whole the jp08 to be interesting, and Roland have done a great job in re-creating the sound digitally. Whilst I think you need to take into account every Jup 8 will have a very slightly different sound at the same settings due to calibration (I have not done mine for a while) There are however a few differences beyond that which I noticed and make enough of a difference to the experience and perhaps you will hear them too in the video.

1) the square wave doesn't sound as square on the jp08 as it does on the jupiter. It sounds like the width of the pulse has been very slightly narrowed on the jp08. it sounded like it did not go wide enough.

2) probably the biggest difference and I think a huge oversight is that each oscillator voice in the jupiter 8 will have a different phase compared with the other voices, you dont notice on single notes but when you play chords they beat pleasantly on the jupiter 8 and just gives it a richer fuller sound compared to the jp08. It's a pity there is not a slop setting like on the new prophet 6, I think that would help here. (even though that is analog)

3) slightly more pronounced resonance on the jp08 especially at higher settings.

4) saw tooth waveform slightly quieter on jp08 compared to the square.

5) triangle smoother on the jp08, though I think could be a calibration issue on my jup8 where I could calibrate it for a more symmetrical triangle.

Other than that it was fun to play with though the sliders are definitely too small so probably best operated from a controller. I definitely won't be getting rid of my Jup 8 anytime soon but it's nice to see Roland recreating something closer than their previous attempts, if they could add voice phase variation it would be great....now if only they'd do something analogue again :-)"