Roland JP-8000

Description

The JP-8000 is a virtual analog synthesizer produced by Roland beginning in 1996. It became popular for its ‘supersaw’ oscillators which were heavily used in trance music, and even today it finds good mileage in hip hop, dance, and pop studios. While some other virtual analog synths of its time did away with a lot of the panel controls, the JP-8000 still looks very much like a traditional analog synthesizer with 38 sliders and knobs. The resemblance shouldn’t be too surprising, however, since the JP-8000 - as the name suggests - was Roland’s attempt to recreate the Jupiter-8 polysynth in a MIDI-capable VA synth package.

The JP-8000 boasts 8 voice polyphony. A pair of oscillators for each voice generates a handful of traditional waveforms (square, sawtooth, triangle) and also a few new types such as triangle mod, feedback osc, and, most notably, the supersaw waveform. The supersaw is modeled off of 7 analog sawtooth waveforms that have been detuned to one another to make a super wide, large sounding effect (think Darude’s “Sandstorm”, which used the rack version JP-8080’s supersaw sound extensively).

Sound is generated using 16 bit DSP technology, and while Roland aimed for recreating the full sound of the JP-8, the technology of the time didn’t allow for that. Instead, the JP-8000 has a sound of its own, but one that is definitely still worth considering. The JP-8000 remains popular today thanks to its swath of features; a 49 key velocity-sensitive keyboard, arpeggiator, cross-modulation capabilities, motion control recording, a multimode filter, onboard effects, and more.

Technical Specifications

Roland JP-8000